Is There an Army Cover Up of Rape and Murder of Women Soldiers?
The Department of Defense statistics are alarming — one in three women who join the US military will be sexually assaulted or raped by men in the military. The warnings to women should begin above the doors of the military recruiting stations, as that is where assaults on women in the military begins — before they are even recruited.
But, now, even more alarming, are deaths of women soldiers in Iraq, and in the United States, following rape. The military has characterized each of the deaths of women who were first sexually assaulted as deaths from “non-combat related injuries,” and then added “suicide.” Yet, the families of the women whom the military has declared to have committed suicide, strongly dispute the findings and are calling for further investigations into the deaths of their daughters. Specific US Army units and certain US military bases in Iraq have an inordinate number of women soldiers who have died of “non-combat related injuries,” with several identified as “suicides.”
94 US military women in the military have died in Iraq or during Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). 12 US Civilian women have been killed in OIF. 13 US military women have been killed in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF). 12 US Civilian women have been killed in Afghanistan.
Of the 94 US military women who died in Iraq or in OIF, the military says 36 died from non-combat related injuries, which included vehicle accidents, illness, death by “natural causes,” and self-inflicted gunshot wounds, or suicide. The military has declared the deaths of the Navy women in Bahrain that were killed by a third sailor, as homicides. 5 deaths have been labeled as suicides, but 15 more deaths occurred under extremely suspicious circumstances.
8 women soldiers from Fort Hood, Texas (six from the Fourth Infantry Division and two from the 1st Armored Cavalry Division) have died of “non-combat related injuries” on the same base, Camp Taji, and three were raped before their deaths. Two were raped immediately before their deaths and another raped prior to arriving in Iraq. Two military women have died of suspicious “non-combat related injuries” on Balad base, and one was raped before she died. Four deaths have been classified as “suicides.”
19-year-old US Army Private Lavena Johnson, was found dead on the military base in Balad, Iraq in July, 2005 and her death characterized by the US Army to be suicide as a self-inflicted M-16 shot. On April 9, 2008, Dr. John Johnson and his wife Linda, parents of Private Johnson, flew from their home in St. Louis for meetings with US Congress members and their staffs. They were in Washington to ask that Congressional hearings be conducted on the Army’s investigation into the death of their daughter, an investigation that classified her death as a suicide despite extensive evidence suggesting she was murdered.
From the day their daughter’s body was returned to them, the parents had grave suspicions about the Army’s investigation into Lavena’s death and the characterization of her death as suicide. In charge of a communications facility, Lavena was able to call home daily. In those calls she gave no indication of emotional problems or being upset. In a letter to her parents, Lavena’s commanding officer Captain David Woods wrote : “Lavena was clearly happy and seemed in very good health both physically and emotionally.”
In viewing his daughter’s body at the funeral home, Dr. Johnson was concerned about the bruising on her face. He was puzzled by the discrepancy in the autopsy report on the location of the gunshot wound. As a US Army veteran and a 25-year US Army civilian employee who had counseled veterans, he was mystified how the exit wound of an M-16 shot could be so small. The hole in Lavena’s head appeared to be more the size of a pistol shot rather than an M-16 round. He questioned why the exit hole was on the left side of her head, when she was right handed. But the gluing of military uniform white gloves onto Lavena’s hands hiding burns on one of her hands is what deepened Dr. Johnson’s concerns that the Army’s investigation into the death of his daughter was flawed.
Over the next two and one-half years, Dr. and Mrs. Johnson, and their family and friends relentlessly through the Freedom of Information Act and Congressional offices requested the Department of the Army for documents concerning Lavena’s death. With each response of the Army to the request for information another piece of information/evidence about Lavena’s death emerged.
The military criminal investigator’s initial drawing of the death scene revealed that Lavena’s M16 was found perfectly parallel to her body. The investigator’s sketch showed that her body was found inside a burning tent, under a wooden bench with an aerosol can nearby. A witness stated that he heard a gunshot and when he came to investigate found a tent on fire and when he looked into the tent saw a body. The Army official investigation did not mention a fire nor that her body had been burned.
After two years of requesting documents, one set of papers provided by the Army included a xerox copy of a CD. Wondering why the xerox copy was in the documents, Dr. Johnson requested the CD itself. With help from his local Congressional representative, the US Army finally complied. When Dr. Johnson viewed the CD, he was shocked to see photographs taken by Army investigators of his daughter’s body as it lay where her body had been found, as well as other photographs of her disrobed body taken during the investigation.
The photographs revealed that Lavena, a small woman, barely 5 feet tall and weighing less than 100 pounds, had been struck in the face with a blunt instrument, perhaps a weapon stock. Her nose was broken and her teeth knocked backwards. One elbow was distended. The back of her clothes had debris on them indicating she had been dragged from one location to another. The photographs of her disrobed body showed bruises, scratch marks and teeth imprints on the upper part of her body. The right side of her back as well as her right hand had been burned apparently from a flammable liquid poured on her and then lighted. The photographs of her genital area revealed massive bruising and lacerations. A corrosive liquid had been poured into her genital area, probably to destroy DNA evidence of sexual assault.
Despite the bruises, scratches, teeth imprints and burns on her body, Lavena was found completely dressed in the burning tent. There was a blood trail from outside a contractor’s tent to inside the tent. She apparently had been dressed after the attack and her attacker placed her body into the tent and set it on fire.
Investigator records reveal that members of her unit said Lavena told them she was going jogging with friends on the other side of the base. One unit member walked with her to the Post Exchange where she bought a soda and then, in her Army workout clothes, went on by herself to meet friends and get exercise. The unit member said she was in good spirits with no indication of personal emotional problems.
The Army investigators initially assumed Private Johnson’s death was a homicide and indicated that on their paperwork. However, shortly into the investigation, a decision apparently was made by higher officials that the investigators must stop the investigation into a homicide and to classify her death a suicide.
As a result, no further investigation took place into a possible homicide despite strong evidence available to the investigators.
Another family that does not believe their daughter committed suicide in Iraq is the family of Army Private First Class Tina Priest, 20, of Smithville, Texas, who was raped by a fellow soldier in February, 2006 on a military base known as Camp Taji. Priest was a part of the 5th Support Battalion, lst Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, Fort Hood, Texas. The Army said Tina was found dead in her room on March 1, 2006, of a self-inflicted M-16 shot, a “suicide”, 11 days after the rape. Private Priest’s mother, Joy Priest, disputes the Army’s findings. Mrs. Priest said she talked several times with her daughter after the rape, and while very upset about the rape, she was not suicidal. Priest continues to challenge the Army’s 800 pages of investigative documents with a simple question. How could her petite daughter, 5-foot-tall daughter with a short arm length, have held the M-16 at the angle which would have resulted in the gunshot? The Army attempted several attempts explanations, but each was debunked by Mrs. Priest and by the 800 pages of materials provided by the Army itself. The Army now says Tina used her toe to pull the trigger of the weapon that killed her. The Army never investigated Tina’s death as a homicide, but only as a suicide.
Rape charges against the soldier whose sperm was found on her sleeping bag were dropped a few weeks after her death. He was convicted of failure to obey an order and sentenced to forfeiture of $714 for 2 months, 30 days restriction to the base and 45 days of extra duty.
On the same Camp Taji, 10 days later after Tina Priest was found dead, on May 11, 2006, woman US Army Private First Class (name known to author, but not identified for the article), 19, was found dead. She died three days after she suffered what the Army called “a self-inflicted gunshot”. The Army claimed that she too had committed suicide. In her room where her body was found, investigators discovered her diary open to a page on which she had written about being raped during training after unknowingly drinking a date rape drug. The person identified in the diary as the rapist was charged by the Army with rape after her death. Many who knew her did not believe she shot herself, but there is no evidence of a homicide investigation by the Army.
The September 4, 2006 death at Camp Taji of Private First Class Hannah Gunterman McKinney, 20, of the 44th Corps Support Battalion, Ft. Lewis, WA was investigated and rather than having been run over by a military vehicle as she crossed a road from a guard tower to the latrine as initially claimed by the Army, she fell or was pushed from and run over by a vehicle driven by a drunk Sergeant from her unit who had first sexually assaulted her. The Sergeant pleaded guilty to drinking in a war zone, drunken driving and consensual sodomy with an underage, incapacitated junior soldier to whom he had supplied alcohol. A military judge ruled that McKinney’s death was an accident and the Sergeant was sentenced to 13 months imprisonment, demotion to private, but he would not be discharged from the Army.
Other suspicious “non-combat related injury” deaths on Camp Taji include Fort Hood’s 1st Armored Cavalry Division PFC Melissa J. Hobart who died June 6, 2004, 1st Armored Cavalry Sergeant Jeannette Dunn who died November 26, 2006), 89th Military Police Brigade Specialist Kamisha J. Block (who died August, 2007), 4th Infantry Division Specialist Marisol Heredia who died September 7, 2007) and 4th Infantry Division Specialist Keisha M. Morgan who died February, 22, 2008. None of the deaths have been classified as suicides, but the circumstances of their deaths should be investigated further because of serious questions concerning their deaths.
The US Army has classified the deaths of four other women as suicides. In the space of three months in 2006, three members of the U.S. Army who had been part of a logistics group in Kuwait committed suicide. Two of them were women. In August 2006, Lt. Col. Marshall Gutierrez, was arrested at a restaurant in Kuwait and was accused of shaking down a laundry contractor for a $3,400 bribe. He was allowed to return to his quarters and found dead on September 4, 2006 with an empty bottle of prescription sleeping pills an open container of what appeared to be antifreeze.
Major Gloria D. Davis, 47, assigned to the Defense Security Assistance Agency which handles the sales of military equipment to other countries, reportedly committed suicide in Baghdad on December 12, 2006, the day after she allegedly admitted to an Army investigator that she had accepted at least $225,000 in bribes from Lee Dynamics, a US Army contractor, that reportedly bribed officers for work in Iraq. Major Davis had a daughter, son and granddaughter. She had worked as a police officer, was a volunteer at women’s shelters and helped get disadvantaged African-American students into ROTC programs.
New York Army National Guard Sergeant Denise A. Lannaman, 46, assigned to a desk job at a procurement office in Camp Arifjan, Kuwait that purchased millions of dollars in supplies. She received excellent performance ratings, her supervisor citing that her oversight eliminated misuse of funds by 36 percent. On October 1, 2006, Lannaman was questioned by a senior officer about the death of Lt. Col. Gutierrez and reportedly told by that officer that she would be leaving the military in disgrace. She was found in a jeep dead of a gunshot wound later in the day. While her family said that she had attempted suicide four different times in her life, the Army has not ruled on the cause of death of Lannaman.
US Army interrogator Specialist Alyssa Renee Peterson, 27, assigned to C Company, 311th Military Intelligence Battalion, 101st Airborne Division, Ft. Campbell, KY, was an Arabic linguist who reportedly was very concerned about the manner in which interrogations were being conducted. She died on September 15, 2003 near Tal Afar, Iraq in what the Army described as a gunshot wound to the head, a non-combat, self-inflicted weapons discharge, or suicide. Peterson reportedly objected to the interrogation techniques used on prisoners and refused to participate after only two nights working in the unit known as the cage. Members of her unit have refused to describe the interrogation techniques Peterson objected to. The military says that all records of those techniques have now been destroyed. After refusing to conduct more interrogations, Peterson was assigned to guard the base gate, where she monitored Iraqi guards. She was also sent to suicide prevention training. On the night of September 15th, 2003, Army investigators concluded she shot and killed herself with her service rifle. Family members challenge the Army’s conclusion.
US Army Sergeant Melissa Valles, 26, assigned to Headquarters Detachment, Company B, 64th Forward Support Battalion, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, Fort Carson, CO, died on July 9, 2003, in Balad from a two non-combat gunshot wounds to her abdomen. The Army has not ruled whether her death was a suicide or a homicide. But Valles’ family stated that although small in stature at 5 foot 3, she was a tough person. “She really put people in their place. She did that since she was a girl. She would put little boys who were bullies in their place.” The family does not believe Valles committed suicide.
One suspicious non-combat death of a military woman occurred in Afghanistan.
On September 28, 2007, Massachusetts Army National Guard Specialist Ciara Durkin, 30, a finance specialist, was found lying near a church on the very secure Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan, with a single gunshot wound to her head. She had recently told her relatives to press for answers if anything happened to her while she was deployed in Afghanistan. When she was home three weeks prior to her death, she told her sister about something she had come across that raised some concern with her and that she had made some enemies because of it. Members of her family also questioned whether the fact that she was gay played a role in her death. They believe Ciara was killed by a fellow service member, intentionally or accidentally, and they are confident that she did not commit suicide.
In Bahrain, On January 16, 2007, US Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Jennifer A. Valdivia, 27, assigned to the naval security force for Naval Support Activity, Bahrain, was found dead 3 days after she was to report for duty on January 14. The Naval Criminal Investigative Service has classified her death as a suicide. Valdivia was kennel master of the largest military kennel in the world. In 2005 she was named Sailor of the Year at the Bahrain Naval Base.
Although the data on the number of suicides in the military is vague and purposely underreported by the Veterans Administration, of 69 suicides of men in the military since 2002, 64 committed suicide in the United States, 1 in Kuwait, 2 in Iraq and 2 in Afghanistan. Men are much more likely to commit suicide once they return from a combat zone, than in the combat zone. Of the 8 alleged suicides of women in the military, 3 were in Iraq, 2 in the US, 1 in Kuwait and 1 in Bahrain. The question of why women would be more likely to commit suicide outside the US than once home should be investigated.
The circumstances surrounding each of these deaths warrants further investigation by the US military. Congress can compel the military to reopen cases and provide further investigation.
I strongly urge the Congress to demand further investigation of the deaths of these women.
US Army Reserve Colonel, Retired, Ann Wright is a 29-year veteran of the Army and Army Reserves. She was also a US diplomat in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan and Mongolia. She resigned from the US Department of State in March 19, 2003 in opposition to the Iraq War. She is the co-author of “Dissent: Voices of Conscience.” (www.voicesofconscience.com)
Our national meme is to take what we want from others. Why would anyone be suprised if that attitude did not trickle down to those directly doing the taking. Support the troops? Sure, go ahead….and pretty soon the Blackwater contractors will be keeping order on your street. Mine too, unfortunately.
Veteran, ‘66-68
Ask the Pat Tillman family about cover ups.
Hoa binh
Thank you Ann, Maybe someday the truth will be acknowledged by the people and the press and Americans will have the courage to stand up against this tyranny. jim wiley
Coverup? Or coverups plural? Of course. It’s SOP for anything embarrassing concerning the misfortunes of women at the war. Once we were shocked by the plight of Pvt. Jessica Lynch, so they told bigger-than-life stories. We’ve gone years “past” that, and the goal now is to just bury as many bad stories as possible.
Convicted felons being recruited for military service?? What the hell are they thinking? It’s bad enough that there are felons in “Blackwater”, but don’t they care about women in the military? Maybe as long as the policy of recruiting felons continues, women in the military should not be sent overseas. This is only an opinion and should not be construed as prejudice toward women.
A thousand little battles against oppression add up. Never let up but do not allow negativity to consume you.
Read the first sentence of this article again:
The Department of Defense statistics are alarming — one in three women who join the US military will be sexually assaulted or raped by men in the military.
If there was any reason to completely disband the US military, this is it. What happened to “military honor”?
This is terrible.
Just like its terrible that sometimes the knife used to slaughter cattle in slaughterhouses will cut the butcher.
You cant make something vicious not vicious.
War and Slaughterhouses are hell.
Best to do away with them rather than trying to make them politically correct.
Not let me see…. The army is now filling its recruitment quotas with uneducated enlistees who have criminal records and other questionable histories, who are then given guns and placed in a culture of violence and machismo with a bunch of similarly inclined soldier girls. And we were expecting what?
Ya lost me at “Is there an army cover up…”
How do the kids put it?
“Duh.”
It is asking for it to allow women to serve with gang members and felons. A father I know told me his son was accepted into the military in lieu of serving a sentence for aggravated assault that was just short of murder. It was very bad but the dad won’t tell me what happened. The son has been on the wrong path for a few years now, progressing to more serious crimes. How nice that he is now the military’s problem. And the problem of those he will serve with. That’s exactly what we need more of, psychopaths in uniform.
Stories like this make it so hard to love my country. This could never happen if there wasn’t a culture of violence toward women tolerated in all american institutions
Ann Wright is a real heroine ! Thank you for exposing the shocking levels of sexual violence against women in the military.
Well..WHATTYA KNOW…HUP! These assholes are…SOCIOPATHS! Who would have guessed that?
AND I WANT TO SHOUT OUT TO YOU ALL..THE DANGERS COMING TO OUR STREETS IN THE FORM OF RETURNING SOCIOPATHS JOINING LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES!
PLEASE..WRITE TO YOUR REPRESENTATIVES..(YEAH RIGHT!) IMMEDIATLEY, TO REQUEST LEGISLATION THAT WILL CREATE A “MANDATORY COOLING OFF PERIOD OF AT LEAST 3 YEARS” BEFORE A VETERAN OF THIS PARTICULARLY VICIOUS “WAR” CAN BECOME THE POLICE MAN WHO WILL STOP YOUR WIFE AT 3 AM FOR A BUMPER STICKER HE DOES NOT APPRECIATE AND THEN…WHO KNOWS…YOU DIG?
SO..THIS IS A REAL PROBLEM..AND IT IS COMING TO OUR STREETS…DO YOU WANT THESE PEOPLE TO BE IN A NOTORIOUSLY BUREAUCRATIC, OFFICIOUS POSITION OF…”POLICE MAN” OR GOD FORBID…PLEASE NO!…SMALL TOWN SHERIFF..UGHHHHH!
AND WITH THE KINDS OF “THIN BLUE LINE” MENTALITY THAT THOSE AGENCIES ALREADY HAVE IN PLACE TO PROTECT THEIR MEMBERS FROM..REALLY..THE MOST HEINOUS(SIC?) ACTS OF VIOLENCE AGAINST THE POPULATION…DO YOU REALLY WANT THAT TO CONTINUE ON AS STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE WITH…RAPISTS? AND MURDERERS? AND MEN…AND WOMEN..WHO HAVE JUST RETURNED FROM A PLACE WHERE THE PEOPLE HAVE…NO RECOURSE…NO “RIGHTS” AND WHERE THESE MEN AND WOMEN HAVE BEEN IN EFFECT “CONDITIONED” TO RESPOND WITH VIOLENCE TO THE SLIGHTEST PROVOCATION…DO YOU REALLY WANT THAT?
I DON’T, AND HAVE WRITTEN NUMEROUS LETTERS TO MIKE T. AND BOXER AND “MY PEOPLE” AND THERE NEEDS TO BE MANY… MANY MORE LETTERS AND PHONE CALLS..AND DISCUSSION…BECAUSE THESE PEOPLE ARE GOING TO COME BACK…AND WHEN THEY DO..MANY OF THEM WILL BE ACTION “JUNKIES” AND WHERE ELSE CAN THEY GET THAT “ACTION”…BUT ON THE STREETS OF YOUR TOWN..WHERE YOUR STUPID TEENAGE DAUGHTER…SO PROTECTED FROM REALITY THAT SHE HAS ABSOLUTELY NO STREET SENSE..WILL BE…FOOD..FOR THESE SCUMBAGS…REMEMBER…”RAPISTS”…SO..BEFORE THEY GET THE BADGE OF PROTECTED STATUS…BECAUSE AS YOU KNOW..THE POLICE IN THIS COUNTRY ARE NOW A “PROTECTED CLASS” OF CITIZEN..FROM WHOM YOU MAY NOT EVEN DEFEND YOUR OWN LIFE…AND THEY WILL…ABSOLUTELY..ABUSE THEIR OFFICE…ESPECIALLY IF THERE IS NO OVERSIGHT OF RETURNING VETS, AND THEIR ACTIONS “IN COUNTRY” BEFORE COMING BACK AND TAKING AN EXAM AND PRESTO…MUREDEROUS SWINE ROAMING THE MALLS AND STREETS OF AMERICA..WITH A BIG CHIP ON THEIR SHOULDERS AND A DEATH WISH, AND POSSIBLY PSYCHOTIC, AND FOR SURE SOCIOPATHIC..AND WITHOUT REGRET…OH YEAH….AND A BADGE!…YOUR THE NEXT “INSURGENT” THEY MIGHT TARGET…”OOPS…I DUN THOUGHT THEY WAS POINTIN A GUN AT ME…AND THAT YUNG GURL OVER THERE..WELL..SHE DUN TEMPTED ME…I WAS JUST DOING MUH DOOTY..SIR!”
YEAH…THUG RUNTS..GET READY..OR ACT NOW..OR…DON’T PAY FOR IT..
LOT’S O LUCK..
SEE YOU IN THE TRENCHES..
BE ALL YOU CAN BE: BE A RAPIST IN THE ARMY!
What kind of country sends women to battle??
George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and the rest of the Republicans evaded the draft, yet they expect women to go fight along with the men.
Jcrumb: You make an excellent and utterly horrifying point. The rapists we are training to enjoy raping females will soon be coming home, and will likely get jobs in local law enforcement.
Do you wonder why our local police act like thugs from Saddam’s heyday? Do you wonder why they get off on torturing people with electric tasers simply because those people don’t listen to them? Maybe they learned this behavior from their previous employer…
Support concealed carry, people. Its the only way to keep raping thugs at bay!
Hey Rick! I think you got some explaining to do? And it better be real good. All the families need to to a CSI autopsy here at home to ascertain the facts as it is clearly some shenigans going on with the military right now. American women and women in general are not the problem. . .so general and admirals, get your act together or retire. If you can’t protect the service personnel under your command, then what makes any of us think you could protect the citizenry as a whole in any other type of confrontation?
To read about the rate of assault in the military is not surprising, considering how prior social changes (i.e., an integrated military) were resisted kicking and screaming. And living most of life in a city that has long recruited ex-military from small town America, Los Angeles, I do not look forward to a current version of the Droogs from “A Clockwork Orange” charged with policing my city.
The reasons Woman go to war are the same as for men.
1. Patriotism
2. Economics
In both cases they are misled by their government. And if they get back alive they will be droped by that government when they need help.
If you hear me remember the 60s chant: Hell no we won’t go!
Burned out rural communities were harvested for cannon fodder, post 9/11. No factory, no Starbucks for miles, no $8-an-hour doing anything, the Army is really attractive under these circumstances. These circumstances are always present in the US, and an well thought out (immense) feature was to keep things “volunteer” during this bloody imperial adventure. So many issues have fallen through the cracks that rape is probably much higher (along with suicide) then in a typical demographic. Of course, if sensible opportunities existed and were explained, kids would never waste and risk their time.
The US military is a group of gangs, hit men for organized crime. Nothing has changed in the 75 years since Smedley Butler pointed this out.
I do note, however, that the most violent of US street gangs are: less violent than the US military, do a far better job of discriminating neutrals from foe (the acronym IFF was upgraded to IFFN decades ago and then downgraded back to IFF), and are far braver (they don’t expect to live to thirty).
US military training is designed to make its personnel worse than all but a small fraction of convicted felons.
Given that, what Wright writes is right because it is to be expected.
The atrocities & coverups in the death of Lavena Johnson has concerned me since I first read of them in the “St. Louis Post-Dispatch”. It was obvious that the paper also felt she had been murdered, but the story only occasionally surfaces. I know the blogger Phillip Baron has tried to keep it alive, as have some columnists at the “St. Louis American”. If there ever was a case of blood crying out from the earth, it is that dear girl’s.
I’m glad that this enormity is the centerpiece of this article.
And I had tremendous admiration for Col. Wright when she left the State Department. Would that more had followed her example.
Colonel Wright is a must see and hwear if she is in your area. She is smart, experienced, expert in her field, and unappologetically forthright in her expression of both revulsion and outrage. She would make an excellent candidate for some public office.
well, a person who volunteers to go to a foreign country and help rape it’s citizens for GW Bush gets raped in the process.
what’s the big deal???
Anyone who joins the army deserves what they get.
anniais’ comment is the most on target in this thread in my opinion. There is a culture of violence against women, in word and in deed tolerated as normal in this society.
A woman in a nearby town where I live in Jersey was cut up with an axe by her ex last week, the same day in a neighboring town a woman was raped as she went in to a job interview at a salon. These stories get one mention on the night news.
I am not trying to start an arguement, or place issues in competition with each other at all. I want to preface this by saying that. I strongly believe that every time we have a civil rights violation or violence against any group of people it should be a HUGE deal. It is not a big enough deal to this society in general.
However, as a reporter at daily papers here, I heard our police radio ringing off the hook each night with domestic incidents. These two recent horrible incidents, one of which was a murder, are nothing out of the ordinary. And there is such a culture of silence, the murder of a woman by her ex husband with an axe in the street in front of her apartment building gets a one-off on the night news and that is that.
I think there might be no other group of people our culture is in such absolute and complete denial about than female victims of domestic violence, whether black, white or any background. Women need to take notice of this and start to get organized and get a real voice in the media.
verbal violence and assault in the workplace ALSO!
“Culture of violence towards women,” yes, and a culture of violence against weaker countries — especially countries that have a valuable natural resource.
Sounds like a bully to me.
Men are pigs anyway, with rare exceptions. But a group of them that volunteer to go kill are going to be the worst.
If there were any decent soldiers or officers over there, these Rapists & Killers would have been dealt with on the spot, in the beginning, with weapons.
Word would have spread. And Voila, No Mas!
“He questioned why the exit wound was on the left side of her head, when she was right handed.” Why? Where else would it be expected?
And JCRUMB IS RIGHT-SOON THESE RAPISTS WILL HAVE GUNS, HANDCUFFS & TASERS & BE PULLING YOU OVER (GIRLS), IN YOUR OWN HOMETOWNS.
The information in the article is revolting enough to make me rethink my non-violent ways.
Have the last 40 years been an illusion of peace? I completely realize that many have been scarred by violence in this time, by war or by ethnic strife.
Are there no moralistic beings left in our institutions?
We need to ask who (besides the perpetrator) benefits from having this covered up.
If we did not know that this was happening, how much more likely would we be to enlist if we were female? How much more easily would it be for us to believe that our occupation of Iraq is noble and just (ok that might be going a bit far - but, if they are doing this to their female fellows in uniform, then how are they treating the locals).
As always, powerful institutions figure that dealing with the problem could cause negative publicity. And, as always, all they are doing is making the negative publicity (and public outrage) much worse when the story finally blows.
But then, they were hoping, it may be years from now when they had long retired from the military and gone on to work for private industry.
Speaking of cover ups …
LaForme to lead residential schools commission
The first aboriginal person appointed to any Canadian appellate court, LaForme graduated from York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School in 1977 and was called to the bar in 1979. He was an associate at Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt before leaving for private practice, specializing in aboriginal law.
Assembly of First Nations Chief Phil Fontaine, himself a residential school survivor, praised LaForme as a “kind and generous person” who “would leave no stone unturned” in determining what happened at the schools.
“We couldn’t think of anyone better for this,” Fontaine said. “He is just an outstanding individual.” …
Some 150,000 aboriginal, Inuit and Métis children were removed from their communities at the age of six and forced to attend the schools, where physical and sexual abuse was rampant for much of the last century. The schools aimed to assimilate the children by making them Christians, as well as to bury their language and culture.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/04/28/laforme-appointment.html
Judge named to head residential schools inquiry
An Ontario aboriginal judge will head up a commission to look into abuse at Indian residential schools.
Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl has announced that Justice Harry LaForme of the Ontario Court of Appeal will sit as chairman of the truth-and-reconciliation commission.
The commission - modelled along the lines of a similar body that heard witnesses after the collapse of South Africa’s apartheid regime - is aimed at providing a forum for former aboriginal students to tell their stories.
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080428/judge_residential_080428/20080428?hub=Canada
Yeah, I’ve had more than a few calls from female recruits that were SHOCKED that the recruiters lied to them. This is nothing new - it’s not about the criminals now being recruited eagerly to fill those empty slots left by the dead and injured. This is SOP in the military - the US military, for sure - and persecution of the victims is encouraged by the brass. Teach those bitches a lesson. But before there were women in the US military, they just raped the locals, or used the local whorehouses - or even raped anyone they thought was effeminate. That’s just the kind of mentality you get with an imperial military - and offensive (pardon the pun) military force. Defensive forces can be taught to fight effectively without dehumanizing the enemy - but you can’t do that with an invasion force. Those guys MUST BE dehumanized, and their victims must be dehumanized. If you dehumanize one person, you can easily translate that into dehumanizing another.
Resistance forces had women - sometimes more women than men (for obvious reasons) - and yet there wasn’t such deviant behavior among them (for the most part - there are always exceptions). And don’t think those women weren’t cold-blooded killers. I know - my family were in the Resistance, and I was raised to be a cold-blooded killer, when necessary. But we were always taught to respect everyone. That respect was about ‘us’ - not ‘them’ - and everyone was treated decently. We had to be ‘above reproach’ - no matter what the enemy did. That doesn’t mean you don’t kill the bastards any way you can - it just means you don’t treat a live human being (even a captive) any worst than you’d treat your own brother or sister.
My father quit the US military because they started dehumanizing recruits, thinking they’d get a better kill-ratio that way. Well, that really wasn’t the key - they did need better training (like we got) but the fascist method turns people into monsters. Then you become the enemy. It’s called the ‘Theory of the Grotesque’ - when you become that which you claim to be fighting against. And it isn’t necessary to win. Or even to keep casualties down. After all, when your own people are the victims, whose side are your really on?
Holden & Jcrumb:
“You make an excellent and utterly horrifying point. The rapists we are training to enjoy raping females will soon be coming home, and will likely get jobs in local law enforcement.”
I think they might be bringing that training back home where it came from in the first place.
This is an excerpt from a Truthout article of 06/04/04 titled: Why Did the US Hire These Four Guys? about Americans hired as contractors to help run the Iraqi prison system:
”These are not the four people you would want to run any prison system,” said Schumer, D-N.Y.
One of the four, Terry Stewart, was sued by the Justice Department in 1997, when he ran Arizona’s Corrections Department. The lawsuit charged that at least 14 female inmates were repeatedly raped, sexually assaulted and watched by corrections workers as they dressed, showered and used the bathroom.
At the time, officials also charged prison authorities had denied investigators access to staff and prisoners to examine abuse complaints.”
Looks like plenty of job opportunities for the vets.
We are a Christian nation with mostly Christian soldiers, doesn’t surprise me that 1 in 3 woman are being raped.
WTF, “What happened to “military honor”?”
See “honor killings”. This is merely “our” version of it.
“But, now, even more alarming, are deaths of women soldiers in Iraq, and in the United States, following rape. The military has characterized each of the deaths of women who were first sexually assaulted as deaths from “non-combat related injuries,” and then added “suicide.””
Let us now admit “Baghdad Bob” was a prophet. He did predict:
“I can say, and I am responsible for what I am saying, that they have started to commit suicide under the walls of Baghdad. We will encourage them to commit more suicides quickly.”
“Their infidels are committing suicide by the hundreds on the gates of Baghdad.”
“I’m a picture
“Of ugly stories
“I’m a killer
“And I’m a clown
“Step into the street by sundown
“Step into your last goodbye
“You’re a target just by living
“Twenty dollars will make you die”
We should distinguish between the violence against women because they are women and the violence against whistle-blowers, some of whom happen to be women, reported on in this article.
I think the movie “Platoon” showed both. (I saw it a long time ago, and forget parts.) But I believe it showed a brutal rape of a Vietnamese woman and then the murder of the American soldier who stopped it.
In other words, this problem comes with the military and war, and not with letting women into the military.
It reminds me of something Golda Meir was supposed to have said. Apparently, there was a rash of rapes in Israel, so the Cabinet wanted to put a curfew on women. She pointed out that women were the victims, so the curfew should be on men. I think that the posters here who think this can be solved by banning women from the military are missing the point. Ban the military.
We have an Administration who has thumbed it’s nose at the law from day one! Is it any surprise to anyone that this lawless attitude has taken over the military? It trickled down from the top through the ranks! The only way to get rid of it is from the top to bottom clean out the ranks and not stopping until the whole mess is cleaned up.
This is another terrible aspect of the culture of extreme violence that characterizes all military organizations. Soldiers are trained to kill men, women, and children in defense of their “band of brothers”. Why wouldn’t many of them, since misogyny is also strongly promoted in this culture, be willing to assault sexually, their female compatriots? Additionally, women soldiers are seen as less feminine than “pretty girl” civilians, and are consequently, devalued even further in the eyes of these “macho” types. All of this is virtually a recipe for brewing the horror of the raping and murdering of young female service personnel. I’m skeptical that an impotent Congress can do anything about it. What have they done in the last seven years to prosecute any crimes committed by the military or executive branch?
Is anyone really surprised that the feminization of civil society and its values doesn’t transfer well in a military environment that is built on aggression againt all those identified as “not us”.
There can be no doubt that the military tries to cover up these things and keep them in house. They always have.
When you have a lot more women serving and as pointed out earlier, felons being allowed to join because they can’t recruit enough, its no surprise is it?
The only answer is Congressional action and a specific framework to protect these soldiers. And a punishment that fits the crime. Mandatory 30 minimum years at hard labor would be my suggestion. Restore trust in volunteering or you’ll have a draft before you can say Jack Robinson.
Tumbleweed has a very valid point.
The anti-military types with the disband the military or their “band of brothers” comments have never served, don’t understand what they are saying, know nothing about the military and need to study history a bit more before recommending that everyone shirk their civic duty and we become the modern day Carthage.
RE - But before there were women in the US military, they just raped the locals, or used the local whorehouses - or even raped anyone they thought was effeminate.
Armybrat, the mentality was different, though. The rape of those deemed inferior or external was always more acceptable to the raping of an equal or one of your own. The US Military raping US soldiers is more like a pedophile who preys on his own children or nieces or nephews while the US Military raping locals is more like a pedophile going after complete strangers or the kid in the play ground.
All rape is bad but raping your own tends to be considered a bit more depraved than raping those not your own.
If this is an endemic situation within the Military, then what is it like in situation where one expects more immunity and an even greater willingness to cover up.
RE - If you dehumanize one person, you can easily translate that into dehumanizing another. / My father quit the US military because they started dehumanizing recruits, thinking they’d get a better kill-ratio that way.
And the dehumanize dehumanize. You are saying that they are intentionally stripping soldiers of that which leads them to act morally. If so, those who intentionally dehumanized these recruits may be legally responsible for the crimes these recruits commit. It would give a motive for someone other than the actual rapist to cover up the crime - and it is these motivations of these third parties we need to uncover to solve the problem.
RE - Yeah, I’ve had more than a few calls from female recruits that were SHOCKED that the recruiters lied to them.
Private Lavena Johnson did not realize she was being lied to about this particular “work safety” issue until it was too late. Her calls home, according to Ann Wright, were happy and cheerful (she probably even believed in the mission).
If the Sargent covers up the actions of a rapist Private, we need to know why. If a Captain covers up the actions of a rapist Sargent, we need to know why. Are they covering it up because they are trying to preserve the unit’s reputation or are they covering it up because they are involved in similar things themselves - and don’t want the other rapists ratting them out? Or is it, like ArmyBrat says, the consequence of dehumanizing a recruit during training - something which American society will have to deal with when the recruits return to civilian life.
RE - The circumstances surrounding each of these deaths warrants further investigation by the US military. Congress can compel the military to reopen cases and provide further investigation.
What about an investigation by an independent body. Canada has had problems with police investigating their own and the recommendation is always an arms length independent body. I think that it is automatic for when a body comes home under suspicious circumstances from Afghanistan that the investigation into the death be at arms length.
WTF says: - “What happened to “military honor”?”
DuraMater says: - See “honor killings”. This is merely “our” version of it.
How are these honour killings! Usually if a woman is killed for being raped, it is for the crime of adultery (the whole “she asked for it” myth) rather that to cover up the crime itself. In such situations, it is the rape victim, rather than the rapist, that is seen to have committed the crime.
As far as I can see, a US female solder doesn’t commit a crime by being raped - but commits one if she tells.
It was not an honour killing. The rapist just didn’t want anyone to know that he accidentally raped someone to death so the fire was to cover up the crime. If she had survived the rape, would he have felt the need to kill her?
I think this creep thought that, while rape was ok, murder was something serious that could get him in trouble.
Re: the misogamy and anti-Muslim comments here.
Female circumcision is barbaric, but so is male circumcision, which is widely practiced in the US, even though many people campaign against it.
Rape is a horrific crime. More men than women are raped in the US, because of the prison practices that ignore or encourage it. Prison rape is considered fodder for comedy in the US.
There are Christians in the US who want to go to Biblical law, including stoning of adulterers, homosexuals and disobedient children. If our system falls apart, and the stoning begins, there will be arguments about whether Christians are inherently barbaric or not.
The Department of Defense statistics are alarming — one in three women who join the US military will be sexually assaulted or raped by men in the military.
And this is why I would never want my daughters to join the military.
The US military sense of honor has a strong tradition. However, it is a John Wayne sense of honor: totally phony at the core. RE Lee is still one of the biggest heroes of the cadets at West Point. What is his top career accomplishment? He betrayed his service and his nation, and played a key role in the killing of over 600K Americans for the cause of denying liberty to a subset of the population.
Thomas More wrote: “The anti-military types with the disband the military or their “band of brothers” comments have never served, don’t understand what they are saying, know nothing about the military and need to study history a bit more before recommending that everyone shirk their civic duty and we become the modern day Carthage.”
If he paid more attention to the anti-military posters, some have served, and many know their military history better than most active duty personnel, whose military history educations have been carefully censored. There is a strong tradition in the US military of treason, incitement (and even aid) of foreign attacks, and killing US citizens, and dishonesty.
A defensive military with limited overseas capability would do a far better job of defending the US, because it would be forced to consider defense its primary mission. Traditionally, offense is the primary mission of the US military, and that weakens the national defense. It is not our civic duty to kill people overseas so rich people here can get richer, and the officers pick up medals and promotions.
RE: - Rape is a horrific crime. More men than women are raped in the US, because of the prison practices that ignore or encourage it. Prison rape is considered fodder for comedy in the US.
So men rape both men and women. Personally, I can’t see Karla Homolka as the only one of her kind. You don’t hear about the Karla Homolkas out there waiting for your sons to enlist.
If you think that men raping men is considered a laughing matter in the US - try being a man claiming he was raped by a woman!
We live in a society were, as 22 Minutes says, a man can take Viagra so that he can be ready for sex whether he is attracted to the person or not. As they say, he can boing the woman that he’s pretending is a man because he is really gay. But why would a man figure he needs to be able and ready to perform at the drop of a hat - isn’t it ok for him to say he’s not interested?
The language we use reflects attitudes - when the word “impotent” means both not being able to salute - but also being weak and ineffective. Thus, is Viagra about the desire for sex or the desire not to appear “unmanly”?
And sometimes there is dark humour - laughing at that which scares you - or should.
Cougar’s Corner - Taser (2:22)
http://www.airfarce.com/seasons/season15/080118.html
At the route of all of this is the fact that the US is a society which worships power and despises weakness.
“one in three women who join the US military will be sexually assaulted or raped by men in the military”
Has anyone been able to find a source for this, seeing that the author has declined to do so?
I would like to draw your attention to the fate of the american soldier Ashley Turner who was murdered in the naval station in Keflavik, Iceland on August 14th in 2005. Now the naval station has closed down and all soldier left Iceland.
The investigation of this crime was very strange. A suspect Calvin Eugene Hill acted strangely. You can read about the case in my blog post http://salvor.blog.is/blog/salvor/entry/213112/
The blog is in Icelandic but the quoted text is in English and there is in the end links to futher information about this case.
Bush and his “war on terror” are all based on lies. Bush is a combat evading New England preppie who moved to Texas and was transformed into a cowboy by his father’s $ & PR people. Neil got caught in the S&L debacle and Jeb almost made it but little Georgie hit the big time. One out of three is not too bad.
From non-existent WMD, mushroom clouds, links to Al-Qaeda, mobile chemical labs, robot drone planes that could reach America and now Iranian & Syrian nuclear weapons, this administration has been all about chicken-little BS.
Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rice, Powell, Rove, etc. Liars all. It should be no surprise that this situation with the cover ups of the women’s deaths follows a familiar pattern.
The military is inherently male-chauvinist, I think, and nothing can change that. It might be a good idea if young women understand it, and accordingly avoid military service like the plague, no matter what kind of “candy” (like college funding, etc.) the recruiters offer.
Heck, instead of candy, call it “pogey bait”!
As a former (pre-Bush) active duty military women, I had to read this article, but of course what it makes me feel isn’t even worth commenting on because what I feel is every bit as predictable and horrible as all this was.
I didn’t get messed with. But not every female maintencence troop can pick up an 80 pound aircraft generator. Most would never try, due to the sheer fact of embarassment of exerting in ANY way, being less than graceful and feminine. Trust me, young women everywhere, intimidation factor and ruthless use of gratiuteous force are helpful, because sometimes when you do not look pretty, you ALSO do not look like a good candidate, AND know that they get you by the headtrip long before they get you by the hair. Don’t trust being alone with them, basically, so pair up as much as you can, that’s what I think anyway. My environment was long before Iraq, and must have been much easier to deal with.
DON’T be embarassed about not trusting your fellow MALE troops. Don’t be shy about not trusting, don’t be afraid of being PISSED off about having to even WORRY about it. Don’t mince words. Don’t be nice. Not very many women get along very well playing nice, so if your choice is only that of “princess or bitch”, or what someone once told me now is “Bitch or Slut”, DO NOT be ashamed or afraid to be LESS than friendly and trusting. Don’t ACT so surprised if they come on to you, and for Gods sakes don’t act scared.
That’s about all I can say. In the end, I have to realize some of my good forture was blind luck, which really pisses me off actually. This whole thing does. Armed women should NOT have to worry about getting raped, much less by their own. Jeez. They’d have had to kill me too, I’d have gone postal, so to speak, with every automatic weapon I could carry. Hmmm. Yup. That would have been me. Would have been messy.
Stolen Children
Personal devastation and a culture nearly destroyed. Such is the legacy of residential schools. Can a Truth and Reconciliation Commission start the healing?
http://www.cbc.ca/national/blog/video/aboriginal_issues/stolen_children.html
Cast your minds back to the invasion of Baghdad. At the time, I noted that the extensive looting (including a lot by American troops of Saddam’s palaces) was not a hopeful indicator of control by the invading power. Rumsfeld laughed it off, because there was nothing he could do about it but brush a lot of lipstick onto the pig.
I did not want us to invade, but thought that if we did there was a right way and a wrong way. It is now evident to everyone, even hawks, that the ominous looting was the shape of things to come.
Of course the photos of Saddam’s statue coming down were like a movie set — the general American public never saw that the square where it happened was ringed with tanks to allow this staged “liberation” to go forward.
What does this have to do with rape/murder cover-ups? A lot. The troops themselves have been characterized as professional soldiers who chose to go to Iraq. That is a myth which is falling apart with stories of stop-loss. Some of the earlier requirements for people without felonies have been ignored. You could even imagine them spinning this story into how we need good clean boys, instead of the ones from prisons and boys’ reformatories.
But the reality is that the military just doesn’t care very much, as long as certain metrics are met. A few women raped and murdered? So what? They’d like to promote the other myth that women will kill themselves after they are raped out of shame and fear. Women who enlisted, and who had some pride in themselves. I don’t think the women were coming out of prison. I think they were also idealistic and up for a challenge. But they did not receive adequate redress, and for some of them who were rape-murdered it never came up.
Rape is, it must be understood, mostly about the assertion of power. It may occur as a kind of revenge for the fate of losing a buddy, etc. Because this is power which is not granted to the rapist by his superior officers, the rape is by definition another example of the lack of power we have in Iraq. It is about impotence of the superior officers. And who wants to get it out that impotence exists in a place where the “surge” is supposed to be so potent?
Time to withdraw that limp organ, Bush and Cheney. Your impotence is trickling down to the men and it will be very ugly when they catch on how really dickless you are.
RE: I noted that the extensive looting (including a lot by American troops of Saddam’s palaces) was not a hopeful indicator of control by the invading power.
Yes, there is a link, it is the raping of culture and, despite the need to present it as mostly locals or a few bad apples, it was deliberate. To build a new, one must destroy what was there before. Some loot artifacts and others loot flesh.
To destroy national pride, one has to create shame - whether it be the shame that one was not “man enough” to protect one’s wives or daughters, or shame in one’s wives and daughters for not resisting more forcefully. Either way, intimacy between man and wife has been destroyed.
I don’t think that the American military wants its female soldiers used as “spoils of war” - so we have to know whether one is covering up one’s own sins by covering up the sins of another - or more worried about the reputation of the institution than about punishing sinners.
RE: Rape is, it must be understood, mostly about the assertion of power.
It is a ritual of devaluation and power. It is a dismissal of the person - of what the person wants and doesn’t want. It is the taking away of control over that which is the most personal (one’s body). There is a bit of defiling going on. Rapists often move from hating women of a certain despised group to hating all women.
Where does the hatred of women come from - or, at least, the attitude that one’s own wants renders what another wants or doesn’t want unimportant.
Then again, this whole occupation in Iraq was something the people did not want.
I believe the American Government is a complete wreck. A building that is no longer safe to live in and ought to be repaired… But the people are told that the building is perfectly safe.
Rape ought to be punished with death or life imprisonment. Rape is a form of extreme torture that no one should suffer and the perpetrator of such a horrendous crime does not deserve to live. A rapist is the worse criminal in existence. They still your body.
A murderer generally ends your agony but a rapist/murderer does the ultimate torture first. The problem: Men rule most of everything. Women are a minority. They do not see rape as much of a crime. It is. It is the worst.
The very fact that this happens in this military makes me hate my own country all the more. A true government should have everything laid bare. No secrets. The people ought to be able to access every last detail easily. Secrets lead to crimes against human rights within our own government. It is not right. This government is not just.
The United States is invading other countries rights all the time. This war is replacing tyranny with another form of tyranny. Our tyranny. Our government is horrible. The dream of our forefathers is nearly demolished by selfish leaders. Just takes a small push and the entire building is going to fall down.
I was once in my building’s laundry room and it happened we were all older women and we all started work as teenagers. We started talking and it turned out that every one of us was subjected to different forms of “sexual harassment” as a condition of keeping the job, and I don’t mean “can you be a sweetheart and get me a cup of coffee”.
In those days women said nothing out of shame or fear of being thought crazy or being blamed. If they did anything, it would be to quit and look for another job.
These days it would be risky for males to engage in that overt behavior in most US workplaces. That is true because women refused to be ashamed and fought back, despite being ridiculed and punished.
Evidently this is not true for the military and their contractors. Domestic violence is also rampant on army bases. I know someone who worked as a 911 operator at a huge base in the south. It is harder to change something whose very essence is control through brutality.
I get the impression from personal conversations that immigrant women without papers are also frequently raped and harassed on the job.
People removed from nature soon have a heart of stone. You can’t be in a war of destruction of the very earth people walk on and keep a good heart.
These stories shake me to the core! I think what really gets me is that one of these women was in my old unit. This could have easily been me if I had stayed in the military. I remember all the sexual harrassment I endured during that time, but never was I raped. It is horrible to think that these women are being raped and killed while in a warzone by our own people! We need to do something about this!!!! Even if it is simply talking to those who want to join the military about the realities of military life and war.