All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton, and our next guest is Antoinette Bonsenior.
She is a Seattle-based workers' rights advocate most recently focused on worker compensation issues.
She's a blogger for NARAL, N-A-R-A-L, Pro-Choice Washington, and RH Reality Check.
Her work has been syndicated in truthout.org, among others.
And that's an article I'm looking at right now at truthout.org, with or without the dash.
It'll work for you.
And it's called The Military's Rape and Sexual Assault Epidemic.
Welcome to the show, Antoinette.
How are you?
Well, thank you, Scott.
Thank you for having me.
And did I say your last name OK?
Yes, you did.
Thank you.
OK, good deal.
All right, well, so this is a very disturbing article.
We got 20 minutes here.
And I was thinking, more or less, we could try to split the interview up with the first half maybe really kind of going through and exploring the nature of the problem.
And then the second part, the legalities and the class action suit you refer to here and, you know, what do they call that?
Accountability.
They used to have that word, accountability.
Yes, they used to.
I don't know if people still say that anymore.
But maybe we can get to that in the second half a little bit.
OK, sounds good.
So first of all, this is a really disturbing article.
Many of these cases, which seem like they would generate blaring headlines, I had not ever heard of before at all.
I was wondering if you could just sort of illustrate a little bit about what we're talking about, particularly women, it seems, but maybe not sexual abuse in the US military.
Yes, well, I think that's an important point, that most people don't realize that the problem is this pervasive and this frightening.
A number of people who read the article, friends of mine, were quite frankly shocked to see that this is going on in the military, and the media is pretty much ignoring this problem.
And more importantly, ignoring the fact that the Department of Defense and the White House have really not spoken out about this issue at all.
And I encourage everyone to go over to the Service Women's Action Network website, where you can read a copy of the class action lawsuit, which really details the horrifying, and I truly mean horrifying, nature of the many instances of horrible, horrible rapes and sexual assaults that are happening in our US military against women and men.
I'd like to emphasize that as well, that there are men who have joined in this class action lawsuit.
And to really take a look at what is happening, and the fact that there really is no system set up that provides for transparency and accountability in the Department of Defense to deal with the complaints, primarily because the military is self-policing itself.
And any time you have a bureaucracy that self-polices itself, there is an inevitable tendency for crimes of this nature to be ignored and to be swept under the rug.
All right, well, I want to mention here that at truthout.org's version of the article, at least, I'm pretty sure at our age reality check as well, there's a hot link right here in the very first sentence to that class action lawsuit.
And now, so I guess, can you go through some of these?
I think maybe some of them will ring a bell, as maybe some people have heard of a couple of these.
But to illustrate just what kind of situation you're talking about people are dealing with, the victims are dealing with in the military, seems like a few examples might help people get their head around what we're talking about.
Right, well, if you go through the lawsuit, there are numerous examples that are listed.
Some of them are, the general pattern is women and men are sexually assaulted, sometimes by fellow soldiers, sometimes by superiors.
And when they try to report the crimes, they are convinced or threatened that reporting the crime, it would not be in their best interest.
And when they actually try to report the crime, they are subjected to harassment and intimidation, demotion.
And what adds to the problem is that a lot of times, the people who are the perpetrators of these crimes are not punished.
They're barely even reprimanded within the military code of justice.
And a lot of these women and men are forced to work alongside either a fellow soldier who's committed the rape, or they have to report back to a superior officer who's also committed a crime.
So there's one particular instance where a woman was raped by two fellow soldiers.
And they actually videotaped the crime and then distributed that videotape among other fellow soldiers.
And when this woman then had the courage to report what had happened to her, she was told by a superior officer that after he viewed the videotape, he didn't think that she had fought back enough.
So in his mind, she hadn't really been raped.
Well, and you have one in here about a victim who reported her rape to the military chaplain, who told her, well, it must have been God's will then.
Yeah, I mean, it's just shocking that people who are there to counsel soldiers who are victims in this kind of situation would have the audacity to say something like that.
And the problem is that I can almost guarantee you that that chaplain is still working in the military and still counseling people.
And that's part of the problem.
Nobody is punished.
People are not removed from their posts.
And people are not prosecuted.
Well, and that means that the enlisted know that good and well, too.
So as you say in here, it's really a small proportion.
When they do the surveys, it's actually a very small proportion of rape victims in the military actually reported at all.
Because they know that all it's going to do is make all the rest of their peers, get them in trouble with all the rest of their peers and with their superior officers, rather than lead to any accountability for the perpetrators.
Exactly.
And oftentimes, if they do report it, things get even worse for them.
And it becomes even more dangerous.
There's one horrifying account in the article that you can read about in the class action suit where a woman was actually murdered after she reported the crime.
And a lot of people have commented on various posts on the article.
And I read one comment from a woman who said that her sister had been in the military.
And she had been raped.
And she actually wrote on the comment, thank God she never reported it.
Well, you say in the article, too, that men actually get raped more than women.
After all, there are a lot more men in the military than women.
Exactly.
And actually, there's a very good article at the Christian Science Monitor that talks about there was a recent Air Force study and talks about the prevalence of men who are being assaulted in the military.
And I think probably the stigma and the shame that's associated with men being sexually assaulted and raped in the military is probably even more of a problem in terms of underreporting.
Well, and I guess more and more people, when they're facing a criminal trial or facing a sentencing after conviction, are given a choice by the judges whether they want to maybe join the Army instead of going to prison.
So I guess we can just make the Army more and more like the prison system and maybe just combine those two into one.
Well, it's just really frightening that the military code of justice just is not holding people accountable for this type of criminality.
I don't understand.
Well, and it's just like the prisons, right, where the whole society knows that rape is part of your prison sentence if you get sentenced to prison.
But it's just only there to be the butt of our jokes.
Nobody even cares.
Nobody cares.
I mean, and exactly.
It's just a joke.
It's just a constant joke.
And people think it's funny, and it shouldn't be funny, because rape should not be the price you pay for going to jail.
All right.
Now, hold it right there.
Antoinette Bonsenior.
We'll be right back, y'all.
All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's Antiwar Radio.
Talking with Antoinette Bonsenior from RH Reality Check and from truthout.org.
The new piece at truthout.org is called The Military's Rape and Sexual Assault Epidemic.
And now somebody, I guess, hired a lawyer to do something about this, since the prosecutors inside the military and inside the Department of Justice can't seem to make their chops by prosecuting these cases.
Somebody's going to do something about it.
Is that right?
Well, fortunately, the Service Women's Action Network, along with a number of other advocacy organizations, joined together in this class action lawsuit to really put the Department of Defense and the Pentagon's feet to the fire on this.
They've been systematically ignored for years.
The two defendants in the suit are a former Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, and the current Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates.
And they're going to have to be held accountable for their continued refusal to not only respond to the situation, but to respond to Congress's many requests for reform measures.
And they've not only ignored their own service members, but they've ignored Congress over the years.
And hopefully, this class action lawsuit will finally bring the attention to this that this deserves.
Well, you know, when the Washington Post did their expose on Walter Reed and all the rats and the cockroaches and all that, Robert Gates fired the general in charge of all that, who was, I think, a two- or three-star general, which that's pretty unprecedented for a general to get fired for actually doing something wrong, something like that, you know?
Stepping on the wrong toes, maybe.
But in this case, it seems like you say that in the article that Robert Gates apparently deliberately hired an inexperienced contractor to implement this new congressionally mandated prevention system.
Can you tell us a little bit about what that prevention system was supposed to be and about that part of this scandal?
Right.
Well, there was a contractor that was hired out of Alaska, actually, that was supposed to implement part of the reporting system that was mandated by Congress.
And unfortunately, and the Washington Post reported on this last November, the contractor that was hired, apparently their past experience was in janitorial work.
They had absolutely no experience dealing with implementing a congressional mandate for the sexual assault and harassment prevention system that had been mandated by Congress.
And I guess this is sort of a rhetorical question, but how does that kind of thing happen?
And no one is asked to resign.
There is no outrage.
There's no media outrage.
There's no outrage from the White House.
And it's just astounding to me how that happens, and no one has been asked to resign.
You also detail in here about the training and the people who are in charge of investigating these things, how their mandate is to just look at what a fine young man the accused is, basically, as their method of investigation.
Exactly.
The policy director for the Service Women's Action Network, who is a former Marine, his name is Greg Jacob, I spoke with him for the article that I wrote for RH Reality Check.
And he was part of this investigatory system.
And he admits that he had absolutely no investigatory training to deal with this kind of situation.
And he admits he really just had no idea what to do.
And the fact that not only are they self-policing themselves, but they are installing people to deal with these crimes who don't have the experience or the training to handle this kind of investigatory work is, again, shocking to the conscience.
And, you know, I guess I just don't understand how Secretary Gates has not been held accountable for this.
Well, you know, you look at, at least over the years, they say it's getting a bit better now.
Aaron Glantz says it's a bit better now.
And I'll definitely take his word for it on that one.
But, you know, for so many years, at least, and I don't think this is really over yet, the government would hide behind any excuse to deny medical treatment, to people with severe brain injuries, concussions, and, you know, brain traumas and things, and say, oh, well, you know, you have a personality disorder or something, which means that you're kicked out of the Army and you're not qualified for any medical care, this and that.
A lot of PTSD people have shot themselves in the face rather than sit around continuing to wait for VA care.
And then you think about, here's some American soldier rape victims who got raped not by the terrible Taliban enemy or something, but by their fellow soldiers.
They don't get any health care for, you know, over that at all, you know, physical or mental, huh?
Exactly.
I mean, that's part of that, when every rape case in the military is an automatic cover-up, what happens to the victim after that?
You know, even when they come home, as you say.
Exactly.
The Veterans Administration has been doing a rather poor job with dealing with military sexual trauma cases, which is just sort of a companion sort of claim to PTSD.
And a lot of these claims are not being compensated under the VA system, primarily because the evidentiary burden that's placed on veterans is so high that they can't meet the standard.
And part of the reason why they can't meet the standard is because the rape complaint or the rape case was never properly prosecuted in the first place.
So there's no evidence to support their claim that they have this form of PTSD, and therefore they can't get disability compensation under the VA system.
Wow.
And then you're also saying here that the Air Force released a study last week finding that one in five women and one in 20 men have been sexually assaulted while serving in the Air Force.
Yes, and you can read more about that.
There's an article in the Christian Science Monitor about that, and there's also more information at SWAM's website on that.
Do you know, is it mostly comparable numbers for the other services?
Yes, well, part of the problem with a lot of these surveys is that a lot of the people who have been assaulted never report the crime.
And this is, unfortunately, the problem you have with rape statistics in general, the under-reporting of the crime, so you can't really get to how really prevalent and problematic the situation is.
And when you have a system set up in the military that discourages people from even reporting in the first place, oftentimes when people do report, they're forced to recant.
You can't get accurate statistical data to represent really what the problem is.
All right, now, Antoinette, tell people some maybe web addresses, about some groups where they can help with this.
I mean, after all, there is a class action suit going on here, something actually, you know, in motion, not just articles being written.
How might they take part in helping out?
Yes, you can go to the Service Women's Action Network, which is servicewomen.org.
They have a really great website set up where you can sign on to a petition to Congress to help facilitate congressional reform measures.
There are a couple of pieces of legislation that have been introduced in Congress to deal with the VA compensation system to help some of these victims get properly compensated.
So I encourage everyone to go to servicewomen.org and sign on to their petition.
That would be a really great thing that your listeners can do.
All right, everybody, that's Antoinette Von Senior.
She's a blogger for Now or All, Pro-Choice Washington, and RH Reality Check.
And her new piece at truthout.org is called The Military's Rape and Sexual Assault Epidemic.
And it's full of hyperlinks to source material, firsthand material, the other activist groups, and everything else.
So just go to truthout.org and look for that.
Thanks very much for your time on the show today.
Thank you for having me, Scott.
