Post by maruf on Nov 25, 2005 12:01:14 GMT -5
Published November 25, 2005
Sexual assault in military common, devastatingdesmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051125/OPINION01/511250331/1035/OPINION
Rekha Basu's Nov. 18 column about the alleged rape of a Filipino woman by the U.S. Marines was a troubling story. This isn't an isolated case, either. Physical and sexual violence against women is a widespread problem in the U.S. armed forces. Media reports have offered evidence suggesting that U.S. military personnel raped and sexually abused Iraqi women detained at Abu Ghraib prison and other detention facilities in Iraq.
Stronger evidence, however, indicates that the most frequent target of male troops is their sister servicewomen. According to the U.S. Department of Defense, 1,700 female soldiers reported sexual or physical assaults in 2004 — up from 1,012 in 2003 and 901 in 2002.
Two recent studies done by the University of Iowa College of Public Health on behalf of the U.S. Department of the Army help us explore this issue. The first, Health Related Consequences of Physical and Sexual Violence: Women in the Military, identifies "differences in health-related quality of life among women veterans who were raped, physically assaulted, both, or neither, during their military service."
The second, Military Environment: Risk Factors for Women's Non-Fatal Assaults, identifies "factors associated with non-fatal physical assault occurring to women during military service." Both use the same cross-sectional telephone survey of a national sample. All told, 537 women veterans completed the survey, conducted in 2002.
The first study strongly suggests that the negative health consequences of rape and physical assault among servicewomen are both severe and chronic. Forty-eight percent of responders experienced violence during their military service, 30 percent were raped, 35 percent were physically assaulted and 16 percent were both raped and physically assaulted. Forty-seven percent of participants reported being sexually abused during childhood, raped, or both before their service in the military.
The study concludes: More than a decade after rape or physical assault during military service, women reported severely decreased health-related quality of life, with limitations of physical and emotional health, educational and financial attainment, and severe, recurrent problems with work and social activities.
The second study concludes that unwanted sexual behavior and repeated physical assaults are pervasive and consistent within the U.S. armed forces. It identifies "sexual harassment allowed by officer and unwanted sexual advances while on duty and in sleeping quarters" as the most notable risk factors. Interestingly, it concludes that mixed-gender sleeping quarters or predominantly male work contexts did not significantly increase the odds of assault. Rather, it was when those living and work environments were sexualized, through unwanted sexual advances or harassment, that women's odds of physical assault doubled or tripled.
According to both studies, findings could have been affected by "memory failure, telescoping of events into or out of the reference period . . . and decreased willingness to report victimization because of knowledge that a more detailed interview would follow." Other potential limitations: Female victims are sometimes hard to find, and a pattern of low response rates is common. These are convenience samples, a self-selected subset that may not be representative of a whole population.
The U.S. Department of Defense established a task force in 2004 to address this issue. But will it address how to implement the major reforms needed to make the military safer for gender-integrated forces?
We are told that our soldiers protect the freedoms of all Americans and that they export those freedoms abroad as well. Yet physical and sexual violence against women is frequent in civilian and military life. The contrast between the ideal and the reality couldn't be more clear.
This chilling social problem is but one of the reasons why students at the University of Iowa and the University of Northern Iowa have begun a "College Not Combat" counter-recruitment campaign.
DAVID GOODNER of Iowa City is a part-time college student majoring in international studies and a copy editor and reporter for College Not Combat, the national newspaper of the Campus Antiwar Network.
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Copyright © 2005, The Des Moines Register.
Use of this site signifies your agreement to the Terms of Service (updated 1/3/2003).
Sexual assault in military common, devastatingdesmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051125/OPINION01/511250331/1035/OPINION
Rekha Basu's Nov. 18 column about the alleged rape of a Filipino woman by the U.S. Marines was a troubling story. This isn't an isolated case, either. Physical and sexual violence against women is a widespread problem in the U.S. armed forces. Media reports have offered evidence suggesting that U.S. military personnel raped and sexually abused Iraqi women detained at Abu Ghraib prison and other detention facilities in Iraq.
Stronger evidence, however, indicates that the most frequent target of male troops is their sister servicewomen. According to the U.S. Department of Defense, 1,700 female soldiers reported sexual or physical assaults in 2004 — up from 1,012 in 2003 and 901 in 2002.
Two recent studies done by the University of Iowa College of Public Health on behalf of the U.S. Department of the Army help us explore this issue. The first, Health Related Consequences of Physical and Sexual Violence: Women in the Military, identifies "differences in health-related quality of life among women veterans who were raped, physically assaulted, both, or neither, during their military service."
The second, Military Environment: Risk Factors for Women's Non-Fatal Assaults, identifies "factors associated with non-fatal physical assault occurring to women during military service." Both use the same cross-sectional telephone survey of a national sample. All told, 537 women veterans completed the survey, conducted in 2002.
The first study strongly suggests that the negative health consequences of rape and physical assault among servicewomen are both severe and chronic. Forty-eight percent of responders experienced violence during their military service, 30 percent were raped, 35 percent were physically assaulted and 16 percent were both raped and physically assaulted. Forty-seven percent of participants reported being sexually abused during childhood, raped, or both before their service in the military.
The study concludes: More than a decade after rape or physical assault during military service, women reported severely decreased health-related quality of life, with limitations of physical and emotional health, educational and financial attainment, and severe, recurrent problems with work and social activities.
The second study concludes that unwanted sexual behavior and repeated physical assaults are pervasive and consistent within the U.S. armed forces. It identifies "sexual harassment allowed by officer and unwanted sexual advances while on duty and in sleeping quarters" as the most notable risk factors. Interestingly, it concludes that mixed-gender sleeping quarters or predominantly male work contexts did not significantly increase the odds of assault. Rather, it was when those living and work environments were sexualized, through unwanted sexual advances or harassment, that women's odds of physical assault doubled or tripled.
According to both studies, findings could have been affected by "memory failure, telescoping of events into or out of the reference period . . . and decreased willingness to report victimization because of knowledge that a more detailed interview would follow." Other potential limitations: Female victims are sometimes hard to find, and a pattern of low response rates is common. These are convenience samples, a self-selected subset that may not be representative of a whole population.
The U.S. Department of Defense established a task force in 2004 to address this issue. But will it address how to implement the major reforms needed to make the military safer for gender-integrated forces?
We are told that our soldiers protect the freedoms of all Americans and that they export those freedoms abroad as well. Yet physical and sexual violence against women is frequent in civilian and military life. The contrast between the ideal and the reality couldn't be more clear.
This chilling social problem is but one of the reasons why students at the University of Iowa and the University of Northern Iowa have begun a "College Not Combat" counter-recruitment campaign.
DAVID GOODNER of Iowa City is a part-time college student majoring in international studies and a copy editor and reporter for College Not Combat, the national newspaper of the Campus Antiwar Network.
Click here to go back to article
Copyright © 2005, The Des Moines Register.
Use of this site signifies your agreement to the Terms of Service (updated 1/3/2003).