(NEW YORK) MintPress – Every single branch of the U.S. military was implicated in the stories told by female troops, all victims of sexual abuse by their peers, who appear in veteran filmmaker Kirby Dick’s newly released documentary The Invisible War.
The women include Kori Cioca of the Coast Guard; Lee Le Teff, Teah Bedney and Valine Demos of the Army; Tia Christopher, Hannah Sewell and Trina McDonald of the Navy; and Ariana Klay of the Marine Corps.
The attacks are as disturbing for them as some of those they witnessed in conflict. Recalls Cioca, “He hit me across the left side of my face…and my face hurt so bad.” Christopher says, “He slammed my head against the concrete wall and very forcibly had sex with me.” Those are just two of the myriad horror stories recounted in the film.
Equally scary is that none of the women were able to get help. “They made it very, very clear that if I said anything they were going to kill me,” reveals McDonald. “He said that if I told anybody, that he was gonna have his friend Marv, from Indiana, kill me and throw me in a ditch, ‘cause that’s how they took care of things in Indiana,” adds Klay.
She continues, “The thing that makes me the most angry is not even the rape itself; it’s the commanders that were complicit in covering up everything that happened.”
Denials by military brass
Although U.S. government statistics back up these allegations with hard facts — more than 20 percent of female veterans have been sexually assaulted while serving — the Pentagon has steadfastly ignored the issue.
Members of Congress have conducted probes into the Tailhook, Aberdeen and Air Force Academy scandals, but to little avail.
The Invisible War investigates on its own. Klay was told to do “what a Marine officer should do, and that’s to ignore it and move on.” When Andrea Werner reported her rape to her Army superiors, she was charged with adultery because her assailant was married. Again, these are far from isolated incidents.
In 2010, the military catalogued 3,158 reports of sexual assault, only one-sixth of which came to court-martial and for which just 175, or 1 in 20, of the assailants served time in jail.
The Director of the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office, Major General Mary Kay Kellogg says in the film that victims should petition the Defense Department’s Attorney General, but of 2,994 cases forwarded to the AG, not one was investigated.
Congresswoman Jackie Speier asserts that the Attorney General’s office told her, “We have other, higher priorities.”
Laments Mary Haider, a member of the Army Criminal Investigation Division who herself was raped by her superior officer, “Suicide or AWOL — those are your only options.”
Bleak house
“In the military, when we’re functioning at our best — a band of brothers and sisters — we’re like a family,” Brigadier General Loree Sutton, a retired Army psychiatrist tells Dick. “When that band of trust is violated, the wound penetrates to the very most inner part of one’s soul, one’s psyche.”
Leaving the victims to continue suffering in silence.
Last December, a class action suit against the military on behalf of several victims, brought by the Director of the Service Women’s Action Network, Marine Captain Anu Bhagwait, and attorney Susan Burke, was dismissed by the Court, which ruled that rape is an occupational hazard of military service.
One sign of hope, according to Bhagwait: After seeing The Invisible War in April, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta “took the decision to prosecute away from commanders.”
At this stage, it could be too little, too late.