tv Documentary RT May 10, 2020 11:30am-12:01pm EDT
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i think the minute we attract to the military you know we've got to the army of one you know be all you can be all those themes that we've had throughout the years very very heavily masculine masculinity cannot be victimized because if you're a leader if you're a masculine person and you're victimized then you're weak the problem is that anybody can be a victim of sexual assault. i join the service in 1972. the military is a great way to life. i got to see the world. i got educated i love the military. was 19 and i want to challenge a loan and the next thing i met all was laying on the ground i was struck from behind. and you guys will hold me down and one day i was pulling my pants down.
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and. you know. i was taking care of his business and you know struggled and i was being struck and hit and told you know told to shut up or they'd kill me. and i see how it destroyed my life. i mean i've been married 3 times this luckily i have a wife right now who i've been married to for 25 years. you start wondering you start sort of you know you're coming up with reasons why things are the way they are and for a long time i kept thinking i don't know this something something else. i had never told anybody over 30 years i decided to tell my wife. it was the scariest moment in my life i was going tell my wife she was going to leave me and i would be lost without her i mean honest to god i couldn't i couldn't get up every morning
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without my wife. you know. and i told i felt horrified and i felt sad and i felt angry and you know all along the course of the evening you know feelings just started to surface that were probably just simmering for a very very long time and she put her arms around me and we're both sat there and saw it was like. this great weight had been lifted off for me. i think it's important to recognize that military sexual trauma is not limited to women and in fact when it comes to the absolute numbers because of the proportion of men in much larger numbers than women actually the numbers are even greater. i think one of the last bits of research showed that about one percent of males had been. it seems a sexual assault within the past year in the military that equals to about
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$20000.00 you'll get labeled as a body and that's the lowest term to be related to so it's one of the things that you just don't you don't talk about it or you don't bring in what is your sense you just kind of keep yourself it's really really hard to forget. you know. they live in my head i can hear them. i can see their faces i can see what they're doing to me. so i felt scared. and i was scared to tell my friends the people that really knew me the truth about what happened the shame as bad as it is for women is even worse for men because it's all tied in with him a phobia the people who are doing the raping are not gay that's not the problem they're worried about gays in the military the gays are not the rapists they're
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heterosexual man for the most part this is not an issue of sexual orientation this is simply power and violence male sexual predators for the large part of target whoever is there to prey upon whether that's men or women whenever. there is. evidence of another when one has been sexually assaulted the question. is when does this ever. breaking news at this hour but maybe appears to be facing a huge sex scandal details are still covering yeah. this news girl news tonight with peter jennings to t.v. we're going to begin tonight by putting the human face on the worst case of sexual harassment of the navy's history at an annual naval aviators convention called the tailhook convention so your officers have known since 1900 binge included the so-called stand up or the specific purpose of targeting and sexually molesting
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women. i got off the elevator on the 3rd floor you can see it in b. 200 men. it was just a few steps into the hallway before. they closed ranks around me and then it happened very quickly that from both sides and from behind men came in and started reaching in my shirt i was getting pushed down to the floor and some was reaching under my skirt point my underwear off and it was about maybe 30 or 40 feet of 200 guys trying to pull my clothes off like i was a high value target and investigation was finally begun. but 1500 interviews later the navy's inspector general reported that his investigators were being stonewalled a great wall of silence had gone up to protect the guilty. the us army today is trying to establish the extent of a new and growing rape and sexual harassment scandal at all took place at the army
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base at aberdeen proving ground where 30 women have filed complaints of sexual advances that range from unwanted touching to rape and forcible sodomy acceptable conduct for shoulders to bow to the army and we have 0 tolerance. 12 years ago that still looks sex scandal shook the u.s. navy and the air force faces what may be an even bigger problem and other sexual abuse at the air force academy in colorado springs 100 out of 42 allegations of assault against women have been made in the last decade highest ranking air force generals knew about serious problems of sexual assault at the academy yet failed to take action we don't intend to sweep this under the rug we take it very seriously we're going to address it publicly in congress outraged senators accused the air
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force brass of ignoring assaults on women we have a clear pattern. of reports of sexual assault where the reaction of the air force academy seems to be to blame the victim we are in the process of is to those changes now the process reinstituting those changes now obviously you and i and secretary of fundamental disagreement here. in a small post in washington d.c. private history and tradition living. room barracks in washington d.c. is the most prestigious unit there is in the marine corps this is the unit where the best of the best go it is the marine corps showcase ceremonial unit it handles presidents and dignitaries security
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at the white house the silent drill team. after my deployment to operation iraqi freedom in 2009 my command officer recommended me for the marine barracks washington i was excited it was the tip of the spear as far as the marine corps is concerned. he would stay work late and then she would drive home and she'd call me and she'd be on some kind a little and she talked about how she loved her job she was. sweet person who was trying really hard. and succeeding. one of the 1st things i was told my entire dinner was. don't worry because the marines will think that you want to sleep with them and i thought that's just ridiculous the atmosphere off the bat at marine barracks washington was was horrible people asked me what sexual favors had
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i performed to get my orders there. there is a senior officer in my command who the 1st time he spoke to me he said marines here are nothing but objects for the marines to. shows up at my work. of the new females get talked about how. they're having facts so i stopped all that. i mean i did it got progressively worse and worse they determined that i welcome the sexual harassment by wearing my regulation length uniform skirt and running and running shorts. there were several junior female marines that came up to me crying while i was there saying that they felt humiliated to come to work . the.
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one of the duties that marine barracks washington was a ceremonial drill. evening parades are what you would see on the news the. president everybody goes to those type of things. after the parades. all the officers are required to stay told. during consider house washington so we're talking about ones the happy hours that started 3 and. it was partying and drinking culture. and going out and party. i was ordered to drink i was ordered to attend the drinking and my boss even said. they were mandatory to me she's like we do our best work at these events we went to various pubs and bars and the goal was to do a shot at each one paid for by the marine corps you're talking about you're going to bounce for other senior officers that are drinking to the point of hands you
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know passing out on mont lawns this is the norm at one bar i had water and i was ordered to shot anyways and told i needed to take 2 shots to make up for that. i left the bar to get a cab my company commander followed me and said i need to talk to you about some things so we walked up the stairs into his office there was a little bit of a struggle he tried to kind of make an advance and try to kiss me i tried to leave any slammed the door on my arm. i fell on the ground and hit my face on his desk and the next thing i realized was i had woken up wearing his shorts with all of my clothes off and tremendous pain and i knew enough about me that something wasn't right and i had felt entirely violated.
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the kernel of one point said you know who's had a home or boys girls now call just don't mix well never really know what happened inside that office only when the major knowing he's not talking so at this point the investigation is closed for lack of evidence and we have reopened a new investigation against you for conduct unbecoming an officer and public intoxication. lead.
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i remember going to the bar. was an officer that said about shots for us after i'd had a couple drinks. that's all i remember. this i was certain were you know his fellow officers i was that he had. got called up to a major's office and he charged me with freshman station adultery he was married i wasn't and i was tried but i don't think. i told. about the comments and he said. you know you should do what a marine officer should do and that's to ignore it and move on. i used to lie awake compared to you know wondering. what i could do to help her get out.
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he's a good well told me. that he was going to have his friend marvin from indiana kill me and throw me in a ditch because that's how they take care of things in india and. she went to war and 9 years for a life. for them to take it. and come back and say boy yes they called you a yes they called you a yes they called you a walking mattress it's documented over and over and over again and you deserved it and you won and when you complained about it you were welcoming it. the actions of my seniors both in the assault and in the ensuing arrest a geisha ins have really destroyed me. when she when your wife doesn't come home to. remember
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from it's through that house searching for the suicide note be to call the police one hand. put your restraining her from killing herself with the other the. i think the thing that makes me the most angry is not even the repeat itself it's the commanders that were complicit in covering up everything that happened. this is an organization that gives commanders an unbelievable amount of power and i
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felt it as a lieutenant in iraq it's scary you appoint the prosecution you appoint the defense you appoint the investigator you're in charge of the police force you're in charge of the community. your own everything you are judge or jury or executioner. most americans assume that there is access to a system of justice so that for example if your civilian and you are raped you can call the police and then you have prosecutors other federal prosecutors state prosecutors local prosecutors they bring the perpetrator to justice the problem with the military is that instead they have to go to their chain of command now in our system of military justice it is the commander who's responsible you know to the chain of command for how that investigation proceeds i know that there's been numerous times in my career that i regretted the new vigil commander hood the the total see saw over
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a case and most them don't have the training or the education to determine what's appropriate and serious felony commodus cations the problem in the military is the convening authority who is not legally trained makes the final decision. they have a team to command squadron where the credit rating it was still station. he'd only been and command for 4 days and he made the decision over illegal to stop the case when i saw was was commanders i mean our field grade officers lieutenant colonels colonels. who have been 2025 years you know they're career officers they sweep cases under the rug the last thing a company commander in the army wants to do is make the phone call to his or her battalion commander to say i have had a an allegation of
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a rape in my unit this is viewed in many cases as a failure to command that will adversely then affect their career sometimes you'd see a guy get for 5 years for selling minor amount of drugs and you'd see a guy get you know 2 weeks of duty for rape that the military hides behind. it is really really hard almost impossible to prosecute but when you look at prosecution rates in the 2010 department of defense reports you begin with 2410 unrestricted reports and 748. what that means is they've already funneled 748 sexual assault victims into a system that has absolutely no adjudication whatsoever. then you take the 2410 that have been reported of those they identify 3223 perpetrators know what happens once you send a perpetrator over to command the command has just completely unfettered discretion
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to do whatever it is they want and what is it that they do do 1st off they drop $910.00 of them they just don't do anything then of the $1025.00 where they actually take some action do they court martial them know only half of them 529 actually got court martialled the rest 256 were subjected to article 15 punishments 190 administrative discharges and then 131 to quote other adverse administrative actions whatever that means and then of the convictions where they actually get jail time when you work your way all the way through the numbers what you're looking at is that out of $3223.00 perpetrators only $175.00 end up doing any jail time whatsoever. i have been in congress for 7 terms now and every single term we have had meetings with d.o.t.d. and they come in and they confirm to the us to us we're going to be serious we're going to take care of this we're going to stop this 0 tolerance but the rhetoric is
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not being turned into the reality of protecting our women and in some cases men in our military and their like but we have to start programs like great. they can strongly suggest to the military to do something. sexual assault they can't order them they can't enforce it they don't back it up in april of this year we will debut a social marketing campaign as part of our prevention strategy that things like. my . school are so my buddies do. our school which. is ludicrous. you know we have posters that say wait until she's sober i'm it's remarkable that that's allowed to pass and in today's military we've implemented
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training at each and every level of military service from the moment they enter the service and basic training they are given that campaign consist of a series of posters that are actually training tools and each of those posters has a different focus you cannot perform sexual assault with pretty posters posters do not prevent sexual predators from preying upon women and men in the military we're talking about people barging into rooms in the middle of the night posters going to provide a criminal from version of these are violent people but one of the things that we do in our prevention strategy is to focus on bystander intervention in strategy and in that training we ask for each soldier sailor airman or marine to be aware of what sexual assault is and how to prevent it so are. the things that they say ignored or there may.
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be a video or 20 slides it's like a lot of military training words. from the box. sapper can't fix any you know walking back along yeah such a short walk to buy 2. and all the money seems to be spent on advertising which is just right with victim blaming an internet. like that is clearly wrong but i just i just wanted to ask you. since you also know that the guys in crimea are you by yourself or your body and everything they needed was sexual assault is preventable are you doing your part and so this notion that you know essentially like anyone could be a rape as we all have to be on alert it misses an opportunity to take real steps towards preventing rape if they actually had systems of accountability that
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prosecuted and imprisoned perpetrators you would get rid of a lot of the rapes right away how would you characterize the typical sex offender well if i look at our data from the department of defense and young people that are ages 18 to 2425 when you say that most of them are serial rapists i don't have data one way or the other to determine that what percentage of the rapes you think are caused by serial predator. i don't i don't have any numbers i don't know how to i don't think we collect that type of data there's been studies done of people who enter the military are twice as likely to have committed rape as their equivalent population in the civilian world i'm not aware of that study my area of expertise focuses primarily on prevention and victim care but when prevention includes focusing on the perpetrators.
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i notice that dr kay whitley is not in her chair is it under your direction that she has not shown her testimony this morning yes or do you have an executive privilege to. to assert. you've instructed her not to come what is your reason for doing that if you find the department's response in provisions efforts fall short of your expectations responsibility for that shortfall rests with me the ridiculous answer but is it you're trying to hide we all remember to look at the scandal and how the military tried to cover that up i don't know who you think elect of you to defy the congress of the united states we're an independent branch of government so for now it's the biggest you're dismissed. intimacy is
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definitely in fact it. will go for months without stats. i have to initiate if i'm comfortable enough if i'm having a good day and i think my husband lets off and the day i have to initiate. when he comes up and hugs me sometimes i'll cringe and i just want him to you know like he'll feel it. sometimes i think if when he has sex with me is he thinking about even me getting raped is he up sad is he in now because i think i think about that it all right never does it not enter my head that's why i didn't want to have sex for a while. like when we almost split up this is stuff i feel like i'm responsible. i don't know what i'd do if i was. a goat.
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he's like my only supporter. like my own. time after time corporations repeat the same mantra. dana bill it's very important to excel or transition to sustainable prize board sustainability stay nowhere man not be more equitable and sustainable well. they claim their production is completely harmless. it. companies want us to feel good about buying their products while the damage is being done far away and this is something else this must be going down even us i mean look i. mean listen we didn't. seem to. understand that so when.
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i have entered the limits of the world and rape is a very very. ty's ing thing to have happen 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 so she was sold to the 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 are functioning at our best cohesive unit with brothers and sisters in of the band of brothers and sisters i mean we are family we're.
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