{"id":186829,"date":"2013-09-24T19:04:00","date_gmt":"2013-09-25T00:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/09\/24\/just-when-you-thought-that-the-american-military-could-not-get-any-worse-on-rape-in-the-military\/"},"modified":"2013-09-24T19:04:00","modified_gmt":"2013-09-25T00:04:00","slug":"just-when-you-thought-that-the-american-military-could-not-get-any-worse-on-rape-in-the-military","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/09\/24\/just-when-you-thought-that-the-american-military-could-not-get-any-worse-on-rape-in-the-military\/","title":{"rendered":"Just When You Thought that the American Military Could Not Get Any Worse on Rape in the Military"},"content":{"rendered":"

We have a the convening authority allowing cross examination that would not be out of place in a Taliban court<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, the U.S. Naval Academy held a hearing into allegations that three of its football players had sexually assaulted a female midshipman. The alleged victim was a 20-year-old sophomore in April 2012 when she attended an off-campus \u201ctoga and yoga\u201d party, drank heavily, and had alleged sexual contact with the three men while being allegedly too intoxicated to give consent. That\u2019s a lot of \u201callegedlys,\u201d but if true, the midshipman\u2019s tale is a worn, familiar one\u2014especially in the military, where a recent Defense Department report found that an estimated 26,000 service members experienced some form of sexual assault last year, up from 19,000 two years before. Of those incidents, 3,000 were reported; only 302 went to trial. As details from this latest hearing leak out, it\u2019s easy to see why so many victims might prefer to disappear rather than face the punishing interrogations and institutional pressures that come with speaking up.<\/span>

<\/span>The woman, now 21, spent more than 20 hours on the stand, requesting several times to be excused from testifying because of exhaustion. Though, according to newspaper accounts, she said repeatedly that her memory of the night was fuzzy (she came to believe she\u2019d been raped after she heard rumors and saw posts about her on social media), the defense lawyers pounced on discrepancies in her story as evidence of instability and deceit. They grilled her on her mental health. They inquired whether she wore a bra or underwear at the party. They quizzed her relentlessly about her oral sex technique, including how wide she opened her mouth. (Why? Because, as the New York Times reports, \u201coral sex would indicate the ‘active participation’ of the woman and therefore consent,\u201d according to one of the player’s lawyers.) They asked, the paper of record continues, \u201cwhether she had apologized to another midshipman with whom she\u2019d had intercourse for \u2018being a ho.\u2019 \u201d <\/span>

<\/span>This is shameful. And it makes an excellent case for Sen. Kirsten E. Gillibrand\u2019s bill to remove sexual assault trials from the military chain of command, prosecuting them in civilian courts instead. Supporters of the Gillibrand proposal cite the web of conflicting loyalties between the accused, the accuser, and the judges as one reason that the current system is failing to protect victims. They argue that authorities\u2019 first allegiance may be to the military\u2019s reputation\u2014that the bias is to acquit. But here\u2019s an even simpler reason to make the switch: Civilian courts don\u2019t allow the kind of abusive questioning described above. Lawyers in civilian courts are prohibited (or at least strongly discouraged) from asking an alleged assault victim about her sexual history. Judges in civilian courts would probably break their gavels admonishing a counsel who wanted to know how wide a woman opened her mouth for oral sex.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is truly obscene.<\/p>\n

I’d go further than Gillibrand, and put this in Federal Court, removing it completely from the jurisdiction of the military, because it is clear that they cannot be trusted with this.<\/p>\n

As the Germans once said of the British, “They fight like lions, but they are led by asses.”<\/p>\n

It appears that the same could apply to our officer corps, at least with regard to their morality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We have a the convening authority allowing cross examination that would not be out of place in a Taliban court: Earlier this month, the U.S. Naval Academy held a hearing into allegations that three of its football players had sexually assaulted a female midshipman. The alleged victim was a 20-year-old sophomore in April 2012 when …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[970,1052,969,972,1006,1075],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-186829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corruption","category-crimes","category-evil","category-justice","category-military","category-sex"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186829"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186829\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}