This Veteran's Day might not be too happy for you if you are a female veteran trying to get over a rape. Some female veterans have been billed for their rape kits at civilian facilities.
Rules are supposed to go into effect in December to remedy this situation, but what about the women veterans who have already been raped?
Women in the military are twice as likely to be raped as the rest of the population. The number is probably higher since 80% of rapes aren't reported. We know what military salaries are like, and we have been repaying women for their service by making some of them pay for their own rape kits. Happy Veterans' Day folks!
Here's the situation.
[UPDATE 1: After a comment in the thread about the Alternet article being unclear about whether women on bases are covered, I did a little more digging.
Apparently, even though there are few prosecutions, women on military bases can get rape kits without cost. It seems that when they go off the base, perhaps because their cases weren't taken seriously, or their rapes occurred off-base, or they are guarding their privacy, that some of them they were being billed.
Here's a pertinent section from the proposed regulation at Regulation tracker
Forensic examinations are currently paid for active duty members with supplemental care, which under 10 U.S.C. 1074(c)(1), does not have the same requirement for medical or psychological necessity. All
beneficiaries are covered if they are examined in a military treatment
facility. The forensic examination becomes an issue when services are
provided in a civilian health care facility. Eighteen States have
mechanisms in place that require civilian health care facilities to
bill a State agency directly. Certain other States, to some degree,
have mechanisms to minimize the possibility of invoicing the
beneficiary. This proposed rule puts into place a mechanism that allows
civilian health care facilities to invoice TRICARE for reimbursement of
forensic examinations.
This brings up another weakness in the article. The rule to implement the legislation hasn't been written yet. The comment period ended in just September.
Sorry for trusting this author too much, even though the main point remains the same: all miltary women should have gotten coverage for rape kits in all circumstances. AND these crimes should be prosecuted relentlessly, not covered up.]
[UPDATE 2]: You might think that since this problem has to do with civilian facilities, and some states require this to be paid in any case, it's not really an issue. ZenTrainer has a comment below that reveals why we need to pay attention to this:
You can risk your career and safety by getting an exam on base. So in a sense you DO have to pay for your own rape kit because it isn't safe to get it on base.
It's not effective either since you won't get the morning after pill and you won't get counseling.
So you really have no choice but to go off base and pay for your own kit.
And since it is Veterans Day, I'd like to mention that we pay these sacrificial lambs peanuts.
This information comes from an article on Alternet today.
An Epidemic of Sexual Violence Against Military Women
There are currently about 1.7 million female veterans in the United States, and the Department of Defense estimates that there are about 200,000 women, 15 percent of the military, on active duty. Thirty-nine percent of those women return from Iraq or Afghanistan with mental health issues, and, for more than a third who seek VA health care, the precipitating trauma was a sexual assault.
All MEDCOMM commanders have received a memo saying that rape kits are not covered by Tricare, which means that family members can't get them at civilian facilities either (edit: to be clear, this problem regards civilian facilities).
Women in the military are twice as likely to be raped as their civilian counterparts. In fact, "women serving in the U.S. military today are more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire in Iraq," Congresswoman Jane Harman, D-Calif., told the House Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs in May.
Harman said, "The scope of the problem was brought into acute focus for me during a visit to the West Los Angeles VA Health Center where I met female veterans and their doctors. My jaw dropped when the doctors told me that 41 percent of the female veterans seen there say they were victims of sexual assault while serving in the military, and 29 percent said they were raped during their military service."
Think Bob Gates should keep his position as Secretary of Defense? In July the House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee asked the director of the Pentagon's Sexual Assault and Prevention Response Office, Kaye Whitley, to testify about what her office was doing to stop an escalating problem with sexual assault in the military, but Gates ordered her not to appear. Threatened with a contempt citation, she finally agreed to testify in September.
What did she say?
After saying that the DoD was on a "crusade" against sexual assault, she admitted the following:
...in 2007 there were 2,688 sexual assaults in the military, including 1,259 reports of rape. Just 8 percent (181) of those cases were referred to courts martial, compared to a civilian prosecution rate of 40 percent. And almost half of those cases were dismissed without investigation. (And I say Whitley "had to admit" the number of cases because in 2004, Congress woke up to the fact that the DoD was blowing off the issue and required the military to make yearly reports on all matters relating to sexual assault in the Armed Forces. But those reports did not indicate either prioritizing or progress -- hence the hearings.)
What's being done about this?
This year the Assistant Secretary of Defense did solicit legislation, which is now an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act scheduled to be implemented in December. I doubt anything will seriously happen until Obama is sworn in.
For head of Veterans Affairs: According to the article, Tammy Duckworth is at the top of the list for an appointment, and she's a good candidate. She has direct experience with the military medical system since she lost her legs in a blackhawk helicopter crash in Iraq in 2004
Since this is Veteran's Day, lets use this occasion to remember that many women are soldiers, an that their war injuries may not be outwardly evident. And that even though in the future women who are raped while on duty won't have to pay for their own forensic exams, some of our current women Veterans did.
I truly hope that under an Obama Administration, the military will be forced to address the problem of women soldiers being sexually assaulted in a much more serious fashion than what we've seen up until now.
And I don't trust Bob Gates. He was just another Bush Administration appointee obstructing Congress on this one.