The Invisible War

It is estimated that 500,000 female US military personnel have been raped/sexually assaulted by fellow male military personnel, the rapist often being a person in authority. The US military, no matter the branch of the armed forces, generally has a culture of making it as difficult as possible for the women to want to report the incidents, and if they do to have a non-satisfactory process to investigate/review their complaints, where the victims are often charged with some offense while the actual perpetrator is not investigated at all. A handful of the known victims speak of: the initial excitement of and reason for joining the military; the situation of the rapes, some who have been raped more than one time; what official process they went through to deal with the incident; and the physical and emotion scars of the rape, some of those scars which have been long lasting and lead to attempts of suicide or going AWOL. The latter also includes more often than not the victims' feelings that they are being let down by an organization they trusted. A few male victims are also interviewed, they who are larger in absolute numbers due to the extreme imbalance in numbers between men and women in the military, and whose issues also include emasculation and homophobia. Examples of how sexual assaults are ingrained into the military, such as what is known as the Tailhook scandal, are presented. The military and political responses to these non-prosecuted rapes are also presented.