Sexual Violence at our Military Academies
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Dear Friends,
This fall, SWAN is taking a deeper look into sexual trauma cases at the Military
Academies. As you may know from our publication earlier this year, “Military Academies: Rape, Sexual Assault, and Sexual Harassment,” fewer than 10% of sexual assault survivors at Military Academies report their incidents.
We are interested in speaking with women and men who currently attend or have attended any Military Academy (including the Coast Guard Academy) and who were subjected to sexual harassment, assault, and/or rape, or witnessed these acts committed upon others. If you have a story and are willing to share it with us, please contact us at peersupport@servicewomen.org with responses to the questions below. Confidentiality is assured. read more
A Letter from Robin Morgan
Robin Morgan is on SWAN’s Advisory Board and is one of my favorite people in the world. Many of us know her as an iconic writer and visionary within the women’s movement. But to us at SWAN, she is a mentor and friend. During the hardest times, she apologetically encourages us to continue to do what we are doing. Today, we thank her for sharing her heart and pen in support of our work.
– Anu
Dear Friend,
I’m proud to be a member of SWAN’s Advisory Board, and I’m writing to share exciting news about this extraordinary organization.
As you may know, SWAN (The Service Women’s Action Network) uses legislative reform, litigation, public education, and a national peer support helpline to help secure equal opportunity and the freedom to serve in uniform without the threat of harassment, discrimination, intimidation, or assault, and to secure quality health care and equal benefits for women veterans and their families.
With More Veterans on Campus, More Support is Needed
Via newgibill.org
Disheartening reports of suicide rates among the military community have been surfacing as Suicide Prevention Awareness Month approaches in September. One of the more troubling statistics comes from a study of Veterans enrolled in higher education. Sara Lipka at the Chronicle for Higher Education reports:
Almost half of military veterans who are enrolled in college have contemplated suicide at some point, and 20 percent have planned to kill themselves, according to a study presented here on Thursday at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association.
Sharan Jayson from USA Today offers further perspective from the study, which examines the rates of suicidal ideology among veteran students versus non-veteran students:
Veterans and Shelter Dogs Partner Up
By Emily Dake
Emily Dake is a graduate of Vassar College and executive assistant at SWAN. In her spare time, she enjoys theater, music and Gothic literature.
Amid anxiety over the security of veterans services under the new debt deal, one community is thinking outside the box to provide unique services to veterans and help place shelter animals with permanent homes at the same time.
The Veterans & Shelter Dogs program at the University of Missouri’s College of Veterinary Medicine places veterans as amateur trainers of shelter dogs. The program is part of a study to find out how to make shelter dogs more adoptable and able to better adapt to their new families. The study also looks at how working with and training animals can help alleviate symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in veterans:
Discharged for Reporting the Truth
Dear Friends of SWAN,
SWAN was flooded with responses to our call for stories related to unfair Personality Disorder diagnoses and Sexual Assault. As many of you know firsthand, survivors of military sexual violence often face multiple forms of retaliation after reporting their attacks, including improper mental health diagnoses that force them out of the military. Service members who are diagnosed with Personality Disorders not only face the certainty of being kicked out of the military, but also the denial of critical veterans benefits.
Unfortunately, the lack of Congressional and DoD attention to Personality Disorder diagnoses and discharges is all too familiar to many generations of veterans. We are proud to be cooperating with organizations like Vietnam Veterans of America, who know intimately about the effects of improper Personality Disorder diagnoses on combat veterans. Together, we can make a powerful case for systemic reform on this issue.
Leadership Failure
By Greg Jacob
Greg is the policy director for SWAN, and served in the US Marines as both an enlisted infantryman and an infantry officer.
Two retired officers recently posted an interesting article in the Defense Policy blog where they pull back the curtain and expose the world of the Army officer. What Brigadier General Dennis Laich and Lieutenant Colonel Mike Young found was a broken system of leadership in which feckless, overbearing, careerist senior officers rule over frightened, downtrodden and paralyzed junior officers. This has created what is described as a “Culture of Conformity” which rewards officers who toe the line and drives out the officers who see their role as true leaders. In spite of its own rhetoric about being a meritocracy, the reality of the military is much different.
Defend Equality
Join SWAN to “Defend Equality: A Campaign to End Gender Discrimination and Sexual Violence in the Military!”
A generous donor has offered SWAN a matching grant of $25,000 to close our fiscal year. If you make a donation now, no matter how small or large, it will be matched dollar for dollar up to $25,000, thereby doubling your donation and doubling its impact on the work we do! Every donor will receive one of our beautiful SWAN T-Shirts (while supplies last, e-mail info@servicewomen.org with your preferred size and mailing address) and all donations are tax-deductible. If we are able to raise $25,000 from supporters like you, it will result in $50,000 to support SWAN’s work!
Your support goes an incredibly long way in supporting our dedicated staff so that we can help women and men in crisis. Unlike many organizations, SWAN does not rely on membership fees or charge its clients. We count on the generous contributions of supporters like you!
Just last week, the Armed Forces discharged one of our clients, another bright and talented woman, a future officer who was unfairly kicked out with a “personality disorder” diagnosis in retaliation for reporting her rape. SWAN is rallying Congress and the courts around this and other issues in the coming fiscal year, and we will not relent until justice is served.
Please help us support our courageous women and men in uniform. With your generosity, we can prepare to launch another year of groundbreaking change.
The Debt Deal and Military Sexual Violence
By Brittany Stalsburg
Brittany Stalsburg is a political science PhD candidate and Policy Associate for SWAN. Her academic work focuses on parenthood, gender, and political candidacy.
The debt deal seems to be nearing a compromise, but neither side of the aisle is particularly happy. While those on the left are lamenting budget changes to beloved social programs like Medicare, Republicans are decrying massive defense cuts which, depending on the final outcome, could total more than $600 billion. For weeks, veterans and veterans groups have been worried over what this deal would mean for their benefits and healthcare; even if veterans programs survive this particular compromise, it is clear that in the coming years the Veterans Administration (VA) will have to do more with fewer resources than they actually need. With the influx of veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the annual cost of caring for OEF/OIF veterans will more than triple in the next decade, from $1.9 billion in 2010 to as much as $8.4 billion in 2020.
One way to reduce the extraordinary sums spent through the Department of Defense (DOD) and VA is to eliminate the rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment crisis that infects the U.S military. The sexual violence problem is an expensive one, and high costs incur for both the DOD and VA. Although military sexual assaults are notoriously under-prosecuted, those that are brought to court-martial use a lot of taxpayer money to try rapists.