Healing Combat Trauma

Domestic Violence: Personal and Family Safety Pocket Guide

The Washington state Dept. of Social and Health Services puts out these excellent pocket cards, in English and other languages, called the "Safety Plan Pocket Guide" for victims of domestic violence.  It looks like they were produced over ten years ago now, but Seattle-area businesses and medical offices still have them available, and the suggestions look current and practical.  Here they are:

Domestic Violence National toll-free hotline: 1-800-799-SAFE (7233)

Within Washington state: Domestic Violence Hotline: V/TTY: 1(800) 562-6025.

Safety Plan Pocket Guide:

PLAN AHEAD:

• Develop a plan with your children;
• Arrange to have a place to go;
• Make copies of important papers and hide them;
• Have available important phone numbers;
• Pack and hide an overnight bag;
• Put aside money and spare keys;

DURING AN INCIDENT:

• Call for help (9-1-1);
  Get out if you can;
  Bring important items listed above;

IF YOU CAN'T LEAVE THE SITUATION:

• Avoid rooms with only one exit;
• Avoid the kitchen, bathroom and garage;
• Call for help;

IN YOUR HOUSE:

• Change lock, secure doors and windows;
• Arrange to have someone come stay with you;
• Change your phone number(s);
• Obtain a protection order;
• Notify trusted friends and family;

AT THE WORKPLACE, SCHOOL AND PUBLIC AREAS:

• Inform your work, daycare and schools;
• Change your daily routine;
• Plan ahead for unexpected contact with the abuser.

Editor's note: For previous coverage of domestic violence, PTSD and combat veterans, look to this blog post, linked here, or the index of blog posts on the topic, linked here.

"Love Shouldn't Hurt": Combat Veterans, PTSD, and the Deadly Serious Topic of Domestic Violence

Domestic violence is an enormous public health problem in our society today. Domestic violence among families of combat veterans is also a significant problem -- if you take "significant" to mean, "important to those it affects." According to a fact sheet produced by the National Center for PTSD (NCPTSD), part of the VA, domestic violence is "the most frequent cause of serious injury to women, more than car accidents, muggings, and stranger rapes combined."

Among veterans, studies show that "domestic violence rates among veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are higher than those of the general population. Additionally, according to studies, domestic violence rates among "active-duty military men (Heyman & Neidig, 1999), couples seeking relationship therapy (O'Leary, Vivian, & Malone, 1992), and Vietnam veterans with and without post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD; Jordan et al., 1992) have been found to be higher than those from the general population." 

One academic paper adds, making a crucial point, "Research has yet to study couples seeking relationship therapy in which the veteran has PTSD to explore how these relationships compare with other couples. Given the elevated risk for violence among these couples due to the PTSD, the treatment-seeking behavior, and the relationship distress, couples seeking relationship therapy are an especially vulnerable population." (And of course, couples not seeking relationship therapy might be even more under-served -- it's just they can't be as easily surveyed.)

---

Casey Taft, M.D., an associate professor of psychiatry at Boston University, has recently been awarded a $1.5 million grant from the Department of Defense to study this topic. From an article published by BU, announcing the grant, quoting Taft, and linked here:

"People who are exposed to trauma, and in particular those who develop PTSD, are at very high risk for aggressive behavior,” says Taft, who also works at the Boston Veterans Affairs Medical Center and the National Center for PTSD. “In one Vietnam war study, they found that among vets with PTSD, one third had engaged in physical violence against their partner in the past year. This rate was almost three time the rates they found among vets without PTSD. Since we know that current vets in Iraq and Afghanistan have been exposed to significant trauma and many of them have been on multiple deployments and they’re coming back with high rates of PTSD and other mental health issues, it would stand to reason that they would also engage in high levels of aggression and partner violence, though we don’t have the specific data to back that up.”

(Hence the study).

In the meantime, know that domestic violence can be "deadly serious."

Domestic violence is serious. Risks include death, serious physical injury, and psychological injury as well -- including PTSD and secondary PTSD. Just some of the psychological effects (often less obvious initially than the physical effects) are: depression and being at greater risk for subsequent suicide.

Again, according to the NCPTSD, "60% of battered women report depression," and "25% of suicide attempts by Caucasian women and 50% of suicide attempts by African American women" have been "preceded by abuse."

Some more sobering statistics about the magnitude of the problem:

• 20-30% of American women will be physically abused by a partner at least once in their lifetimes; 
• 30-40% of women's emergency room visits are for injuries due to domestic violence;
  
• 30% of women killed in the U.S. are killed by their husbands or boyfriends;
  
• 50% of men who assaulted their female partners also assaulted their children;
  
• 3.3 million children witness domestic violence each year.
• 1.3 million women and 834,732 men are physically assaulted by an intimate partner annually;
• 201,394 women are forcibly raped by an intimate partner annually;
• 11% of women in homosexual relationships and 23% of men in homosexual relationships report being raped, physically assaulted, and/or stalked by an intimate partner;
• 503,485 women and 185,496 men are stalked by an intimate partner annually;
• 1-25% of all pregnant women are battered during pregnancy;

What to do if you're in crisis?  There's a

National toll-free Domestic Violence hotline: 1-800-799-SAFE (7233)

There's an excellent "Fact Sheet" put out by the NCPTSD, linked here; and

There's a "safety plan pocket guide," linked here.

The NCPTSD's fact sheet, they say, provides "information regarding the definition of domestic violence, the prevalence of domestic violence, the dynamics of abusive relationships, the effects of domestic violence, treatment for victims and perpetrators, and resources offering assistance."

There are also some good resources at other websites, including FamilyOfAVet.com, linked here.

Combat Veterans, PTSD and Domestic Violence - A Sometimes Deadly Combination

Domestic Violence a Growing Problem for Veterans

“The increasing number of veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder [PTSD] raises the risk of domestic violence and its consequences on families and children in communities across the United States,” says Monica Matthieu, Ph.D., an expert on veteran mental health and an assistant professor of social work at Washington University in St. Louis. “Treatments for domestic violence are very different than those for PTSD. The Department of Veterans Affairs [VA] has mental health services and treatments for PTSD, yet these services need to be combined with the specialized domestic violence intervention programs offered by community agencies for those veterans engaging in battering behavior against intimate partners and families.”

Matthieu and Peter Hovmand, Ph.D., a domestic violence expert and an assistant professor of social work at Washington University, are merging their research interests and working to design community prevention strategies to address this emerging public health problem.

“The increasing prevalence of traumatic brain injury and substance use disorders along with PTSD among veterans poses some unique challenges to existing community responses to domestic violence,” says Hovmand. “Community responses to domestic violence must be adapted to respond to the increasing number of veterans with PTSD. This includes veterans with young families and older veterans with chronic mental health issues.”

VA research shows that male veterans with PTSD are two to three times more likely than veterans without PTSD to engage in intimate partner violence and more likely to be involved in the legal system.

— Source: Washington University in St. Louis

The Woman's Bill of Rights to Sexual Intimacy and Pleasure

Periodically we revisit the all-important topic, "Healthy Sexuality for Combat Veterans."  In this installment, we include a "bill of rights" that's essentially written for the woman partner, from Gina Ogden, Ph.D., author of "The Heart and Soul of Sex," and, most recently, "The Return of Desire." The author of five books, Ogden is a marriage and family therapist and a sex therapist.  In a conversation directed primarily to women, she says:

"It's important for you to know what your sexual rights are -- no matter what your age or sexual orientation or physical ability.  Some of us seem to know our rights instinctively and are able to set effective boundaries and ask for what we want.  But many of us have never thought about our rights to intimacy and pleasure -- or even imagined that we had such rights.  When we're unaware, we're extra vulnerable to being taken advantage of by others, whether they intend to take advantage of us or not."

The following advice comes from a guide by Ogden for women about "how to say "yes" to pleasure and "no" to unsafe sex."

My Rights to Intimacy and Pleasure:

1.  I have a right to my own body and all of its sensations, including pleasure and pain;

2.  I have a right to think my own thoughts, whatever they may be;

3.  I have a right to feel the full range of my emotions – excitement, joy and anger, sorrow and depression, love and fear – whether or not my feeling them is acceptable to others;

4.  I have a right to acknowledge my memories, whether they are memories of delight or of abuse, and to base present relationship decisions on them;

5.  I have a right to be – or not to be – a sexual person at all ages and stages of my life, and a right to chose how I define what I mean by sexuality;

6.  I have a right to expect that my partner respect my body, thoughts, feelings, and general well-being, and a right to insist on respect, if necessary;

7.  I have a right to ask for what I want;

8.  I have a right to say “no” to any sexual encounter that feels unsatisfactory or threatening – physically, emotionally, spiritually, or sexually;

9.  I have a right to say “yes” to pleasure that is physically, emotionally, spiritually and sexually safe; and

10.  I have a right to feel good about saying both “yes” and “no.”

-- Source: "The Heart and Soul of Sex," by Gina Ogden, Ph.D.

Projects Target PTSD-Related Relationship Aggression

"Living with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can strain any relationship—sometimes to the point of violence against a loved one. University of Arkansas psychologist Matthew T. Feldner, Ph.D., is part of two national research projects aimed at preventing relationship aggression in couples coping with PTSD and treating this type of aggression when it has already developed.

“The main aims of these projects are to reduce the number of new cases of interpersonal violence and reduce the number of cases already existing,” Feldner says. “We teach couples skills for better relationship behaviors, such as how to communicate better and how to manage anger.”

All people receiving these interventions will be closely monitored and referred for more intensive individual therapy should the need arise. Rather than going back to focus on the roots of the PTSD, Feldner says the couples in these interventions “will focus on the here and now of how the PTSD is affecting their relationship.” While teaching couples about the features of PTSD and improving their relationships, the group treatment can also serve as a gateway to further treatment for PTSD and other services.

If these interventions succeed in preventing or treating relationship aggression, Feldner says that these would be groundbreaking, landmark projects. “Ultimately, we are hoping we can conduct these interventions in such a way that they could be useful for the VA and could be extended to community populations as well, for situations that are not specifically military,” Feldner says."

— Source: University of Arkansas, Fayetteville

In the News: Two Articles Worth Reading Recently

Two articles worth reading that have been in the news recently:

"How the VA Abandons Our Vets," by Joshua Kors, in The Nation, linked here; and the poorly-headlined but otherwise worthwhile"Military Town Newspaper Challenges U.S. Military on Murder of Military Women," by Ann Wright, in TruthOut.org on the Web, linked here. 

Kors' article talks about the recent veterans' class-action lawsuit against the VA, fought in Federal court, and WHY it was necessary -- and there are some interesting and unexpected points, which didn't show up elsewhere in enough detail.  The biggest one is about the "fuzzy math" the VA employs to calculate claim times, and how this uniformly works against veterans (no pun intended on the "uniformly" thing.) It also confirms a longheld impression on my part that a veteran who struggles intensely with the mammoth difficulty of being his or her own advocate in the process, and ends up committing suicide, is actually counted as a "victory" for the VA, who calls their claim "resolved" in the time it took them to kill themselves.  In other words, fellow veterans killing themselves while waiting for their claims to be resolved actually makes the VA look "better and faster" at resolving claims, if you can believe that.  Yikes.  Talk about a system that needs to be overhauled and addressed...

Another great point Kors makes is that "someone" already attempted -- but was fired for her efforts.  That "someone" is Frances Murphy, M.D., who in 2004, according to Kors, "helped draft the Mental Health Strategic Plan, a blueprint for overhauling the VA.  The plan called for 256 changes to the organization, among them: installing a tracking system to stay in touch with suicidal veterans, creating rehabilitation programs that involved veterans' families, and streamlining the benefits process to resolve wounded veterans' immediate needs."  However, after expressing her frustration in public (to mental health providers) about the barriers the VA erects to veterans' speedy care, and how this causes veterans to suffer additionally and unnecessarily -- she was summarily fired.

Read the Kors piece to understand what wounded veterans have to go through, and how unfair it is; and to get a better picture on the fuzzy math that's employed to make things seem much better than they are.

The Ann Wright piece talks about military wives and women servicemembers murdered recently by other servicemembers, and mainly serves to remind us of how this is a problem that isn't going away.  The "news peg" for her article is a recent editorial in the Fayetteville, NC Observer -- Fayetteville is close to huge Army and Marine bases -- called "Our View: Military Domestic Violence Needs More Aggressive Prevention" (speaking of odd word choices).  That editorial is linked here.  The editorial references a recent vigil to memorialize the murdered women locally.

In conjunction with the Helen Benedict material and the other writings on Military Sexual Trauma, blogged about recently, here -- this is a topic worth keeping in the forefront of our minds.  Collateral damage from combat trauma? Or just crimes committed by otherwise sick individuals who happen to be in the military?  Either way, "more" needs to be done about this terrible problem.  (A similar and related topic is the "non-combat deaths" one we discuss from time to time, which can sadly be what's used to describe what more actually is a victim's suicide or a "domestic violence" type murder, of one servicemember by another.) We're just about to add a series of blog posts about domestic violence, and why it's important to leave when you're at risk, but ideally how to do so in a way that preserves your life.  Look for that shortly.

About the authors:

Joshua Kors is an investigative reporter for The Nation, where he covers military and veterans' issues. He is the winner of the National Magazine Award, George Polk Award, IRE Award, National Headliner Award, Casey Medal, Mental Health Media Award, and the Military Reporters and Editors Award.  He was also a finalist for the Michael Kelly Award, Tom Renner Award, Harvard's Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting, and the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel Award.

Ann Wright is a retired US Army Reserves colonel with 29 years of military service. She also was a US diplomat who served in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia and Mongolia. She is the co-author of "Dissent: Voices of Conscience," profiles of government insiders who have spoken and acted on their concerns of their governments' policies.

Why Soldiers Rape - Helen Benedict on Military Sexual Assault

If you've been following our recurring coverage on military sexual trauma (MST), here is an important addition to it: Helen Benedict, a professor at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, currently on sabbatical, has a book coming out next year from Beacon Press called "The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq."  (You can pre-order the book at Benedict's own website, linked here.)

On Memorial Day weekend, she published an OpEd recently on the subject, in the New York Times. The piece, which was entitled "For Women Warriors, Deep Wounds, Little Care," is linked here.

A few months later, in August, she published another OpEd, called "Why Soldiers Rape," in a different outlet, which is linked here. Compared to the NYT piece, this one is more overtly politicized, both in thinking and in language.

While that strategy can have pros and cons, one positive is -- whether you agree with it or not -- that it's a useful stance to take to provoke thinking and/or discussion.  (Although I'd also like to compare the two essays side by side to see how Benedict treats the same material slightly differently, for different audiences.)

Decades ago, feminist authors and filmmakers were able to accomplish traction by taking on topics like rape (Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape, by Susan Brownmiller) and pornography (Not a Love Story: A Film about Pornography, by Bonnie Klein, with Susan Griffin and others) as aspects of the culture that harm women substantially, yet are frequently overlooked.

(Benedict's website indicates that a previous article published in Salon last year, "The Private War of Women Soldiers," was awarded the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism in 2008. That article is linked here.)

Some of the terms Benedict uses, like "misogyny" (literally, hatred of women) are very strong indeed.  How big a problem is this really? My hunch is less so than what Benedict suggests.  But by using such volatile language to communicate similarly incendiary thinking, Benedict succeeds in drawing greater attention to the problem.  Doubtless what she portrays, however, is not "everywoman" servicemember's experience in the military.  (The comments to the NYT piece make that abundantly clear.) But for those who are harmed by military sexual trauma, no doubt she makes some very good, and thought-provoking points -- even if you don't end up agreeing with everything she says, or how she says it. 

Another difficulty is the topic is so polarizing, based on individuals' own experiences -- that those who have suffered from it tend to see the pervasive nature of it; whereas those who haven't personally experienced also tend to believe their experience is the norm, and shut out the other point of view.  (See the comments section in the NYT piece for examples of this "all or nothing" thinking.) In this way, both sides run their own risk of illustrating the cliche that "when all you have is a hammer, you tend to see everything as a nail."

The following is an excerpt from that piece:

"Rape in civilian life is already unacceptably common. One in six women is raped or sexually assaulted in her lifetime, according to the National Institute of Justice, a number so high it should be considered an epidemic.

In the military, however, the situation is even worse. Rape is almost twice as frequent as it is among civilians, especially in wartime. Soldiers are taught to regard one another as family, so military rape resembles incest. And most of the soldiers who rape are older and of higher rank than their victims, so are taking advantage of their authority to attack the very people they are supposed to protect.

Department of Defense reports show that nearly 90 percent of rape victims in the Army are junior-ranking women, whose average age is 21, while most of the assailants are non-commissioned officers or junior men, whose average age is 28. . . "

Benedict ties rape to misogyny -- literally, hatred of women -- and what she suggests is the systematic, institutionalized degradation of women in the military:

"Two seminal studies have examined military culture and its attitudes toward women: one by Duke University Law Professor Madeline Morris in 1996. . . and the other by University of California professor and folklorist Carol Burke in 2004 . . . Both authors found that military culture is more misogynistic than even many critics of the military would suspect. Sometimes this misogyny stems from competition and sometimes from resentment, but it lies at the root of why soldiers rape. . .

Morris and Burke both show that military language reveals this "unabashed hatred of women" all the time. Even with a force that is now 14 percent female, and with rules that prohibit drill instructors from using racial epithets and curses, those same instructors still routinely denigrate recruits by calling them "pussy," "girl," "bitch," "lady" and "dyke." The everyday speech of soldiers is still riddled with sexist insults. . .

The view of women as sexual prey has always been present in military culture. Indeed, civilian women have been seen as sexual booty for conquering soldiers since the beginning of human history. So, it should come as no surprise that the sexual persecution of female soldiers has been going on in the armed forces for decades. . ."

Benedict then goes on to suggest why rape is under-reported in the military:

"Having the courage to report a rape is hard enough for civilians, where unsympathetic police, victim-blaming myths, and the fear of reprisal prevent some 60 percent of rapes from being brought to light, according to a 2005 Department of Justice study.

But within the military, reporting is much riskier. Platoons are enclosed, hierarchical societies, riddled with gossip, so any woman who reports a sexual assault has little chance of remaining anonymous. She will probably have to face her assailant day after day and put up with resentment and blame from other soldiers who see her as a snitch. She risks being persecuted by her assailant if he is her superior, and punished by any commanders who consider her a troublemaker. And because military culture demands that all soldiers keep their pain and distress to themselves, reporting an assault will make her look weak and cowardly.

For all these reasons, some 80 percent of military rapes are never reported, as the Pentagon itself acknowledges. . . ."

And then Benedict suggests two reasons, not exactly complimentary to recruiting, about how violence is perpetuated in and by the system.  Hmmmn.

"Misogyny has always been at the root of sexual violence in the military, but two other factors contribute to it, as well: the type of man who chooses to enter the all-volunteer force and the nature of the Iraq War.

The economic reasons behind enlistment are well understood. The military is the primary path out of poverty and dead-end jobs for many of the poor in America. What is less discussed is that many soldiers enlist as teenagers to escape troubled or violent homes.

Two studies of Army and Marine recruits, one conducted in 1996 by psychologists L.N. Rosen and L. Martin, and the other in 2005 by Jessica Wolfe and her colleagues of the Boston Veterans Affairs Health Center, both of which were published in the journal Military Medicine, found that half the male enlistees had been physically abused in childhood, one-sixth had been sexually abused, and 11 percent had experienced both. This is significant because, as psychologists have long known, childhood abuse often turns men into abusers. . .

Worse, according to the Defense Department's own reports, the military has been exacerbating the problem by granting an increasing number of "moral waivers" to its recruits since 9/11, which means enlisting men with records of domestic and sexual violence.

Furthermore, the military has an abysmal record when it comes to catching, prosecuting and punishing its rapists. The Pentagon's 2007 Annual Report on Sexual Assault in the Military found that 47 percent of the reported sexual assaults in 2007 were dismissed as unworthy of investigation, and only about 8 percent of the cases went to court-martial, reflecting the difficulty female soldiers have in making themselves heard or believed when they report sexual assault within the military. . ."

(Those last statistics are perhaps most troubling of all...)

Benedict also has an essay on her website that's worth reading, called "For Women Warriors, Deep Wounds, Little Care," which is linked here. (Same title as NYT piece, slightly different content.)  Watch for her book to come out in the Spring of 2009, from Beacon Press.

Twice Betrayed: Women Veterans and Military Sexual Trauma

It's my deep-seated belief that women veterans who suffer military sexual trauma risk being twice betrayed: once by their perpetrator in uniform, once by the system itself, which should be doing a much better job of protecting them from a problem that's too apparent, widespread, and part of the actual culture to pretend that it doesn't exist.

 

See Jeff Benedict on this:

"But an occupation that thrives on a unique capacity for aggression among participants runs the risk of being a home for troubled men who cannot contain their rage against the opposite sex." -- Jeff Benedict, author of "Public Heroes, Private Felons"

Preventing Psychological Injury, Betrayal and Trauma: The Real “Costs” and “Treatment” of Military Sexual Trauma

 

Sometimes I think I miss the point on some of these blog posts: I’m too busy trying to set the stage and establish the “milieu” so that a thoughtful person can absorb it all and come away with a new outlook or two on a “same old” problem.  But maybe I’m failing to come right out and say what I’m really thinking, and God knows enough people are floundering around on this topic who shouldn’t be, so maybe I just will.  Here goes the suddenly editorial portion of our program:

 

We heard Jonathan Shay, M.D., Ph.D., pretty much the foremost expert nationally on veterans and PTSD, talk the other day about the “psychological injury” that troops are exposed to from lack of sleep, before and after combat, and how that sets them up for significant problems.  True; agreed; understood.  What we’re talking about here with women in the military and military sexual trauma is a similar thing: preventing and treating what is a grievous psychological injury. It's a situation like the one Shay talks about, something where the proverbial “ounce of prevention” is worth the “pound of cure.”  Shay is remarkable: he’s one of a kind.  There’s probably no better advocate for veterans in the country, although anyone who works with veterans from the heart is worthy of great honor.  It’s a pretty much unsung, undervalued calling.

 

However, we can’t really expect Dr. Shay, as amazing as he is, to come out and have much to say about military sexual trauma.  He’s got his hands full already with what his topics are; and, his main “demographic” has always been Vietnam veterans, most of whom…the vast majority of whom…are men.  That’s who served for the most part in Vietnam. That is not the composition of the military today; or even the contracting world that “supports” (using that term somewhat loosely) the military and the Department of Defense.

 

So we need to find some new experts, and some new paradigms; put in place some new safeguards, establish and deliver some new training; and, in general, get a radically new “outlook” on this problem.

 

That’s why I bothered to link in the passage from Jeff Benedict’s book about pro athletes who commit crimes against women, and how they are protected, in part, by the very environment in which their crimes take place.  So too with the military: it’s as good an analogy as you’re going to get right now, and frankly, we’re in need of one.

 

It’s a crying shame that women victims of military sexual assault are being murdered (they are) by their perpetrators to prevent their coming forward; and killing themselves (they are) because they’ve anticipating a double betrayal: the military that failed to protect them in the first place – and allowed the assault to happen – and the betrayal they expect to take place, when they muster up enough strength, courage or hope to try to “fight the system” and report the crime.  In the clutch – feeling desperate, forsaken and very much alone -- some of these women just give up, and take their own lives, because they’ve so lost hope that the system will get them the justice they deserve.

 

If you read the literature on suicide – something that plagues veterans with PTSD, and military sexual assault causes and is associated with PTSD in women – it’s not that hard to see the link.  People kill themselves when they give up hope; and when they anticipate from looking around that their situation isn’t going to be handled any better (any more sensitively, well or effectively) than the last person they heard about who had the same issues.

 

Listen to a world-renowned expert on suicide, Edwin Schneidman, for a moment on this.  A person goes from being troubled (perturbation) to doing something final about it (lethality) when they give up hope.  "Lethality, when coupled with elevated perturbation," writes Schneidman in his book, The Suicidal Mind, "is a principal ingredient in self-inflicted death.  Perturbation supplies the motivation for suicide; lethality is the fatal trigger."  He continues:

 

"Lethality -- the idea that "I can stop this pain; I can kill myself" is the unique essence of suicide.  Anybody who has ever switched off an electric light deliberately to plunge a hideous room into darkness or, with equal deliberation, stopped the action of an annoying engine by turning the key to OFF, has, for that moment, been granted the swift satisfaction the suicidal person hungers for.  After all, the suicidal person intends to stop the ongoing activities [including their highly personal traumas] of life."

 

What's the relationship to this topic?  Do I need to make it explicit?  Well, then, I will: if you set people up in a situation where they will fail (be assaulted) and then furthermore not address their condition compassionately, seriously, effectively or well -- the torment they feel (perturbation) is enough to create a sense that there is truly "no way out" (lethality) and no one who cares.  I think we have all the ingredients here.

 

Said another way, let's turn to Kathie Costos.  Chaplain Kathie Costos, who’s been caring about PTSD issues and the military for years now, signs her personal emails with a great quote, allegedly from George Washington.  It says:

 

"The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive veterans of early wars were treated and appreciated by our nation."  -- George Washington

Well, let’s just snap our fingers and bring that comment current, collapsing it with the material we’re talking about right here.  It still applies:

 

“The willingness with which women who have suffered sexual assaults in the military are to come forward is directly proportional to how they perceive other women veterans who have been victims of military sexual assault have been treated.”

And it seems they would have good reason to be concerned. You see women who came to horrible ends because their predation wasn’t understood for what it was (Maria Lauterbach and Cesar Laurean, but there are plenty more cases like that in the news, not just them); those whose situation was wrongly classified as “suicide” when it was way more clearly murder (see the case of Army Private LaVena Johnson, profiled in Salon and elsewhere, linked here); outrageous sexual assault situations against women contractors (see Jamie Leigh Jones' allegations against KBR, linked here); and well, the list goes on and on. Justice delayed = justice denied. 

 

It's just human nature/common sense: Fewer women come forward to report problems when they can see that the last situations they knew about weren’t handled well by the overarching authority, the military, and represented just more hell for the women involved.  That seriously needs not to happen.

 

(The Sacramento Bee, following up on my lifetime theme about good journalists pushing the culture forward, recently completed an exhaustive, and interesting, investigation about troops with criminal backgrounds, and what the effect on their subsequent service is.  Unfortunately for our purposes it didn't go far enough, because it didn't highlight or single out crimes against women.  If that were studied, and the results were significant -- that's two "if's," we realize -- those findings could go towards screening those potential recruits out of the military.  In a highly-charged aggressive environment with lots of boredom and little oversight, the last thing someone needs is more sexual predators in the midst, in uniform.)

 

In general, though, the focus shouldn’t just be on “reporting” or “treating” women who have suffered military sexual trauma.  It should be on prevention primarily, with a secondary emphasis on the others – or a sense that together, all three of those cords braid into a very strong rope, the kind that women will need to pull themselves up out of a very bad situation.

 

Women who suffer military sexual trauma are twice betrayed: once by the rapist, once by the system.  It’s time to put an end to that problem.

 

Some recommendations?

Create an atmosphere in which military sexual assault is not tolerated.  Where prosecution is expected and justice is swift.  Take women’s concerns seriously.  Raise the standard of investigation and prosecution to be on a par with the civilian world.  Expect, demand, and reward parity with the civilian police departments (good ones) and criminal justice system on this topic.  No more lost rape kits or botched, semi-competent investigations.  If you don’t know how to do this, go learn from the people who do, in the civilian world.  Call them in to be your speakers at your conferences, not the dipsticks who can simply restate the problem to you and offer nothing more than singing “Kumbaya” together as a solution. If you don't have the experts in-house, and my guess is that you heavily don't, go find them, because they are out there: many are specialists in a parallel situation in the civilian world. 

 

Call in some cutting edge thinkers, who can help you re-evaluate the situation as it already stands, and think some new thoughts on it.  People who have some competence in the civilian world, and are sensitive to the issues and concerns that surround women who have been traumatized by aggressive men in a culture that rewards it, but can’t seem to manage mitigating those qualities when they’re not called for – off the field.  The closest analog is actually pro sports: and both Jeff Benedict and Victoria Vreeland (incidentally, both attorneys) who we wrote about the other day on this, if they’re willing, might have copious insights to provide, based on their work with women who have been traumatized by sexual predators.  (Heck, I even know of one combat veteran and ex-cop, ex-police chief, ex-criminal justice teacher, who's getting his Ph.D. in psychology, and intimately understands PTSD, because he has it from combat. He might be willing to help you think through the problem, and create some solutions: or help train the trainers.  That's Rob Honzell.)

 

Want to know the scope of the problem?  Listen to Paul Reickhoff on it, who is once again pushing for change in a key area of importance to veterans.

 

Want to learn how to screen for potential offenders, or protect and keep women secure from it? Get in touch with Gavin de Becker, author of The Gift of Fear, and Protecting the Gift, and have him talk to you about what better security looks like for people who need the assist (women) in a dangerous environment.  A senior consultant to the Rand Corporation, and an international expert on security and threat assessment, he’s very familiar with concepts like unwanted pursuit, and predicting violent behavior – two topics that ought to be of concern to the military infrastructure on this problem.  Thankfully, he’s also very sensitized to the whole topic of women and assault, which is a rarity. 

 

Want to learn how the law and the medical system can work in conjunction to intervene effectively, and bring hope back to survivors?  Study things like the innovative “Passageways” program, a medical-legal partnership between Harvard Law School’s Legal Services Center and Boston’s equally eminent Brigham & Women’s Hospital that offers domestic violence intervention for women. Sarah Boonin is the person who knows most about this program: her bio is linked here. (The Passageways program even has a cool little book that might be helpful for survivors as they work through some of their issues.)  And spend some time thinking about how to keep women warriors safe in an environment where their sexual safety is a) not a priority, and only poorly understood as a need; and b) where prosecution and treatment of offenses can be poorly handled, botched, or doubly victimizing.  Enlarge your minds, call in the real experts, not the supposed experts, ask the good questions, shake up the paradigm; rethink the problem, and come up with better solutions.

 

As good ol’ Albert Einstein is alleged to have said, in some vague quote I’m botching as I paraphrase, “no real problem can be solved at the same level of thinking that was in place when it was created; you always have to go one level up from it.”

 

That is…if you really want it to be solved.

 

It’s always possible – we like to look at every side of a topic, to better understand the 360 of it – that really nobody wants to solve this problem, or they’d be doing a better job of it.  Is it a way to shuffle women out of the military, which some feel they never should have been a part of in the first place?  Would it take too much wise screening of potentially felonious recruits, to start cutting down on the types of potential predators who are donning uniforms?  Is the longtime military focus on just one aspect of “flipping the switch” – the switch that trains men to be killers, but doesn’t help them re-integrate after combat, and resume their ordinary lives – part of the problem?  Men in combat are a finely-tuned killing machine, with women warriors in their midst – and the whole psychology is attuned to the enemy as the opponent.  Sometimes, women inadvertently become the opponent as well.

 

Seriously – who knows?  Certainly not I.  But one thing I do know for sure: this situation cries out for better handling.  And every week that goes by that it isn’t, women are being assaulted, dying and being killed – at their own hand, and at the hands of others.  And worst of all, by the system’s neglect.

 

It’s great that they’re out there – VA programs like the National Women's Trauma Recovery Program for Women Veterans, which we've blogged about here, and the Women's Mental Health Center for Women Veterans, which we've blogged about here -- programs devoted to helping women heal from military sexual assault.  But those programs are in their infancy, there aren’t enough of them, and the women who suffer these invasive tragedies and horrors by those with whom they serve – have a hellaciously tough time putting their lives back together again.  It’s in their honor that I’m even talking about this, which is a little off the topic of the main theme here on this blog, combat trauma and PTSD.  Really, though, military sexual assault of women warriors is just “another form of combat trauma.”

 

In wartime, “betrayal,” which means to have trust broken by one of the parties, in a horrific way that affects the one who relied upon it, and causes them by implication great harm – is a called “treason” – a crime punishable by death.  That is, when it’s the servicemember betraying the military.  When it’s the military betraying the servicemember?  What do we call that?

 

Let’s hope what we don’t call it is...business as usual.

When the Sexual Predator Wears a Uniform: Athletes, Warriors, Women and MST

Editor's Note: This lengthy passage, excerpted with permission of the author, is linked to the previous blog post, "Unchecked Aggression: Women Servicemembers, Contractors and Military Sexual Trauma," linked here.  Read that first to get a sense of why this passage is being introduced.

 

The author introduces the problem that a few athletes (like a few servicembers) are sexually predatory, in a subculture that rewards aggression.  He writes, in the chapter called "When Women Are the Opponent":

Despite the ever-increasing number of sexual assaults and domestic beatings reported to police annually the mainstream press affords little attention to such crimes.  One exception occurs when a prominent individual, particularly an athlete, an unique blend of role model and celebrity, is linked to such an incident.   The increasing frequency of accusations of abuse against sports figures has stirred unprecedented interest in a pervasive social problem that for decades has stirred little.  Although the widespread mistreatment of women clearly transcends the playing field, the attention and popularity enjoyed by sports figures has brought the sports culture under intense scrutiny by researchers looking for links between competitive team sports and the violence that occurs away from the field.  As a result, a perception is growing that the aggressive nature and competitive atmosphere of male athletics can lead to criminal aggression against women.

 

Although the attitudes associated with male sports can reinforce sexist attitudes towards women, the suggestion that sexism is the dominant influence behind the rash of violence by athletes against women both overstates and oversimplifies the relationship.  Participation in athletics does not cause men to abuse women, but it can help to incite transgression in those athletes who are predisposed to such acts.  And certainly the culture of male athletics (using sexist locker room dialogue; rewarding aggressiveness, legitimizing violence) helps to sustain negative attitudes towards women.

 

….

 

“A stronger link between male athletes [sexual predator  servicemembers] and the criminal abuse of women is the socialization process that takes place away from the playing field…”

 

“Operating under an increased sense of power [armed combat] and the mantle of public trust [patriotism, and the unwillingness to question what goes on when we’re fighting a war], athletes [servicemembers] inclined to sexual and physical violence have ample opportunity to exploit women who often misperceive them as respectable citizens [fellow servicemembers; sometimes their superiors].

 

“Among men who harbor violent tendencies toward women, athletic success may accelerate the exhibition of abusive attitudes, increasing the frequency of violent incidents.  Nonetheless, that is less a function of athletics per se than a reflection of the modern athlete’s [warrior’s] status as an icon of pop culture.”

 

…

 

But an occupation that thrives on a unique capacity for aggression among participants runs the risk of being a home for troubled men who cannot contain their rage against the opposite sex.  Because of the physical nature of athletics [combat]; the aggressive, confrontational, super-macho attitudes surrounding them; and the social approval afforded to celebrity-athletes, the sports industry has in effect embraced those men who demonstrate a disdain for women through repeated acts of criminal violence.”

The author then introduces the example of Cincinnati Bengals and Green Bay Packers cornerback Lewis Billup:

“Although he took advantage of his exceptional access to women, Billup’s desire to control them had little to do with his athleticism.  Rather, a much more complex set of factors was contributing to his routine violence.  “It has to do with power and control and hate…a disdain for women,” said Victoria Vreeland, co-counsel for Victoria Alexander, who sued Billup for rape. 

 

As the former president of King County Rape Relief in Seattle, and an assistant to Washington’s Attorney General in drafting the state’s Victim’s Rights Bill, Vreeland was quite familiar with the mentality of men who acted like Billup. “The person [the victim of abuse] isn’t a person anymore, they’re an object.  To that extent, if you  have some societal sense or your grew up with a lack of power or control, or that you weren’t as good, this offers power and control.  “I wanna be in charge.” 

 

It is similar to children who lack a sense of power.  Their feeling of powerlessness somehow gets twisted around in their minds and so the way to be powerful is to pick on somebody else.  If you grow up with crime and objectification, making people objects, then killing them or harming them doesn’t matter.  They are not human.”

---

Then he discusses Mike Tyson's problems with women in depth, writing:

“Greg Garrison, the special prosecutor who successfully prosecuted Mike Tyson for raping [18 year old Desiree] Washington, concluded that Tyson’s violent tendencies toward women, like those of many other abusive athletes, were exacerbated by his sports career.

 

“Professional athletics has become such a megagod that it is sometimes unresponsive to the morals of a community,” said Garrison.  “Sometimes it just doesn’t matter what a superstar does, it’s OK.”  This is a particularly dangerous scenario when men who are prone to violently abuse women get involved and are thrust into an environment where their contact with women increases.”

---

“Professional sports leagues and individual teams are in a more influential position to discipline and deter players from this type of behavior, yet they often decline to do so.  Off-the-field criminal violence is repeatedly tolerated as long as players perform on the field.  Clearly … countless male athletes live and work in a similar environment without ever engaging in criminal mistreatment of women.  Nonetheless, the fact that predators … are playing professional sports demonstrates the degree of indifference exhibited by owners, managers and coaches.”

 

“As in most case of abuse against women, the majority of women who are assaulted by athletes are their acquaintances.  Those few players who are inclined to violate women enjoy almost  limitless opportunity to meet, and ultimately victimize, women.”

 

“Athletes use their celebrity as their billyclub to gain the superior position [with women],” Garrison said.  “Tyson knows he forced Desiree, but he doesn’t care, because that’s what he does.”

 

“One NFL player who has seen the way Tyson interacts with women supported Garrison’s position.  “You can’t imagine,” said the player, on condition of anonymity.  “I’ve been to social functions with him.  He walks in there and goes, “I’ve got to get some pussy, got to get some pussy.”

 

“Now I’ve been around a lot of people, but nobody comes in there with the proudness that they’re that macho that they can just …  It’s like a drink, an item, there’s no feeling behind it.  It’s just something that he’s got to physically conquer.  He’s a product of his environment.”

 

Tyson developed a proclivity toward the abuse of women at a young age – a habit that mushroomed with his rise as a boxer.  As a child he witnessed numerous incidents of violent abuse inflicted on his mother by boyfriends.  As a young teen, demonstrated a disdain for young girls who repeatedly made fun of his high voice and chubby fame.  After the renowned boxing trainer Cus D’Amato rescued Tyson from a life of violent street crime, handlers honed Tyson’s exceptional strength and fury into a relentless fighting machine.  They used his distrust and anger toward others to motivate him and elicit his aggression in the ring.

 

D’Amato once presented Tyson with a baseball bat, prompting Tyson to ask, “What’s this for?”

 

“For the women,” the trainer explained, “When you’re the champion, you’re going to need something to beat them off you.”  Although tactics such as this were designed to strengthen Tyson’s damaged ego, the message they conveyed bolstered an already dangerous attitude toward women.

 

A champion before his twentieth birthday, Tyson indulged in countless sexual liaisons with women.  Yet, his contempt for them only increased.  He confessed to fellow fighter, Jose Torres.  “You know something, I like to hurt women when I make love.  I like to hear them scream with pain, to see them bleed.  It gives me pleasure.”

 

“Well, did it ever occur to you that men who behave that way probably hate women, that deep down they simply don’t like them?” responded Torres.

 

“You may be right,” said Tyson.  “You’re the first person to tell me that.  You know, you may be [expletive] right.”

 

Bitterly aware that women’s interest in him was based solely on his high profile, Tyson nevertheless used that profile to his advantage in his quest to obtain sexual gratification and domination over women.  Through repeated encounters with multiple women, often prostitutes or so-called groupies, Tyson developed an insatiable appetite for sex. …

 

Garrison saw Tyson’s training as a boxer as a lethal trigger mechanism that unleashed his disdain for women. When his sexual advances met with resistance, Tyson approached the unwilling woman much as he would an opponent in the ring. “The wife of every lawyer says, ‘Don’t get into an argument with them [their husbands], because they do it for a living.  You may be right, but you’ll never win,” Garrison said.

 

“What about a boxer?  Boxers are masters of physical deception; at moving in one direction, but actually moving in another; at feigning left and going right; at appearing to be at a disadvantage when in fact they are poised to strike when somebody sees and is sucked into the apparent deception.  Boxing is lying for a living.  You don’t not be a boxer when you leave the ring.  What I wanted to do was to show the jury that this guy will deceive because he’s good at it.”

More on the Tyson assault and ability to accompolish same:

 

“The cordial small talk he had made at the Expo and in the limousine soon turned to sexually suggestive dialogue.  The abrupt change in Tyson’s manner left Washington totally unprepared for what was to follow.  “Desire struggled real hard with, “How could he be like that? He’s Mike Tyson.  My dad idolizes him,” said Garrison.

 

When Washington showed no interest in his sexual advances and tried to flee, Tyson quickly moved to snatch off her clothes and overpowered her with brute force.  Despite her pleas that he stop, Washington became the object of Tyson’s unchecked sexual desires.  “[Tyson’s training as an athlete] certainly plays a role when you realize that any [professional] athlete is possessed of such incredible physical gifts,” said Garrison.  “Guys that get cut from [pro teams] are physical geniuses by comparison to the man on the street. And the players at the top of their profession?  Could O.J. Simpson kill two people with the same knife?  Of course he could, and neither one ever even know what hit them.  You watched him run.  How many guys did you see tackling air?  Laundry was all over the field.  And these men are as good as him.  He was quick as smoke.  Tyson’s the same way.  He looks like he’s going someplace else and bam!  You’re gone.”

Then the author concludes:

A subtle but important distinction is that athletics did not train Tyson to be a rapist; rather, his athletic training became a dangerous weapon in his misguided conception of what qualified as appropriate treatment of women.

“If I want it, I get it,” is the mentality that they’ve trained him to believe,” said Garrison.  “If I want to knock you out, then you’re going to be knocked out.”  Unfortunately, it’s persuasive in many of the wrong directions.  The reason that Mike Tyson won’t admit rape is not because he didn’t do it or because he didn’t think he did it, but because he didn’t think there was anything wrong with it.”

 

The disparaging attitudes toward women held by Billups and Tyson are consistent with those of the small number of athletes who are repeatedly associated with allegations of rape and battery.  While there is no shortage of men who commit crimes of violence against women, few rapists and batterers combine exceptional physical superiority and with an aura of public trust, as deviant athletes do.  Within the confines of the revenue-producing sports, men who are inclined to abuse women are left to inflict their abuse without punishment or the stigma usually attached to sex crimes and domestic battery.”

-- Excerpted with permission of the author, from Public Heroes, Private Felons: Athletes and crimes against women,” by Jeff Benedict.  Boston: Northeastern University Press (1997).

Unchecked Aggression: Women Servicemembers, Contractors and Military Sexual Trauma

The local news today showed another woman servicemember, 34, dead in Iraq of a non-combat wound.  Just days away from a planned, 18 day leave back to the States, she's no longer going home to see her devastated family - or anyone else, for that matter.  The investigation into her unexpected death is still pending, but really -- how many people die accidentally, or worse, kill themselves just before they're liable to get out of hell?  It's a little...ironic, if not completely counter-intuitive (that's, the complete opposite of what you'd normally think, for the non-academic types out there reading this.) It's also particularly tragic, and all the more so if something like military sexual trauma is involved in her death: it has been in a number of others.

---

While I haven't done a count lately of how many women have been dying non-combat deaths in Iraq or Afghanistan, however high or low the number happens to be, a percentage of those deaths will turn out to be murders that are botched or intentional attempts to cover up sexual assault; and another percentage will turn out to be suicides by women who have been sexually assaulted or raped, whether by peers or superiors.  In the "bubble" of living and working for the military, whether as a servicemember or a contractor - women place themselves in an environment where men are the majority, where calculated, strategic violence is the goal (we call that, "combat"), aggression (directed toward the enemy) is the norm, weapons are ubiquitous, and boredom, opportunity, and mixed feelings about being there in the first place create an explosive brew.  Just like KIA versus WIA statistics, for every woman killed or suicided, many more are injured and sexually exploited.

That's the bad news -- but it has to be balanced against the fact that these crimes, and the predators who commit them, are the minority.  Many women pass through the military without becoming victims of sexual harassment or predation; but for those who do, it's often a life and psyche-destroying event.

---

Paul Reickhoff wrote about military sexual trauma today and women in the military in an excellent post, published on the IAVA Blog, linked here.  According to statistics he cites, "Women make up 20% of all new recruits and more than 11% of the forces deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan."  Then he tellingly adds:

"The rates of assault are shocking.  Almost one-third of women veterans say they were sexually assaulted while in the military. (In the general population, one out of every six American women has been a victim of a sexual assault.)  Already, 15 percent of female Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who have gone to the VA for care have screened positive for Military Sexual Trauma.  But even these troubling figures may not be telling the whole story; experts estimate that half of all sexual assaults go unreported..."

All too true.  We've written about Military Sexual Trauma (MST) before on this blog, several times.  It's a hot topic right now, not the least because there just aren't many answers out there about what to do for women who have been affected by it.  What we do know is that it's a potent terror: women who are victims of MST often develop PTSD, the frequent theme of this blog -- and of those who do, the MST is often considered worse than even their usually concomitant PTSD.  Yikes.  That gives you an idea of how horrific the experience is for these tough, trained, formidable and admirable warrior women.

I can also tell from who's searching this blog for answers, and what they're looking for, that there's not much out there that specifically addresses the needs of women veterans who have been sexually traumatized by other servicemembers.  Fortunately, there are a few programs at the VA that are attempting to address this problem, but sometimes I see them searching here, too, for answers.  The answers that would help put these women's broken lives back together may simply be lacking, at present.

In lieu of "answers," what I'd like to offer here is another way of looking at the same problem.  With the permission of Jeff Benedict, I'd like to quote at length from a chapter in his book, "Public Heroes, Private Felons: Athletes and Crimes Against Women," published in 1997 by Northeastern University Press (Boston, Massachusetts).  Benedict, a longtime journalist, is now an attorney in private practice in Connecticut. The chapter is called "When Women Are the Opponent."  As you read the lengthy excerpt from this chapter, try to absorb the great similarities (not perfect as an analogy, but as close as we're gonna get, for the present) between two arenas in which men are systematically trained and rewarded for aggression. 

As Benedict repeatedly points out, and I will have to add as an obvious caveat too, the majority of men who are involved in either pursuit -- professional sports or the military -- can behave appropriately towards women in their midst.  The problem is not with the majority; it's with the minority, who for one reason or another cannot. 

As you read this passage, I've highlighted what I find the biggest issues to be.  Every time Benedict mentions, "athlete" think "warrior" instead, and see if the analogy doesn't work.  Again, we're not talking about MOST men who are in this situation; we're talking about the minority who are the problem.  But the problems these few create are so horrifically soul-destroying to the women who experience them, whether servicemembers or contractors, that much more needs to be done on the part of those who watch over women in the military, to protect them from predation from the few who seek to harm.  The consequences to the women who are affected's lives and psyches are just too great to ignore or overlook or neglect any further.  It's definitely a case where "prevention" of this type of suffering is far more effective than a nebulous "cure" that seems sadly, at this hour, out of reach.

Editor's Note: Given the length of the excerpt, I'll go ahead and create it as a separate blog post, linked here.