May, 19 2016, 08:45am EDT
![Human Rights Watch (HRW)](https://assets.rbl.ms/50602809/origin.jpg)
US: Raped in Military--Then Punished
Unjust Discharges Cause Lasting Harm
WASHINGTON
Thousands of United States service members who lost their military careers after reporting a sexual assault live with stigmatizing discharge papers that prevent them from getting jobs and benefits, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The report is the result of a 28-month investigation by Human Rights Watch, with the support of Protect Our Defenders, a human rights organization that supports and advocates for survivors of military sexual assault. Under pressure from the public and Congress, the US military has in recent years implemented some protection for service members who report sexual assault, but nothing has been done to redress the wrongs done to those who were unfairly discharged.
The 124-page report, "Booted: Lack of Recourse for Wrongfully Discharged US Military Rape Survivors," found that many rape victims suffering from trauma were unfairly discharged for a "personality disorder" or other mental health condition that makes them ineligible for benefits. Others were given "Other Than Honorable" discharges for misconduct related to the assault that shut them out of the Department of Veterans Affairs healthcare system and a broad range of educational and financial assistance. The consequences of having "bad paper" - any discharge other than "honorable" - or being labeled as having a "personality disorder" are far-reaching for veterans and their families, impacting employment, child custody, health care, disability payments, burial rights - virtually all aspects of life.
"Military rape victims with bad discharges are essentially labeled for life," said Sara Darehshori, senior counsel in the US program at Human Rights Watch and author of the report. "Not only have they lost their military careers, they have been marked with a status that may keep them from getting a job or health care, or otherwise pursuing a normal life after the military."
"Bad paper" has been correlated with high rates of suicide, homelessness, and imprisonment among veterans. Those with "personality disorder" or other mental health discharges have to live with the additional stigma of being labeled "mentally ill."
Despite the high stakes, there is little veterans can do to fix an unjust discharge, Human Rights Watch found. US law prohibits service members from suing the military for any harm suffered related to their service. The Boards for Correction of Military Records and Discharge Review Boards, the administrative bodies responsible for correcting injustices to service members' records, are overwhelmed with thousands of cases.
Human Rights Watch, with assistance from Protect Our Defenders, conducted more than 270 in-person and telephone interviews, examined documents produced by US government agencies in response to numerous public record requests, and analyzed data on cases in the Boards for Correction reading room that referenced "personality disorder" or "adjustment disorder." Researchers spoke to 163 survivors of sexual assault from the Vietnam War era to the present day.
"As I look back on the incident I have at times cursed myself for speaking up and reporting what happened," one rape survivor said. "I cannot even begin to express how this entire ordeal has affected my life."
In recent years, public attention has been drawn to the problem of combat veterans being given bad discharges for mental health conditions or misconduct that may in fact be symptomatic of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Congress has made it harder to discharge combat veterans on mental health grounds without checking for PTSD. However, the additional protections have not been extended to sexual assault survivors even though they also suffered trauma in service and the prevalence of PTSD is higher among rape victims than combat veterans.
Lack of Recourse for Wrongfully Discharged US Military Rape Survivors
"We regularly hear from people who report sexual assault that they are being threatened with discharge for mental health reasons or trumped-up misconduct charges," said Colonel Don Christensen, president of Protect Our Defenders and a former Air Force chief prosecutor. "Traumatized young service members may be willing to take a bad discharge just to escape their perpetrator without realizing the costs of their decision. Many more buy into the myth that it will be easy to upgrade their discharge later."
The Defense Department's standard response to service members who suffered sexual assault and allege improper discharge is to recommend they seek review by the Boards for Correction of Military Records or Discharge Review Boards. However, well over 90 percent of those applying to the Boards are rejected with almost no opportunity to be heard or any meaningful review. Lawyers for veterans say their cases often include considerable evidence and supporting documents. Yet Board members often spend only a few minutes deciding a case and may reach a decision without reading the submitted material. Because the courts give special deference to military decisions, judicial oversight of the Boards is virtually nonexistent.
"Military lawyers and veterans see the Boards as a virtual graveyard for their cases," Darehshori said. "Many veterans we spoke with were reluctant to put themselves through the trauma of reliving their assault to try to fix their record when they saw no hope for success."
Congress should require the Defense Department to expedite review of cases of sexual assault victims who believe they were wrongfully discharged. The defense secretary should instruct the Boards to be more open to considering upgrade requests from sexual assault victims, bring evidentiary requirements for proving a sexual assault into line with those used by the Department of Veterans Affairs, and create a presumption in favor of changing the reason for discharge from personality disorder to "Completion of Service," in certain cases.
To ensure that all service members receive due consideration of their claims, Congress should create a right to a hearing before the Boards for Correction of Military Records and provide greater information to the public on all decisions. A representative working group should be created to study standards for granting relief and determine best practices and procedures.
"Immediate reform is desperately needed to ensure that military sexual assault survivors can get a meaningful remedy for the wrongful discharges that darken their lives," Darehshori said. "They deserve support, not censure."
The following are quotes from rape survivors and advocates interviewed by Human Rights Watch or contained in documents Human Rights Watch reviewed. Starred victims' names have been replaced with pseudonyms to protect their privacy.
"Why should I be discharged because I was raped? I did what I was supposed to do. Had I never come forward I truly believe I would still be in the Air Force."
-A1C Juliet Simmons,* November 2012
"I carry my discharge as an official and permanent symbol of shame, on top of the trauma of the physical attack, the retaliation and its aftermath."
-Brian Lewis, March 2013
"Although agencies exist to which you may apply to upgrade a less than Honorable Discharge, it is unlikely that such application will be successful."
-Army Developmental Counseling Form
"I defy any of you not to have mental consequences if you were raped and harassed repeatedly and even set on fire, while management looked the other way and just laughed."
-Testimony of Amy Quinn before the Judicial Proceedings Panel on Sexual Assault in the Military, May 19, 2015
"I was 18 years old, was a mental mess, and was terrified to be back aboard [the ship] any longer than I had to. I wasn't protected, I wasn't helped, I wasn't safe from any type of harm! So how did I actually know what I was signing or even in fact what an OTH [Other Than Honorable] discharge was to mean? How was I to know that from all the sexual attacks that I had to suffer and the harassment, assaults, threats to my life and safety that for all these years [the discharge would be] a huge factor to how I lived and how my life ended up?"
-SR Heath Phillips, 2013
"It is bad enough to go through military sexual trauma, but to be discredited and labeled is difficult to overcome and causes so much damage. PD [Personality Disorder] is another level of betrayal because it is so stigmatizing.... People think there is something wrong with me and don't realize it was a label just stuck on people."
-PFC Eva Washington*, October 2013
"I have practiced law in Texas for 31 years now, and I've appeared in different state and federal courts in a variety of administrative settings and this is the only time that I've been before a discharge review board. It was a horrific experience ... I found myself being cut off and my client being screamed at which was unlike any experience I have ever had before. My client was just completely re-victimized. They didn't really care what we had to say. We got a decision a few months later that was erroneous in a number of different respects ... and it was a 5-nothing decision not to upgrade."
-JoAnn Merica, attorney for a veteran who was discharged for misconduct after reporting sexual harassment, March 2016
"As I look back on the incident I have at times cursed myself for speaking up and reporting what happened but ... I thought I was doing the right thing ... I cannot even begin to express how this entire ordeal has affected my life; it won't go away and I still struggle with self-esteem and trust and the entire myriad of symptoms victims of sexual assault suffer ... the Navy discarded me like a piece of scrap iron or less; truthfully, this ordeal continues to haunt me ... I am a broken man."
-SA Ken Nelson,* October 2012
Human Rights Watch is one of the world's leading independent organizations dedicated to defending and protecting human rights. By focusing international attention where human rights are violated, we give voice to the oppressed and hold oppressors accountable for their crimes. Our rigorous, objective investigations and strategic, targeted advocacy build intense pressure for action and raise the cost of human rights abuse. For 30 years, Human Rights Watch has worked tenaciously to lay the legal and moral groundwork for deep-rooted change and has fought to bring greater justice and security to people around the world.
LATEST NEWS
US Voter Registrations Surge as Republicans Try to Limit Ballot Access
One group said it has registered over 100,000 new voters since U.S. President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race.
Jul 26, 2024
The group behind a popular get-out-the-vote technology platform said Friday that it's registered more than 100,000 new U.S. voters since President Joe Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential race, a surge that came amid mounting Republican efforts to make it harder to register and vote.
Vote.org said that 84% of voters registered in the new wave are under age 35. Nearly 1 in 5 new registrees is 18 years old. Andrea Hailey, the group's CEO, said that "since 2020, we have led the largest voter registration drive in U.S. history," with more than 7.8 million people registered.
After dropping out, Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to face former Republican President Donald Trump and Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) in the November election. The new presumptive Democratic candidate has already earned endorsements from many Democrats in Congress and groups advocating on issues including climate, labor, and reproductive rights.
Vote.org's success comes as Republicans at the federal level are proposing and passing legislation creating obstacles to the ballot box.
Earlier this month, U.S. House Republicans passed Rep. Chip Roy's (R-Texas)
Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which would require proof of American citizenship to vote in federal elections. Republicans claim the bill is meant to fix the virtually nonexistent "problem" of noncitizen voter fraud.
However, Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.)
slammed the bill as a "xenophobic attack" meant to silence "Black voices, brown voices, LBGTQIA+ voices, [and] young voices."
Lee said the SAVE Act underscores the need to pass her recently introduced Right to Vote Act, "which would establish the first-ever affirmative federal voting rights guarantee, ensuring every citizen may exercise their fundamental right to cast a ballot."
Earlier this year, U.S. Senate Democrats also reintroduced the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, legislation its sponsors say will "update and restore critical safeguards of the original Voting Rights Act."
Meanwhile, Republican-controlled state legislatures and red-state governors are enacting laws imposing tough restrictions on voter registration, with violations punishable by stiff fines that critics say are meant to dissuade people from registration drives and similar efforts.
Again under the guise of preventing fraud, Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last year signed legislation limiting voter registration drives, with fines of up to $250,000 for violators.
"These draconian laws and rules are like taking a sledgehammer to hit a flea," Cecile Scoon, an attorney and president of the Florida chapter of the League of Women Voters,
toldThe New York Times in an article published Friday.
Three years after Kansas passed a law making "false representation" of an election official a crime, campaigners say it's become extremely difficult to sign up new voters.
"In 2020, even with the pandemic, we had registered nearly 10,000 Kansans to vote. Now, we haven't been able to register anyone," Davis Hammet, president of the youth voter mobilization group Loud Light, told the Times.
In Louisiana, Republican state lawmakers quietly passed legislation making it easier for election officials to toss out absentee ballots with missing details, limiting how people can mail in other voters' ballots, and restricting the ability to assist people with disabilities with their ballots.
"What we've found is that these measures have a disproportionate impact on voters with disabilities, both Black and white," NAACP Legal Defense Fund senior policy counsel Jared Evans
toldNola.com earlier this week.
"It's clear that their goal is to make it harder to vote, harder for specific communities to vote especially," Evans added. "What they don't realize is that these laws hurt white voters, too."
In Nebraska, Republican Secretary of State Bob Evnen last week
ordered county election offices to stop registering voters with past felony convictions who have not received official pardons. The move came after the state's unicameral Legislature passed a bill granting voting eligibility to felons immediately after they have completed their sentences instead of waiting two years.
"We refuse to accept thousands of Nebraskans having their voting rights stripped away," ACLU of Nebraska legal and policy fellow Jane Seu said in a statement. "We are confident in the constitutionality of these laws, and we are exploring every option to ensure that Nebraskans who have done their time can vote."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Critics Warn Manchin-Barrasso Permitting Bill 'Is Taken Straight From Project 2025'
"You thought Project 2025 was just a threat after the election? It's actually happening *right now,*" said one climate campaigner.
Jul 26, 2024
Climate and environmental defenders on this week implored U.S. senators to block a permitting reform bill introduced this week by Sens. Joe Manchin and John Barrasso that one campaigner linked to Project 2025, a conservative coalition's agenda for a far-right overhaul of the federal government.
Common Dreamsreported Monday that Manchin (I-W.Va.) and Barrasso (R-Wyo.)—respectively the chair and ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee—introduced the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024.
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) noted that although the proposal "includes several positive reforms for the accelerated development of transmission projects," it also advocates "limiting opportunities for communities to challenge projects, loosening oversight for drilling and mining projects, extending drilling permits and fast-tracking [liquified natural gas] permits, and several other provisions friendly to fossil fuel giants."
"This dangerous bill doesn't deserve a floor vote."
These are nearly identical policies to what's proposed in Project 2025's Mandate for Leadership. The plan, which was spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, calls for "unleashing all of America's energy resources," including by ending federal restrictions on fossil fuel drilling on public lands; limiting investments in renewable energy; and rolling back environmental permitting restrictions for new oil, gas, and coal projects, including power plants.
While Manchin has been trying—and failing—to pass fossil fuel-friendly permitting reform legislation for years, Brett Hartl, director of public affairs at the Center for Biological Diversity, said that his "Frankenstein legislation is taken straight from Project 2025, and it's the biggest giveaway in decades to the fossil fuel industry."
Hartl said the bill "deprives communities of the power to defend themselves and gives that power to Big Oil by making it harder for communities to challenge polluting projects in court," and "prioritizes the profits of coal barons over public health."
"And it mandates oil and gas extraction in our oceans," he continued. "The insignificant crumbs thrown at renewable energy do nothing to address the climate emergency."
"Monday was the hottest day in recorded history," Hartl noted. "It's shocking that as the climate emergency continues to break records around us, the Senate continues to fast-track the fossil fuel expansion that is killing us. This dangerous bill doesn't deserve a floor vote."
Hartl added that "to preserve a livable planet," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) "must squash this legislation now."
Manchin—who has said this will be his last term in office—has been a steadfast supporter of the fossil fuel industry, partly because his family owns a coal company. The senator says his permitting reform bill "will advance American energy once again to bring down prices, create domestic jobs, and allow us to continue in our role as a global energy leader."
However, Allie Rosenbluth, Oil Change International's U.S. manager, warned Thursday that "this bill is yet another dangerous attempt by Sen. Manchin to line the pockets of his fossil fuel donors, sacrificing communities and our climate along the way."
"Don't be fooled: The Energy Permitting Reform Act is another dirty deal to fast-track fossil fuels above all else," she continued. "It would unleash more drilling on federal lands and waters, unnecessarily rush the review of proposed oil and gas export projects, and lift the Biden administration's pause on new LNG exports."
"We urge Congress to reject this proposal and commit to action that protects frontline communities from the impacts of fossil fuel development and the climate crisis," Rosenbluth added.
"Don't be fooled: The Energy Permitting Reform Act is another dirty deal to fast-track fossil fuels above all else."
NRDC managing director of government affairs Alexandra Adams said Wednesday that "this bill is a giveaway for the oil and gas industry that will ramp up drilling and environmental destruction at a time when we need to be putting a hard stop to fossil fuels."
"We cannot afford to roll back so many of our bedrock environmental and community legal protections and offer a blank check to the oil and gas industry," she stressed. "We need new solutions for permitting if we are going to meet our clean energy potential and address the climate challenge. But this is not it."
"This bill would altogether be a leap backward on climate, health, and justice if passed into law," Adams added. "The Senate should reject it and look toward alternative solutions already being considered."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Nothing To Eat': War-Torn Sudan Faces Mass Famine as Military Delays Aid
Both parties in Sudan's civil war are to blame for a looming mass famine, experts say, and the military's blocking of U.N. aid at a border crossing with Chad exacerbates the problem.
Jul 26, 2024
Sudan's military is blocking United Nations aid trucks from entering at a key border crossing, causing severe disruptions in aid in a country that experts fear may be on the brink of one of the worst famines the world has seen in decades, The New York Timesreported Friday.
The border city of Adré in eastern Chad is the main international crossing into the Darfur region of Sudan, but the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), the state's official military, which is engaged in a civil war with a paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), has refused to issue permits for U.N. trucks to enter there, as it's an RSF-controlled area.
U.S. and international officials have issued increasingly alarmed calls for steady aid access to help feed the millions of severely malnourished people in Darfur and other areas of Sudan.
Last week, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the United States ambassador to the U.N., said that the SAF's obstruction of the border was "completely unacceptable."
Both warring parties in Sudan continue to perpetrate brazen atrocities, including starvation of civilians as a method of warfare. This piece focuses on the SAF's ongoing obstruction of essential aid. The situation is catastrophic. The policy is criminal. https://t.co/FKhqQh3EI9.
— Tom Dannenbaum (@tomdannenbaum) July 26, 2024
The Sudanese who've made it out of the country and into Adré reported dire and unsafe conditions in their home country.
"We had nothing to eat," Bahja Muhakar, a Sudenese mother of three, told the Times after she crossed into Chad, following a harrowing six-day journey from Al-Fashir, a major city in Darfur. She said the family often had to live off of one shared pancake per day.
Another mother, Dahabaya Ibet, said that her 20-month-old boy had to bear witness to his grandfather being shot and killed in front of his eyes when the family home in Darfur was attacked by gunmen late last year.
Now the mothers and their families are refugees in Adré, where 200,000 Sudanese are living in an overcrowded, under-resourced transit camp.
In addition to those that have made it out of the country, there are 11 million people internally displaced within Sudan, most of whom have become displaced since the civil war began in April 2023.
An unnamed senior American official told the Times that the looming famine in Sudan could be as bad as the 2011 famine in Somalia or even the great Ethiopian famine of the 1980s.
In April, Reutersreported that people in Sudan were eating soil and leaves to survive, and The Washington Postcalled it a nation in "chaos," reporting that World Food Program trucks had been "blocked, hijacked, attacked, looted, and detained."
In late June, a coalition of U.N. agencies, aid groups, and governments warned that 755,000 people in Sudan faced famine in the coming months.
The U.S. last week announced $203 million in additional aid to Sudan—part of a $2.1 billion pledge that world leaders made in April, which some countries have not yet delivered on.
Some officials including Thomas-Greenfield, who has dubbed the situation in Sudan "the worst humanitarian crisis in the world," have called for the U.N. Security Council to allow aid delivery into the country even in the absence of SAF approval; it's believed that Russia would veto such a measure.
Sudan's civil war has seen a great deal of international interference. Amnesty International on Thursday published an investigatory briefing showing that weapons from Russia, China, Serbia, Turkey, Yemen, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had been identified in the country. And The Guardian on Friday reported that the passports of Emirati citizens had been found among wreckage in Sudan, indicating the UAE may have troops or intelligence officers on the ground, though the UAE denied the accusation.
The International Service for Human Rights on Friday warned that both the SAF and RSF were engaged in wrongful killings and arrests, especially targeted at lawyers, doctors, and activists. The group called for an immediate cease-fire.
The SAF and Sudanese government figures have cast doubt on international experts' claims about famine in the country.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular