Air Force Sexual Assault Scandal Even Worse Than We Thought

[Starry Messenger]

http://jezebel.com/5926995/air-force-sexual-assault-scandal-even-worse-than-we-thought

The horribly depressing, kind of gigantic Lackland Air Force base rape/sexual assault scandal (is the phrase "rape scandal" redundant? Can't get more scandalous than rape.) uncovered in recent months has headed to a military court, and details of the case seem to point to a widespread culture of male superiors taking sexual advantage of female recruits. One male defendant accused of sexually assaulting 10 women claims that all of the sex he was having was consensual; the woman he was having sex with claim it was rape. So, best case scenario, Lackland is a fuckfest. Worst case: a rapefest.

Earlier this year, investigators uncovered evidence that there was something rotten in Denmark; in all, 12 of Lackland's 475 instructors had been accused of sexual impropriety with 31 different female recruits. Nine of the men accused of sexual impropriety were in the same squadron. You don't have to be a mathemagician to understand that because 31 is bigger than 12, some of the instructors must have been repeat offenders. And you don't have to be a woman to think: ew.

The biggest repeat offender in the case is Staff Sgt. Luis Walker, who prosecutors claim is a serial predator who routinely targeted recruits — among the 28 counts leveled against him, 1 rape, allegations of sexual harassment and sexual misconduct with 9 other women, 4 of whom he had sex with and 5 of whom he allegedly coerced into performing sexual favors for him by threatening their careers. His defense claims he was just a man looking for love in all the wrong vaginas, since the 2009 alleged rape wasn't reported to Air Force investigators until last year. As for the other stuff, Walker's defense basically boils down to: uh, bitches lie about rape all the time, right? It's fun for women! Like shoe shopping and baby showers.

If convicted, Sgt. Walker could face life in prison and a dishonorable discharge from the military. One of his colleagues, Staff Sgt. Peter Vega-Maldonado plea bargained down to a 90-day confinement after admitting to having sex with one female recruit. Afterward, he admitted he'd been involved with 9 other female recruits.

<snip>

[stevenleser]

1. They need to LWOP all of the folks found guilty.

I went to basic training at Lackland. The amount of power and control Training Instructors have over the Airman Basics is huge and must come with unswerving adherance to ethical behavior. Most Training Instructors examplify these ethics. Those that do not, like apparently this Sgt Walker and his associates, deserve the most severe punishments. They are a disgrace to the Training Instructor corps and the uniform.

Edited to add: If you don't understand the LWOP reference, it means "Life WithOut Parole"

[Starry Messenger]

2. Thank you for the translation, I didn't know that.

It would be tough to join the military as a woman if you knew there is a good chance that this might happen to you. I'm glad to know there are consequences that have teeth for offenders.

[stevenleser]

3. This guy is going away until he dies, and that is much worse than a civilian incarceration

When you go to military prison for a major felony, it is generally a sentence that includes "at hard labor."

The military is the wrong place to go if you are going to commit crimes.

[yardwork]

6. What is "hard labor" in a military prison?

[stevenleser]

7. It can vary.

Most are not pleasant. See:

http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/09/airforce_hardlabor_090408/

UCMJ vague on hard labor guidelines

By Kelly Kennedy - Staff writer
Posted : Thursday Sep 4, 2008 13:12:58 EDT

For 35 days this summer, Pvt. John Suarez worked from 9 a.m. until midnight in a Kevlar helmet, full body armor and a packed ruck, digging foxholes at Fort Lewis, Wash.

His hands turned to sandpaper. His lower back felt like someone had kicked him. Every time he swung his pickax, soreness flooded his wrists.

“It was pretty exhausting,” said Suarez, 20, who was sentenced to 45 days’ hard labor in a summary court-martial after a urinalysis test came up positive for cocaine. “It was like dirt and rock. The soil here is pretty bad.”

DISCUSS: Hard labor

His first sergeant told him that his battalion commander, Lt. Col. Richard Demaree, of the 2nd Battalion, 1st Infantry Regiment, 5th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, had ordered that Suarez could not do goal-oriented work; the foxholes were for naught.

[obamanut2012]

4. MST = Military Sexual Trauma

It has gotten so bad, the military came up with an acronym for both sexual assault and sexual harassment for service members. The majority of the victims are women, although men make up a decent amount, and the latter tend to be assaulted and harassed by other males.

TOs have a huge amount of power over recruits, and the Air Force has a bad rep on covering up MST.

[Starry Messenger]

5. Jackie Speier has been doing a weekly address in the House on this.

She has a special email for people to send their stories and she does a report to Congress. Every week.

And this article says that the military also diagnoses women with psychiatric disorders like BPD to cover the rapes.

http://www.womensmediacenter.com/feature/entry/when-jane-comes-marching-home-again

t is striking to note, for example, that from 2000 to 2010 more than 31,000 veterans were discharged having been diagnosed with a “personality disorder.” (Neither the Department of Defense nor the Pentagon has said how many of these cases involved MST, which can affect men as well as women.) Anu Bhagwati, a former Marine and now executive director of the veteran’s advocacy group Service Women’s Action Network (SWAN), told CNN in an April interview that she sees “a pattern of the military using psychiatric diagnoses to get rid of women who report sexual assaults.” In the case of a “personality disorder,” described by psychiatrists as a long-standing, inflexible pattern of maladaptive behavior, Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) becomes a pre-existing condition rather than a service-related disability. That means MST victims with personality disorder discharges don’t receive benefits. The military can simply dismiss them rather than treat them. And according to military records obtained by Yale Law School’s Veterans Legal Services Clinic and reported by CNN, the diagnosis of personality disorder is used disproportionately on women.

The betrayal is profound, says Mary Ellen Salzano, mother of a Marine and founder of a statewide collaborative for military families in California. “The first thing you learn in the military is ‘I don’t need help,’” she says. “Someone needs it more and you give it to them. So when a soldier or Marine asks for help themselves they are revealing a vulnerability that it is hard to acknowledge. And if they can’t trust their own to help them they suffer ‘institutional trauma.’ They feel crushed. They start questioning everything. It’s huge.”

[FloridaJudy]

8. Shades of "Tailhook"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tailhook_scandal

~sigh~

I'd hoped we'd have come a bit farther as a society in more than twenty years.