Thursday, November 6, 2008

Sexual Trauma in Military

I recently read an article about sexual trauma and its results (http://news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/20081028/hl_hsn/sexualtraumahauntsmanyfemalevets) which talks about sexual trauma in the military. It states that women, and men, who experience sexual trauma while serving in the military have higher rates of depression and PTSD afterward. This should not be surprising. What should be shocking, but unfortunately is not, is the fact that 14.5% (22% according to a different study) of women reported sexual trauma while serving.

It takes a strong woman to join the military. Then they are trained in combat. Yet, this horrible crime still occurs. I am not suggesting this is the victim's fault. It is always the attackers fault. It is sad that it is still occurring. One would think our military would have learned the lessons from a few years ago when they got in trouble for not doing enough to prosecute offenders of sexual assault. The article does not go into whether the crimes were even reporting. It was conducted by the VA for the purpose of getting a handle on and treating vets.

A question that comes to my mind is whether combat training is useful in stopping a sexual assault. Is the training they learn in the military effective at stopping an attack? If not, why not? It could be that a lot of these attacks occurred while a group of people were out at the bar and inebriated. This does not excuse the crime, but may provide a reason why someone was not effective in defense of themselves. If that is not the case, what type of combat training is necessary for a woman to defend herself?

I teach self defense. I enjoy teaching woman how to stop an attacker. I like to think that what I teach will work...but reading an article like the one listed above makes one wonder. What would truly be effective? A knife? A gun? A taser? It is challenging to teach women, who tend to be smaller and weaker than men, how to fend off an attack by someone who could be twice the size and four times as strong. The most important part is awareness and prevention. However, once an attack starts, viciousness and ruthlessness become critical.

Self defense is not for the squeemish. If there is any hesitation in gouging someone's eyes out, it could be fatal. A lot of people have a problem with this. I was teaching one woman how to break someone's grip on her wrist. It was only one session and I was holding very lightly, maybe 25%-50% at most. She never came back. I found out when she told a mutual friend that she believed no one who grab her that hard! And that was just a wrist grab. She will experience a rude awakening if a guy does a full force strike to her face or crushes her throat with a vice like grip.

I tend to doubt that a woman who joins the military would be that squeemish, but that is an assumption. Again, I am not saying an attack is a woman's fault. I am saying that a woman may be able to stop an attack if she is prepared. It is kind of like a country and military spending. Countries maintain a military to defend themselves, not necessarily to attack others. Self defense training is kind of like maintaining a military. It should be kept up to an effective level. Then, hopefully, you never have to use it.

1 comment:

spacer01 said...

Hey my verification word was pusnontr. It sounds dirty.

Sigh. Rape and sexual trauma are tough subjects. I have never been raped and my only sexual trauma was not getting enough when I was young enough to really enjoy it. I do, however, have some direct knowledge about the military (well one branch), it's policies, and it's training, so here goes.

First off, I couldn't find the exact article you specified, as it is gone from Yahoo! but I scanned a few other articles. The few articles I found either focused exclusively on one or two cases, or quoted statistics that are impossible to analyze ("Nearly 15 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans seeking medical care from the U.S. Veterans Affairs Department have suffered sexual trauma, from harassment to rape, researchers reported on Tuesday"). Stats like these are not useful, because they give a percentage of a subset of population whose total numbers are not specified. They do not state whether the sexual traumas reported occurred in theater, in a service environment in general, or simply while they were employed by the military (but not necessarily on base or by another service member). Since we do not know from the article whether or not the rate of reported trauma is higher than the general US population, it is hard to evaluate this information with respect to civilians (i.e., more often, less often, similar/different circumstances, etc).

I will address instead what I think are some misconceptions on your part.

First error: "It takes a strong woman to join the military." False. The physical fitness requirements for basic performance are not beyond the range of healthy people of either gender (although the percentage of healthy people is going down, obesity is up, so perhaps the perception of strength is higher). Emotional/mental strength might be assumed, but I have not observed the females in the military being unusually different from the population at large (and indeed, they are drawn from that population, so this should not be surprising).

Second error: "Then they are trained in combat." Unlikely. Most of the people I have met in the military have not had significant combat training in the service. Exceptions being those in units designed to deploy and engage in direct contact or frontline support (SpecOps, Marines, Seabees, certain medical units, religious specialists, certain other units). Most of these get training using rifles and crew served weapons in support of squad, platoon, and company level operations. I have heard of little or no training in hand to hand combat (presumably the most effective counter to a violent physical assault).

In any case, the answer to your question "Is the training they learn in the military effective at stopping an attack?" is self evident. Since rapes are still occurring, the training is not sufficient to prevent it. However you could say this about many issues the military faces (DUI or motorcycle deaths-which occur at a higher rate in the military than in the general population).

As to why the training is not effective, there is no one answer, as every situation is different. Some of the situations are as you speculated ("date rape", often with alcohol or drug abuse playing a role). As you noted, combat training will not be helpful if one is under the influence of drugs or alcohol. The only thing that can prevent this from happening is awareness (due to repeated training in the risk factors) and prevention (minimize alcohol, do not use drugs, use the buddy system, etc). These topics are addressed in annual training required of all Navy personnel.

Others are more likely to be a situation where a superior used their position to force the individual to comply (using similar tactics that are used in the civilian world). This is illegal as well as against policy. There are policies and procedures in place that allow victims to report sexual harassment or assault, but that first courageous step must be taken by the victim. Self-defense training could help somewhat in this situation. First, it may give the individual the confidence to first say "No!", and then to run or fight as needed to attempt to prevent the assault. However, the military also drills obedience to chain of command, so this is hard to overcome (even when the position is being abused).

The last set of incidents are probably traditional rape-someone jumps you on the street or breaks into your room, attacks you, and rapes you. These cases (and I do not know the quantity) can be mitigated by self-defense training, to some extent. The question then becomes what kind of training. Almost anything would be good, as currently almost nothing is taught. One obvious possibility is to train everyone (men and women) in basic hand to hand, knife, and gun techniques. This is not done today, but it ought to be (as there are truly no rear, secure areas in 4th generation warfare). I think the Marines have instituted this as policy and use their own martial art, which was drawn from several different arts and then adapted to their needs. This is not being done universally across all services, active and reserve, but it should be. Still, it will not eliminate the issue. Picture a women leaving her rack and heading to the latrine in some camp out near the sharp end. Picture some spec ops guy who is bent (I don't think there are any spec ops rapists out there, but there could be). He has significantly more hand-to-hand training and quite possibly combat experience. He is also probably bigger, stronger, and faster than his prey. He is also experience at quietly stalking a target from the shadows. His first hit is going to be disabling (I am thinking a solid blow to the back of the head), possibly rendering the victim unconscious before she can take any action at all. First lesson in martial arts-someone is always bigger, faster, and better than you.

Bottom line, no matter what, you will not eliminate rape or any of the other litany of crimes that date back to before recorded history. But you can try to make yourself a hard target.