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This story is taken from
<a href="http://www.sacbee.com/content/news/projects/women_at_war/v-print/story//content/news/projects/women_at_war">Women
at war</a> at sacbee.com.<br>
<hr>
<br>
</font><h2><b>Women at war: Sexual combat<br><br>
<br><br>
</b></h2><h4><b>By Pamela Martineau and Steve Wiegand -- Bee Staff
Writers<br>
Published 2:15 am PST Monday, March 7, 2005</i></b></h4><font size=3>Gina
W. went to Iraq, and came back with a different kind of war story. Her
battlefields were in the barracks and the mess hall. The weapons were
innuendoes and threats. And the enemy? Her own boss. <br><br>
"When you go there, you have to be prepared for war," she says.
"And then you have to be worried about being raped by your own
people." <br><br>
The former Army specialist is one of dozens of military women interviewed
by The Bee who say they faced some kind of sexual harassment while in the
combat theater in Afghanistan or Iraq. <br><br>
Though publicity about sexual misconduct in the war zone has focused on
rape, female soldiers said unwelcome advances, demeaning comments - and a
feeling that being alone around male comrades in arms meant being unsafe
- were far greater concerns. <br><br>
"I think every female (soldier in Iraq) has been sexually
harassed," said Sgt. Yolanda Medina of Long Beach, who is doing her
second tour there with the California National Guard's 2668th
Transportation Company. <br><br>
The exact number of U.S. military women who have been assaulted or
harassed is probably somewhere between Medina's "every female"
and the number reported by the Department of Defense. <br><br>
Defense Department numbers show that from August 2002 through October
2004, 118 cases of sexual assault on military personnel were reported in
Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan. But the Miles Foundation, a nonprofit
organization that helps victims of military domestic violence and sexual
assault, reports that it was contacted by 258 military assault victims in
the combat theater during that same time span. That number rose to 307
through mid-February, according to the foundation. <br><br>
A Pentagon official said the military would release more up-to-date
numbers sometime this month. Yet military officials acknowledge their
numbers don't reflect the true situation because many women are reluctant
to report an assault. One study by the Department of Veterans Affairs
found nearly 75 percent of military women who said they had been
assaulted did not tell their commanding officer. <br><br>
No statistics are kept on cases of sexual harassment that fall short of
physical assault, and none reflect what many women interviewed by The Bee
described as a bawdy combat zone environment that made them feel like
second-class soldiers: <br><br>
Playboy magazines on sale at the Post Exchange. Porno films purchased on
the Iraqi black market and pornographic pictures scrawled on the bathroom
walls. Platoon leaders handing out condoms even though sex between
soldiers is illegal. <br><br>
And the reality of mostly young women, vastly outnumbered and surrounded
by mostly young men, far from home in a highly stressful situation.
<br><br>
One of the standing jokes in Iraq, returning female vets said, was that
on the 10-point scale some men use to rate women, female soldiers got two
extra points just for being there. <br><br>
Those bonus points came with bathroom-wall taunts like the one a female
soldier remembered from an Iraq camp latrine: "All you queens will
turn back into frogs once you leave Iraq." <br><br>
The sexually charged atmosphere brought continual come-ons from male
soldiers, leaving women feeling unsafe even inside the military camps.
Virtually every woman interviewed by The Bee said that while she was in
the camps in Iraq or Kuwait, she did not walk alone at night. <br><br>
A common thread in tales female soldiers bring back from Iraq concerns
the disregard for military rules against fraternization among officers,
noncommissioned officers and enlisted personnel. <br><br>
"There were affairs going in all directions, up, down and sideways,
with command staff and lower ranks," said Elizabeth Vasquez, of
Vallejo, who served with a California National Guard unit in Kuwait and
Iraq. "It's almost like the Army helped to push the sexually charged
scene." <br><br>
<br>
</font><h3><b>Complaint does no good</b></h3><font size=3>Gina pushed
back, challenging what seemed to be accepted behavior and filing a
complaint against her tormentor. <br><br>
The result was the end of her four-year Army career and a lingering fear
that her accused would pursue her even in civilian life - a fear so
intense she asked that her real name not be used. <br><br>
One of about 100 women in a 500-member battalion, Gina said she began
receiving unwanted attention from male colleagues almost as soon as the
battalion reached Iraq. <br><br>
"Most of the men who would hit on me were senior enlisted, warrant
officers and officers," she said. "They feel they can do
anything to you and nothing will happen. <br><br>
"They can't go to the bar on weekends to let off steam, so they look
to the female soldiers. (But) I wasn't exactly in the mood to be picked
up. I was in a war zone." <br><br>
That didn't matter much to her sergeant, she said, who unleashed a steady
sex-tinged bombardment. It began with comments about her appearance, then
graduated to questions about which sexual positions she preferred. The
comments grew increasingly lewd. <br><br>
Finally, Gina said, he got physical, grabbing her and trying to kiss her.
<br><br>
Tired of the weeks of harassment, Gina filed her complaint. Another woman
in her unit, who said she also had been harassed, joined her. But other
female targets stayed quiet. <br><br>
"Some people either got scared, or they were worried about their own
careers," Gina said. <br><br>
The complaint was passed from the unit's Equal Employment Opportunity
Office to the battalion commander - who was a friend of the sergeant's.
<br><br>
"He thought it was minor," Gina said of the commander's
reaction. But he did assign an officer from within the battalion to
investigate. <br><br>
The sergeant, meanwhile, threatened to beat up Gina and the other woman
for filing the complaint. He began making crude comments about them to
other soldiers and spreading gossip about how Gina and the other woman
had received "irregular" results from their pre-deployment Pap
smear tests for cervical cancer. <br><br>
If she had threatened the sergeant the way he threatened her, Gina said,
"I would have gone to prison." <br><br>
In the end, no charges were filed. Instead, the sergeant was passed over
for promotion and received a letter of reprimand. <br><br>
When her hitch was up, Gina left the Army in disgust. <br><br>
"Basically, it's fair game on women soldiers, and nothing's going to
happen," she said. <br><br>
"You're a piece of meat." <br><br>
<br>
</font><h3><b>No escape from abusers</b></h3><font size=3>Echoes of
Gina's complaints about a look-the-other-way attitude by military leaders
reverberate through the combat theater. <br><br>
Testifying before a congressional women's caucus last summer, Army Capt.
Jennifer Machmer said she was assaulted by her jeep driver in Kuwait, 17
days before the U.S. invasion of Iraq. <br><br>
After reporting it, she told the panel, she was forced to work in the
same unit as the man and was threatened with fraternization charges. Her
assailant, who never was charged, eventually was promoted. <br><br>
Machmer, a West Point graduate, was forced to accept an early retirement
when she developed post-traumatic stress disorder. <br><br>
"Every time you turn around, you're re-victimized and
re-traumatized," Machmer told the caucus. <br><br>
Even cases that don't involve physical assault send shudders through
female soldiers. <br><br>
In one such instance, the commander of a National Guard military police
company from Contra Costa County, who was stationed outside the infamous
Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, was accused of snapping pictures of three
women in his unit while they showered. <br><br>
Caught with copies of the photos stored in his laptop computer, the
commander was allowed to resign rather than face a court-martial.
<br><br>
Even though no one was assaulted in the shower photo case, word of it
spread through the ranks. For many women, the daily hygiene routine
became a potential combat patrol. <br><br>
"It was really dark around the camp," said Elizabeth Vasquez,
then serving in Kuwait. "We had to go quite a ways for our showers,
and we had to be escorted all the time ... . It was upsetting, because we
were supposed to be a family." <br><br>
Of course not all of the women soldiers involved in sexual activity are
blameless victims. Some pursued the affairs as zealously as the men. For
some, the distraction and intimacy of sex helped them ward off their
fears. <br><br>
"You got to the point where you didn't know whether you were going
to be alive tomorrow," Spc. Alexandra Cerda, 21, said of some female
soldiers' rationale for engaging in sex. <br><br>
A female soldier in Vasquez's unit was known as the "woo hoo
girl," because that's what she would yell after having sex.
<br><br>
"She would have sex in the back of a Humvee, have sex standing
behind the trailers," Vasquez said. "She had the most pleasant
personality, but she loved sex." <br><br>
One female platoon leader said such encounters sometimes interfered with
work. More than once, she said, she had to switch out soldiers who were
due to drive in a convoy together because of a lovers' spat. <br><br>
<br>
</font><h3><b>Grappling with a new reality</b></h3><font size=3>While
consensual sex may have contributed to problems of fraternization, the
problems of assault and harassment are rooted in a military culture still
coming to grips with a two-gender fighting force, a culture that until
recently lacked even uniform definitions for "assault" and
"harassment," and is still struggling to differentiate between
predators and prey. <br><br>
"There were so many men over there and so few women," said
Sandy Moreno, a single mother from Sacramento who served in Iraq as a
psychiatric technician in one of the Army's "stress units,"
established as refuges for troubled soldiers. <br><br>
"A lot of the (harassment complaints) we took with a grain of
salt," she said. "We would ask the women, 'What do you think
happened? How do you think you could have changed things?' "
<br><br>
Moreno said the women's complaints often concerned things like
"slaps on the butt," or unwanted kissing. <br><br>
"I'd say to them, 'Because of the situation we're in, maybe you
shouldn't smile at him, maybe you should just ignore him.' One thing
about the military, when you go to war, you really bond. Sometimes you
make friends with the opposite sex, and sometimes there are
misunderstandings." <br><br>
But Kate Summers, a sexual trauma expert and director of services at the
Miles Foundation - which advocates for women who are sexually assaulted
or harassed in the military - said that a female soldier's uncomfortable
feelings about a male colleague's comments or actions should not be
discounted or chalked up to misunderstandings. <br><br>
"It's not about whether she wore her camouflage shirt one button or
two buttons open too much," Summers said. "What's at issue is
the victim may have been describing a pattern of manipulation that is
going to lead to assault. <br><br>
"My reaction would have been entirely different. I'd say, 'Let's
talk about the other encounters you've had.' " <br><br>
Aside from the questionable efficacy of avoid-eye-contact counseling, the
military is wrestling with trying to weld a zero-tolerance policy about
sexual harassment onto soldiers' traditional code of silence about one
another's behavior - particularly while at war. <br><br>
In a combat zone, said Medina, the National Guard sergeant from Long
Beach, "the rules change within the unit." On her first tour in
Iraq, Medina herself was offered money for sex by another soldier. She
turned him down but never reported it. <br><br>
"If you do something to discredit your company, it's on your
ass," she said. <br><br>
Medina offered another reason women in the war zone were hesitant to file
a harassment complaint against fellow soldiers. <br><br>
"You don't know if that person will save your life out there,"
she said. <br><br>
Fears of coming forward were heightened, other women said, by the
possibility that neither they nor their assailants would be removed from
the unit. <br><br>
Standard military policy has been to give commanders wide discretion in
separating accused and accuser, or deciding whether charges will be
filed, or even investigated. <br><br>
In testimony at a congressional hearing on sexual assault in the
military, Gen. George Casey Jr., the Army's vice chief of staff,
acknowledged that when a female soldier files a complaint against someone
in her unit, it is strictly up to the unit commander to decide if anyone
should be transferred - even if the accused is the alleged victim's
commander. <br><br>
"We don't dictate that," Casey said. "We leave that up to
the commander on the scene to make an evaluation." <br><br>
Critics of the military's attitudes point to problems that range from a
shortage of rape examination and HIV testing kits in the war zone to
encouraging women to use an injectable contraceptive called Depo-Provera
so they won't menstruate during their tour. <br><br>
"One woman rape victim in Afghanistan was given high doses of
antibiotics after a rape and told, 'This will kill anything,' " said
Summers, of the Miles Foundation. "It took her two weeks to get to a
hospital." <br><br>
<br>
</font><h3><b>From study to action</b></h3><font size=3>The U.S.
military's problems with sex certainly didn't start with the war in Iraq.
<br><br>
After the Persian Gulf War, the Army acknowledged that its male personnel
had committed at least 34 sex crimes, many of them rapes of female U.S.
soldiers. <br><br>
Graphic testimony by female Gulf War vets before a congressional
committee prompted one senator to charge that during the brief conflict,
U.S. female troops "were in greater danger of being sexually
assaulted by our own troops than by the enemy." <br><br>
In 1991, Navy and Marine pilots at a convention in Las Vegas molested at
least 26 women. In 1996, it was revealed that dozens of female recruits
had been sexually assaulted while training at the Army Ordnance Center in
Aberdeen, Md. In 2003, an investigation found that 142 female cadets at
the Air Force Academy alleged they had been assaulted during the previous
nine years. <br><br>
In each case, Pentagon officials launched task forces and studies, and
promised reforms. <br><br>
"Over the past 15 years ... we have had 18 major studies on sexual
assault," said an exasperated Rep. John McHugh, D-N.Y., during a
hearing last June on a Pentagon task force report on assault and
harassment problems in the Iraq combat zone. <br><br>
"That's more than one a year. And yet ... to put it kindly, we've
got a long way to go before we have in place the kinds of programs, in
terms of both prosecution and prevention and response, that are
necessary." <br><br>
Stung by such criticism, the Defense Department has announced a series of
initiatives in recent months. <br><br>
In October, Brig. Gen. K.C. McClain, an experienced Air Force command
officer and educator, was appointed to head an eight-person team called
the Joint Task Force for Sexual Assault Prevention and Response.
<br><br>
In January, the task force announced new policies for all military
branches that include more support for victims and more training for
everyone in uniform, along with the Pentagon's first-ever definitions of
sexual assault and harassment. <br><br>
Officials acknowledge that the lack of precise definitions has led to
haphazard investigations and prosecutions. <br><br>
"We're off to a good start," McClain said in announcing the
policies, "but I need to be clear ... this is not a silver bullet.
There is no overnight solution, and to do this right, it is going to take
time." <br><br>
McClain and other Pentagon officials acknowledge that all the policies in
the world won't make much difference if commanders in the field don't
implement them. <br><br>
The sentiment is emphatically emphasized by military women, who say the
level of sexual tension and the number of incidents within a unit depend
on that unit's commander. <br><br>
"It starts with the command," said National Guard Sgt. Sharon
Stallworth. "He sets the tone." <br><br>
Capt. Torrey Hubred commands Stallworth's unit, the Sacramento-based
2668th Transportation Company, which is currently in Iraq. According to
Hubred - and troops serving under him - the unit has been largely free of
sexual harassment problems. <br><br>
Hubred attributes it to the "three golden rules" he lays down.
The first is to treat others the way you would be treated. The second is
to make decisions you wouldn't be ashamed to see in the headlines
tomorrow. <br><br>
"And the third," he said, "is ask, 'Would you do this if
someone you love is watching?'" <br><br>
<hr>
<br>
</font><h4><b>DEFINING THE CRIME</b></h4><font size=3>The first formal
Department of Defense definition of sexual assault, announced Jan. 4:
<br><br>
* Sexual assault is a crime. It is defined as intentional sexual contact,
characterized by use of force, physical threat or abuse of authority or
when the victim does not or cannot consent. <br><br>
* Sexual assault includes rape, nonconsensual sodomy (oral or anal sex),
indecent assault (unwanted, inappropriate sexual contact or fondling), or
attempts to commit these acts. <br><br>
* Sexual assault can occur without regard to gender or spousal
relationship or age of victim. <br><br>
* "Consent" shall not be deemed or construed to mean the
failure by the victim to offer physical resistance. Consent is not given
when a person uses force, threat of force, coercion or when the victim is
asleep, incapacitated, or unconscious. <br><br>
<br>
</font><h4><b>TWO VIEWS</b></h4><font size=3>"What does it say about
us as a people, as a nation, as the foremost military in the world, when
our women soldiers sometimes have more to fear at the hands of their own
fellow servicemen than from the enemy?" <br><br>
<div align="right"><b>- Sen. Susan Collins, D-Maine, Feb. 25, 2004,
during a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on
Personnel.</b> <br><br>
"The contemporary culture is more promiscuous in recent years ...
and people who come to the academy reflect the contemporary culture ...
so it's not a climate at the Air Force Academy or a climate in the Air
Force, there's a climate in the nation. You watch halftime shows at the
Super Bowl or 'Girls Gone Wild' or whatever the heck is on MTV, you can
see what today's youth brings to whatever they do." <br><br>
<b>- Gen. John Jumper, Air Force chief of staff, talking to reporters on
Dec. 15 about the 142 reported sexual assaults at the Air Force Academy
between 1993 and 2002. <br><br>
<br>
</font>
<dl>
<dd><h4><b>About the writer:</b></h4></div>
<dd><font size=3>The Bee's Pamela Martineau can be reached at (530)
757-7119 or
<a href="mailto:pmartineau@sacbee.com">pmartineau@sacbee.com</a>. The
Bee's Steve Wiegand can be reached at (916) 321-1076 or
<a href="mailto:swiegand@sacbee.com">swiegand@sacbee.com</a>. <br>
</dl><hr>
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