but i've never seen trauma like i've seen from women who are veterans who have suffered military sexual trauma. i cannot remember how many times a young female marine that had been raped or sexually assaulted told me that she looked at these guys as your brother or the suspect as your brother it's a kin to what happens in a family with incest because you know in the military when we're functioning at our best cohesive unit with brothers and sisters one of the band of brothers and sisters i mean we are family when that bomb of trust is violated. i. the wound penetrates to the very most inner part of one's soul one psyche. i have this folder that i keep i have all my boot camp letters sent from my mom and

my sister and. people and. i was just going through some of this stuff and i'm like what's this you know i open it up i'm like oh my god. my suicide letter. bomb i'm sorry for the grief that you must feel. just because i'm gone physically doesn't mean i will be there spiritually i truly feel that god will take me without question even though i took my own life. i've had the most broken thoughts of dreams and physical pain to remind me of the her if it acts upon me that happened while a duty a mother brother sister and husband should never live with knowing the horrible acts upon me find peace in knowing that my that the body left behind doesn't consume my soul i am free now and i'm not afraid ready to soar corded and you know . i took

a whole bottle of pills and woke up strangely enough i'm not sure why. i at that point in my life i just wanted to be over. and think i was 2021 and then. within the next year i tried again i went out into the garage which separate from the house when i turned the car. to go so the car in the fixie it was so it was all pulled blondie went out a little w. door and she scratching and helling at the dust shot up to me going to wake my wife up so i got to shut the car off for a minute i'll just take her in the garage and then my sis what would. to kill a dog that's stupid and then the dawn on me would you kill yourself i thought of it so many times and so many ways i thought about. at one point in time hanging myself from the flagpole was

a song on me. saying exactly what happened to make him feel bad. i was going to. overdose on pain medication and sleeping medication. and just hope that i'd fall asleep in my body would just shut down or something. when i went to the doctor i had been feeling sick and dizzy and nozick nazia ate it and. they took my urine and they told me that i was pregnant. you know there's a wife and they're you know maybe very wife will be better than mine and i got to make sure that so. she was very special. sometimes it takes a different kind of action to cause change to calm. and sometimes. a lot. i grew up on military bases my dad was career army when i was

a child when we answer the phone we just have to say colonel burks quarters and because of that i have as i have an understanding of the level of control that the military exercises that perhaps most in civilian life don't have. the fairest structure and it is a judicial doctrine that was developed by the supreme court that says if you're in the military you cannot sue for something that happens to you that's incidental your military service if you military doctors amputate the wrong limb you are out of luck you cannot sue for that for that harm that's been done to you so we've filed a lawsuit in federal court on behalf of. 16 men and women seeking to bring former secretary rumsfeld and secretary gates to justice. i heard about the lawsuit and decided to become a part of it. because i never wanted another woman to go through what i would.

be a lawsuit alleges that they have overseen a system that has deprived the rape survivors of their constitutional rights specifically we allege that they deprived them of their substantive due process procedural due process equal protection and 1st amendment rights with. me sick to see everybody stories how they kind of closely tied together everybody story somehow has a it's consistent that the military does to people like us all the things that they

put in place are all pretty much intended to oh women deal with being raped better that's what they're about. and join the military have raised from a sphere of high school awning to serve my country and do new things and challenge myself in a different way. i was in the army about 7 or 8 years before anything ever happened to me. by another cia agent who was senior to me. i was contacted by an agent with 4 riley cod who said they were investigating. the suspect is a serial rapist who had rapes several military law enforcement women and i thought there was no way that you know he wouldn't be convicted and i have a difficult time with anything as well the fact that i had an almost 20 year career which i was very invested in and i gave that up to report

a sex offender who was not even put to justice or put on the registry and he's probably doing the same thing right now and one female attendant pulled me aside and tell me that you know she had heard about my case and she thought she could talk to me is one female marine to another and she told me what he did was capitalize on an opportunity that you presented to him that's not the same thing as rape and you need to know. him after it happened they mean you know and i think with him and i tried having everybody advocate for me to not make me go so i was can deal with seeing him so their solution to that was just to put him right in front of me so i could see him the whole time so that i could know where he was and know that he wasn't able to do anything to sit right in front of me and they were thinking the entire time we were up on the hills and camp. there's no way out of it i mean if you think about it the only way out of it is like a suicide or a wall so that's those are your only 2 options suicide it all or deal with it right

now i'm just barely appreciating. learning how to appreciate being a woman again that's 11 years and. i had to have fun with it not forcing myself to have fun my. i'm trying really hard not to cry but it just. you know and watching you girls having to. go through what i did it makes me want to explode being here and like knowing that me wanting to commit suicide i'm not alone me being hit and raped and not all everything the way that they treated me the way that they made me feel i'm not alone and we have all you guys with all your knowledge and everything you guys are going to stand right up you know it's awesome business in this state. i think the woman who are coming forward in

this lawsuit are very courageous they because they're putting their names out there for criticism. they're putting their names out there to go down and his truth is they were the ones who got raped and there's one thing you want to go through life with. today i stand in solidarity with the courageous women and men who serve in our nation's armed forces the inspirational plaintiffs you see before you are a small handful of the 10s of thousands of troops and veterans who've been sexually brutalized by their fellow service members while defending our nation it is time to finally acknowledge that the military judicial system is broken when it comes to these cases my name is and in my case my command was unwilling to help me i went for help several times with other petty officers and i i was denied help even with

other men saying please get her away from him and it was it was still allowed many . people recently me don't go to the public don't let this get out because it'll make the military look bad i really feel like my social responsibility to speak out about this issue especially considering my investigative experience and the fact that the military justice system allows so many offenders to escape justice. thanks for being willing to fill me in a little bit on some of the experiences i name is reaching and i served honorably in united states marine corps for 4 years planning this clearly chokin i served in the united states coast guard i was harassed and sexually assaulted i was administrative leave discharges no benefit for 9 and a half years of service women should not bear their burden that is not part of what

we should have been doing to do our jobs for time a criminal activity we're talking about a vicious. attack the discriminant it is an assault. almost none of the. and all of the ones that do almost none of their resulting convictions seems to me in all the time times that these things command is the one who has so much to. advocate should actually be civilians once they were in the military i think we should have actual units civilian units absolutely tears in my. to think that this is. and never. all people in the military must know if you are a perpetrator of sexual assault. this

idea why as you point out the anecdotally cheney fired all the cia agents in the field because they were too sympathetic to the locals and he felt that was a liability in the major media speirs of washington d.c. they don't want those reporters those stars to rub elbows in the great unwashed of the flyover states because they may become sympathetic to the working class they may become sympathetic to the disenfranchised. but if she warned you do. you see me.

a lot of. these. days. and. i found it tremendously frustrating when i would demonstrate that an offender commit an offense and taking it to a commander and having a commander be the deciding authority you know i don't think commanders are capable of making. an objective decision i don't i do not think it should be in their hands

so he was just seeking to do discretion away from yes absolutely davis and i are both on the armed services committee there are a number of issues that you've raised that makes me want to go back and particularly take another look an emotional one individual basis what happens after a crime like that has been committed it's a very difficult thing to go through and don't think i don't know i know. the fact that you're willing to tell me your story. makes it much easier for us to go back and just say you know these are policies that we have to change it's a big it's a big big deal but you do it really find people like you who stand up for us thank you so much for everything they do. thank you again for your service thanks for your time mr speaker last year the military received over 3000 reports of sexual assault involving other members into service this week 17 veterans are saying that

the military in order cases of sexual assault while they were on active duty today i'm going to talk about the men corey. dzhokhar who served in the coast guard from august 2005 to june 2007 she now suffers from p.t.s.d. and abnormal e.g. did nerve damage in her fate. joker later told the press it's like they didn't care it wasn't important i wasn't important. going to get the mail. here's cross. here's my way.

this is. effective october 20th 2009 my overall combined rating is 70 percent. service connection for anxiety is denied service connection for displacement and bilateral bilateral does displacement is deny. i'll be right there. my face doesn't have any. that's what. that's what dr kopans letters show you deny medical or the winners are experts.

nice to see you again and thank you for coming. i'm going to play a short public service announcement and then we can entertain questions i think the prevention aspect of sexual assault goes back in some ways to risk reduction where what is risk reduction risk reduction are ideas like telling women to if they're going to go somewhere together always have a buddy with them are there other examples of risk. i didn't i'm not familiar with that's out of my area of expertise. well i want to continue where dr whitley left off you know looking at what our focus is and that's on prevention as well as as response we've really done a very good job there and the credit goes to dr whitley and her staff that has been working this for the last 5 to 6 years i don't think the department of defense has

has really yet embraced that they have a sexual assault problem that it's not just an issue of the culture environment so that the people are at risk for sexual assault that their system itself though just does not value the rights of victims and doesn't provide the medical protection and i have heard the accusations as well that you know commanders are sweeping this under the carpet now what i would say to the people that have come forward to you is if you feel your commander is ignoring what you have have asked them to do if they're not taking care of you within that chain of command you need to go to the d.o.d. that are part of the fence inspector general g.a.o. general accounting office just did a study a report and guess what not one. one case of more than 2500 has been reviewed and investigated by the inspector general and when asked about that the inspector general said we have other higher priorities what what you really want is you want there to be a system akin to

a civilian system where you go to the police and you're in the crime is prosecuted by an impartial judicial system as a commander you have no favorites you are equally to take care of every single person in your organization that's what commanders are all about these are human beings just like everybody else you cannot be impartial when you are already involved with people in other settings i would take exception with your characterization that the disposition of the case is based on the relationship between the commander. and he alleged perpetrator. i'm going to speak to you with my former commanders had on there is absolutely no conflict of interest you do what the right thing is to do. 'd you have other avenues and those if you feel like you have not been taken care

of adequately by your commander go up through your congressman or congresswoman and file a complaint that way you cannot you can't go to a congressman to be to obtain justice for being raped i mean imagine ringback how silly that is imagine if you told civilians that oh geez sorry you were raped go talk to your congressman. you could say something that's going to honestly. i don't think it's affected his life it on. and people in my old squadron i've talked to. they say they don't see any effect that it's had on him and that hurts. because it's a struggle every day it's completely changed to i. am

really hoping that he falls off the coast guard but they never find him i'm really hoping for that like they fight for so poor mishap got chopped up by the proper. big that would be great there'd be an exciting but i price over and. i hope this reaches them too you know i hope that someone or someone sees my face you know wherever it is and goes. i know them and they're talking about me. because they know what they did you know and then although half the mater is some friend there goes a station with her you know and then they can't be a secret anymore. they have to deal with a to you know some way shape or. most rapists.

repetitive criminals that it's a kind of crime that's and has an obsessive quantities to people do it again and again so the tragedy of that is that every one of these guys who gets off free will be doing it to other women again and again often for years. the average sex offender in their lifetime has about 300 victims and the vast majority of sex offenders will never be caught a lot of civilians see it as being a military problem but it really isn't because 5 percent or a louse of reported offenders are convicted. so almost none of them wind up on the sex offender industry there is no military sex offender list that i'm aware of but if you're convicted in court felony conviction of sex offense of a sex offense you're going to go on the national list for any sex a very correct that is not the case it depends on what level conviction they got if they received over a year then that's considered a felony but

a lot of these cases are pled down so that they're not felonies the military doesn't like to prosecute people and keep. as felony convictions i often ask myself the question why wouldn't why would they stop and if there's nothing to stop them like incarceration or some other light major life change they're going to continue. if you run the sexual predator through the judicial system and then you get a slap on the hand all you've done is you've done the equivalent of the kitchen release program you've caught to educate and now you release them back in the home town america. knows a lot more about the law enforcement judicial system than he did when he 1st started which makes him a much more capable criminal a much more dangerous criminal they go on to a letter. they prey on women and men in our neighborhoods across the united states i mean if we don't care about women or men in the military then we hopefully should

care about women and men in our girls and boys in our neighborhoods back home. were. the thing that broke my heart more than anything about this story was the young women who went in with such ideas and i want to serve my country i want to give back to see a young person's hope and i do this and crushed in that brutal way i think we owe our young people love and that. increasingly women are becoming some of the best

trained professionals that we have in the military these are great soldiers and we can't afford to lose them. can happen after. people deeply believe in their hearts to serve their country they should be given that chance with respect. you know it's part of really harm american way do you think that we just are purple hearts because we were wounded in time or you know you're going to give us one you know very just saying maybe there should be written for women you. are served and she who have survived it is or did. we have a good army a good military but not a great one and this is the kind of issue that they keeps our military from being great. we can. view this as a shared challenges not just one issue it's not just something that the military has

to deal with but as a society we're all in this together. it's our national duty.

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