ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, September 20, 1996 TAG: 9609200021
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CHRIS LOMBARDI
YOU SAW them during the Olympics, commercials featuring glamorous women happy in their uniforms: ``Be All You Can Be.''
In Sassy and Glamour magazine, the ads say ``You can look like a model or be one.'' Glossy brochures and posters from the Army and Navy boast, ``Opportunities for Women.''
One of those opportunities is to be the victim of sexual harassment. The Pentagon has done its best to pretend that this aspect of military life is ancient history. But on Aug. 29, The New York Times reported on a class-action complaint by 23 civilian women employees at Fort Bliss, Texas, who charged that they were forced to ``pose nude and perform sexual acts'' while on duty.
Six weeks prior, the Pentagon released its own report on sexual harassment, and the best news they could come up with was that 55 percent of military women surveyed reported that they had been sexually harassed while on duty. It was a slight decrease from eight years earlier.
A brief survey of articles from the last 19 months in the Army-Navy Times turns up more than 200 examples, including a Navy hospital corps member who was denied promotion because she didn't grant a ``sexual favor,'' and a Coast Guard petty officer who was threatened with a screwdriver by men demanding oral sex.
Two Navy SEAL trainees were held for the rape and murder of a Georgia college student, and four Marines were charged in the rape of a female sailor while deployed to Iceland.
The service academies, the training ground for military officers, are no exception. At Annapolis, one midshipman twice raped a high school girl and her sister, while another was accused of assault by four female cadets. At the Air Force Academy, a female cadet in a mock prisoner of war camp is urinated on, sexually humiliated and beaten unconscious three times.
In most cases, even when the victims bring charges against their attackers, the perpetrators either manage to have the charges dropped or are disciplined lightly. In a recent case in San Diego, involving a civilian victim, an enlisted airman was convicted of forcible rape and forcible sodomy. He received only 18 months' imprisonment and a bad-conduct discharge.
What becomes clear from these examples, and from the Pentagon's own report, is that male violence against women in the military is not incidental. It is chronic.
The Pentagon's own report was compiled from three separate studies, one of which asked questions about a range of harassing behavior, from sexist jokes to rape. In a press release, the Pentagon said 55 percent of women reported harassment. But that was only when they were on duty. The Pentagon said that 78 percent of those surveyed reported that they had been harassed, either on or off duty, in at least one of the ways listed.
Many victims experience classic signs of post-traumatic stress disorder: flashbacks, nightmares, insomnia. The Veterans Administration has even set up special clinics for women veterans who have experienced sexual assault, though they turn away many who seek their help.
The central and devastating truth about the military is that sexual violence is intrinsic to its culture and traditions.
In his book, ``On Killing,'' Lt. Col. David Grossman, military psychologist and ROTC instructor, has documented the psychological toll of military training, which systematically desensitizes young people to the act of killing another human being. When such training is paired with what a former Fort Drum, N.Y., Army major calls a ``frat-house mentality,'' the results are predictable and near-lethal.
Ask Elizabeth Saum, the Air Force Academy cadet assaulted during ``prisoner of war'' training, who may never have children as a result. Ask the commander who writes, ``Looking back, I realize now I was the victim of date rape. What was I supposed to do? Scream?''
Ask the male trainees tortured by Marine Corps officers in Camp Lejeune and Camp Smith survival training, their genitals burned with cigarettes and Tabasco sauce.
``The mission of the military is organized mayhem,'' wrote James Webb, Reagan's secretary of the Navy, in a famous essay declaring violent masculinity essential to the military. And certainly mayhem against women is not confined to any single military service, rank or occupational specialty.
Today, with another school just begun, military recruiters are once again pressing their case inside America's high schools, targeting high-achieving students in low-income communities and communities of color. But the ``opportunity'' hawked by military recruiters is the opportunity to be harassed and abused, to have one's claims disbelieved, and to be denied medical treatment for the damage done by military men.
Chris Lombardi is on the staff of the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors.
- Knight-Ridder/Tribune
LENGTH: Medium: 88 linesby CNB