If you are attending Netroots Nation #12 this weekend in Providence, RI, you will have a plethora of sessions from which to choose, everything from Lizz Winstead to effective tweeting to carrying the Occupy movement forward.
You will also have the opportunity on Friday, at 3:00, to attend a very powerful panel on military sexual trauma (MST), in which Joan Brooker, Elizabeth Stinson, and Col. Ann Wright will be leading a discussion on the single-most important non-combat issue faced by any member of the United States Armed Forces.
Why, you may ask, if you are not a member of the military or a military family member, should you take the time to attend a discussion that has nothing to do with you? It is precisely for that reason that you should attend. If you do, you will discover that no matter what your connection to our military, as an American, you are affected by the epidemic of rape, sexual assault and harassment, and the systematic persecution of its victims that is rampant in all branches of our armed forces today.
It is almost a certainty that you somehow have a connection to the United States Armed Forces, whether it be a loved one in active duty or the reserves or through a friend or acquaintance who cares for someone in uniform. If you don’t happen to have that connection, you are always one enlistment signature away from falling within that demographic. Should the person whose name is on that enlistment contract be your son or daughter, you will want to know the statistics regarding the chances of that new recruit being a victim (or aggressor) of military sexual predation.
Participant in the War on Terror is not the only active combat role for which new recruits are being groomed. There is an invisible, undeclared war being waged by our military forces today, and it is not being fought by our soldiers; rather it is being fought against them, by their fellow soldiers as well as a military establishment dedicated to ignoring, not solving, the scourge of military rape; and if you are a citizen who pays taxes to support the institutions responsible for the maintenance of our freedom and democracy, you are currently supporting a system that punishes rape victims simply because they are members of those institutions.
It is estimated that every four hours, a rape is reported in the United States Armed Forces. (These are just the reported assaults; countless others go unreported for a variety of disturbing reasons.)
The statistics are dizzying:
One in three women in the military will be sexually assaulted.
Among the homeless in this country, 25% are veterans; among those homeless vets, 70% are said to be victims of MST.
Over 90% of women in the military who report a sexual assault will be discharged before the end of their contract, and of those, a staggering 85% of those discharges will be involuntary. (For first-hand accounts of the shameful ways in which sexual assault victims are treated by their commanders, please visit mydutytospeak.com, a repository of stories by survivors of MST that is a project of the Military Rape Crisis Center.)
The Department of Defense itself reports, though, that 74 to 85% of the convicted perpetrators of military sexual assault are discharged honorably, their convictions absent from their record.
In 2008, Rep. Jane Harman of California was quoted as saying that a woman who signed up to serve her country was more likely to be raped by a fellow service member than killed in the line of duty.
Every single one of us in this country pays, in one way or another, for the crimes associated with MST. If you are a victim, you pay the price that is most dear. If you are a loved one, you pay the price of the pain of watching your soldier suffer, largely ignored, by his or her branch of the service, simply because they fell victim to MST. If you are a taxpayer, you pay the salaries of the men and women who do the raping, the ignoring, the covering up, and who shame the victims on a daily basis.
Inside or outside of the military, you have a duty to educate yourself about this undeclared war and learn all you can do to bring about a cessation of the hostilities against our own troops.