Question 21: The Urgent Right to Heal
Posted by Katy in 
By Christine S.
Christine S. has spent 16 years on Active Duty and is a veteran of OIF and a Bronze Star recipient. She is currently serving in the Washington, DC area.
I read with exasperation Secretary Panetta’s announcement a few weeks ago regarding changes in the prosecution and handling of sexual assault cases. Though efforts to end sexual assault in the ranks are laudable, the route they take reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the perspective of a sexual assault victim in uniform.
Not every victim in uniform wants to go through a criminal prosecution, start to finish. It is invasive, it is traumatic, and there is no guarantee of the outcome. Oftentimes prosecutions in courts martial turn to displays of “he-said, she said,” where the victim is portrayed as having been assaulted while she was vulnerable, isolated, and often intoxicated. It is to the defense’s advantage to assassinate a victim’s character, and – unlike a civilian court martial – the defense is allowed to submit “good soldier” evidence. This means that the defense attorney can assert that because the accused is a “good soldier,” good worker, good troop, he would be fundamentally unable to commit the heinous crime of which he is accused. Where but the military would this even be considered as persuasive evidence? If the accused was a good garbage man, for example, would that make him incapable of rape?
It is no wonder that many victims in uniform will pass on reporting. In an effort to accommodate these feelings, the DoD promulgated “restricted reporting” requirements, which allows a victim to get treatment from medical personnel without involving law enforcement. Though well-meaning, this is only a half-effort.
After your fingernails are scraped, your mouth is swabbed, your pubic hair combed, and you receive any prophylactic vaccinations and plan B against disease and pregnancy, you are still left with the consequences of what just happened to you.
Your first instinct is to withdraw. You simply want to be left alone. You don’t want your squad leader, platoon sergeant, CO, and so forth all the way up to your brigade commander, to know. Imagine if you worked at McDonald’s. Would you want your shift manager to know about how you were deeply and personally violated? All you want is for your world to be the same as it was before. You want to be able to put on your uniform, and go out, and do your job, and forget it ever happened.
But there is a catch. Because you start to have nightmares. And you start to be afraid to leave the barracks. And you walk around at night checking locks and carrying a kitchen knife the length of your arm.
You know you need help. You consider counseling. But you know if you do, you have to put it on your security clearance and expose yourself to a process over which you have no control. Question 21 on the security clearance questionnaire asks whether in the past 7 years you have sought mental health counseling. Combat trauma, grief, and family counseling are exempt from disclosure. Sexual assault counseling is not. What that means is if you seek counseling for the assault, you must disclose it under penalty of law. On a form that goes up through your chain of command. And once again you will be violated by well-meaning but invasive and intrusive questions. And you will be asked to describe your assault to an OPM investigator as part of a background check.
Here is where my exasperation comes in. I have PTSD from a sexual assault. My colleague has PTSD from combat trauma. Though we have the same diagnosis, I have to disclose my counseling, while my colleague does not.
I *don’t want* my chain of command to fix me. I *don’t want* to have my sexual history cross-examined in open court. I just want to get help, and to do my job.
Institutional changes will take years to implement. Changing Question 21 to have “sexual assault counseling” fall under the rubric of “grief counseling” (and therefore be exempt from disclosure) is a concrete, immediate, and fundamental change that can be made today to help those of us who have already been assaulted, who may or may not chose UCMJ for our own reasons. Because we do grieve.
I just want time and space and privacy to heal from my wounds. And I want to continue to serve, without the intrusion, without the violations (well-meaning though they may be) of the system. After losing control over my body and sanity, I want to have the option of who I disclose this to. Special Victims Units and enhanced enforcement are all well and good for future victims, but for the estimated 1 in 5 female veterans who have already been assaulted, this is too little, too late.
Note to Military: Sexual Assault Includes Rape
By Sandra S. Park, ACLU Women’s Rights Project
While it is estimated that over 19,000 sexual assaults occurred in the military in 2010, a rate far higher than among civilians, the government has failed systematically to investigate complaints, appropriately punish perpetrators, and treat trauma and other health conditions suffered by survivors. The profound personal and social consequences that arise from the government’s systemic failures are powerfully profiled in the new film, The Invisible War. Turning a blind eye to these crimes has allowed them to continue, imperiling the lives of victims and degrading their service.
On Friday, a federal district court judge cited yet another example of the military’s unwillingness to acknowledge sexual violence within its ranks. In response to Freedom of Information Act requests filed by the Service Women’s Action Network (SWAN) and the ACLU seeking records from the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs regarding their response to sexual assault, sexual harassment, and domestic violence in the military, the Army Crime Records Center claimed it couldn’t provide records about “sexual assault” because its records are organized by specific criminal offenses such as “rape,” not under the general heading of “sexual assault.”
“‘Sexual assault’ is easily read as encompassing rape and other non-consensual sexual crimes defined in the Army’s offense codes,” the judge found. “The fact that the agency was unwilling to read the Plaintiffs’ request liberally to include such terms seems to be almost willful blindness.”
The judge further ruled that several other sections of the Departments failed to adequately respond to our requests and ordered the government to fulfill its obligations under FOIA. We will continue to press the Read more…
Question 21: The Mission Continues…
SWAN’s policy team headed to the Hill once again on a mission to engage with House and Senate offices on the many issues facing military sexual assault survivors, and the issue of exempting disclosure of mental health counseling due to sexual assaults on the SF86 Form remained a top priority. We have been pleased at the level of interest and engagement that legislators have had on the Question 21 issue, and are encouraged that the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, has announced he intends to implement a solution to this problem. We are concerned, however, that the course of action proposed by Director Clapper may not do the trick.
Question 21 on the SF86 form requires anyone seeking a security clearance to disclose any mental health counseling they have received in the past seven years, and to allow security clearance investigators access to health records and permission to conduct personal interviews regarding the specific details of the sexual assault. Such an investigation is intrusive, subjects the sexual assault survivor to re-traumatization, creates a barrier that prevents the survivor from seeking much needed care from medical professionals, and discourages them from reporting their assault to authorities. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has recognized the invasive nature of these investigations and created exceptions for certain types of counseling, such as marital or grief counseling, and at the urging of the Pentagon the ODNI added an exception for counseling due to combat related mental health issues in 2008.
The Pentagon asked ODNI to create the combat counseling exception for a couple of reasons: To reduce the stigma in the armed forces commonly associated with mental health counseling, to encourage troops who suffer from combat-related mental health issues to seek care, and in recognition of the fact that someone who needs mental help but is not getting it poses a far greater risk in the handling of classified material than someone who has gotten the help they need. All of these reasons equally apply to service members who have received counseling as a result of sexual assault.
My Silent War with Bulimia
Guest Writer Theresa Hornick
“Why would you want to join the U.S. Marine Corps?”
It is a question I have been asked many times. My reply has always been, “Why not?!” I desired a challenge; I wanted to make a difference, to be among the elite, and to set a higher standard for women in the military. I felt I had the right stuff to be one of the few and the proud, so I pursued my dream to become a Marine Corps Officer with spirit and drive.
My career began as a Second Lieutenant platoon commander of a combat engineer platoon comprised of 54 Marines. In 2004 as a ‘gung ho’ 23- year-old Lieutenant, my future was bright. Having played four years of Division One collegiate softball, I was used to teamwork. Thus, that is exactly how I trained my platoon: like a team. As a platoon, we supported one another for the duration of our grueling work on a Joint Task Force with the Border Patrol in Laredo Texas, during Mountain Warfare Training School in Bridgeport, California, and throughout our deployment to the Sunni Triangle in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom III.
Unfortunately, soon after I picked up my new platoon, I developed an illness millions of people underestimate and misunderstand: Bulimia Nervosa. Even though I was living a new lieutenant’s dream – working with demolition and construction, leading convoys and academic classes, conducting weapons and martial arts training, and, of course, engaging in daily physical training – I was simultaneously waging a silent war with bulimia. I asked myself, “Is this really my dream?”
In training alongside my Marines, learning from them, teaching them and mentoring them, I earned their respect through literal blood, sweat and tears. However, my energies were exhausted as I helped everyone but myself. Who was there to mentor me? Yes, I did have a company commander and executive officer, but I would not let them see any sign of what they would consider weakness. I was responsible for lives, hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment, and worked hard to maintain my strong female Marine demeanor and reputation I would not tarnish. As I constantly struggled to keep it Read more…
Exposing the Ugly Details of the Military Sexual Violence Epidemic
Posted by Sandra S. Park, Women’s Rights Project & Rachel Natelson, Service Woman’s Action Network
On Monday, a federal court judge heard oral arguments in the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) case brought by the Service Women’s Action Network (SWAN) and the ACLU seeking records from the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs regarding their response to sexual assault, sexual harassment, and domestic violence in the military. While the hearing has yet to yield a final ruling, one point was clear: the government continues to refuse to disclose documents that could reveal the human toll of military sexual and domestic violence.
Despite high rates of reported and unreported violence within the ranks, the government argued that producing the records we requested would not contribute significantly to public understanding of the operations of government and thus we were not entitled to a fee waiver. Nonprofit groups routinely seek, and obtain, fee waivers to contain the cost of accessing data because FOIA is intended to enable wide access to information about how our government functions.
However, in the government’s view, the public needn’t concern itself with the ugly details of the epidemic of sexual violence in the military. After all, it duly releases annual statistics on the prevalence of sexual assault within each branch, encapsulating in a tidy number how many thousands of episodes have been reported and what percentage of those cases result in courts-martial, nonjudicial punishment, and other corrective measures.
But isn’t it vital for the public to understand how and why our government has failed to reduce violence experienced by our service members? Don’t we need access to information about how service members have been able, or unable, to access remedies, services and benefits in order to better advocate for reforms? Read more…