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[catsittingstill]

An appalling article about rape in the military.  I don't understand why this isn't on the front page of every paper in the country.  I even know what the headline should be: 

Scumbag "Soldiers" Rape Sisters-In-Arms
Army Blames Victims

And it should stay on the front pages until something serious is done about it.

Damn it.

Airman 1st Class Cassandra Hernandez, 20, says three of her fellow airmen gang-raped her during a late-night party at Pope Air Force Base in Fayetteville, N.C., in May 2006. She says she reported the incident and sought all of the help available to her. Nonetheless, she wrote in a letter to the governor of Texas, her native state, “I felt like no one was looking out for my interests.”

Hernandez says she stopped cooperating with the investigation when charges were filed against her for “lewd behavior” and “underage drinking.” The three men accused of gang raping her were offered testimonial immunity in exchange for cooperating with the prosecution.

Makes you think, huh?  And this is after the army made a big effort to raise awareness about their "zero-tolerance" policy for rape.  Yeah.  Right.  I am so disgusted.

Comments

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Ooops. Let me edit this to get rid of all the LJ-cuts

[pondside.livejournal.com]

They still seem to be stuck in the "boys will be boys" and how can you blame them when the Jezabelles' stick it in their faces mentality.

I don't know what has to happen before they really take it seriously...

:(

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Me either. I'm hoping it can be something political, rather than something tragic.

[aylinn.livejournal.com]

You are aware of what Doonesbury is doing, right?

They have a major plotline running on this. - one of B.D.'s therapy-mates underwent sexual harassment while serving.

[braider.livejournal.com]

Is *that* why Washington Post has been re-running the robot bit with Alex....

*goes to Doonesbury.com*

[stevemb.livejournal.com]

The doonesbury.com site shows the same "Flashback" as today's strip. I think the plotline in question was a couple weeks ago.

[aylinn.livejournal.com]

It's been off & on for several months. I tried to find a strip to cite but have no way to search slate.com.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I just went to the archived strips, jumped back a month, worked my way forward until I was seeing strips I'd seen before, jumped back two months, etc. It took a while, but I think I've found what you were talking about.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I did find part of it eventually.

[dan-ad-nauseam.livejournal.com]

Likewise the Oregonian, which long ago showed its mettle on this subject by allowing Bob Packwood to deny the story about him and running the Neil Goldschmidt story only to avoid getting scooped

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Not sure what to say to that. I remember when people came forward to accuse Packwood of sexual harrassment, and I remember being surprised because Packwood was normally so good, legislation-wise, on women's issues. I don't remember what the Oregonian did.

[dan-ad-nauseam.livejournal.com]

They asked Packwood before the election. He denied it. They didn't run the story.

In December, we were seeing "If it matters to Oregonians, it's in the Washington Post" bumper stickers.

[aylinn.livejournal.com]

actually no, i think he's on vacation.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

No, they have a bit with an actual victime sexual assault(?) in the military. The robot bit is something else.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

It took me a long time to find this, but I did. I haven't gotten back to the beginning of the plotline on it, though. I'm only back to about November of last year.

[catalana.livejournal.com]

This is absolutely horrifying.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Yeah.

[barbara-the-w.livejournal.com]

well, how ELSE are they going to get those pesky women out of the armed forces and back into the kitchen where they belong?

/sarcasm

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Well, if rape doesn't do it, they can always try murder. And in at least one case there is reason to think they did.

This doesn't surprise me

[sffilk.livejournal.com]

as a vet, while on active duty at a training command with Student Naval Aviators who were the same age as me, the attitude they came with was "I'm the hottest thing since breaded butter, and if I want some fun, I'm going to get it!" What's worse is that the higher echelons looked at this as a case of "boys will be boys."

There weren't that many female officers on the base where I was stationed (4, as I recall) - one was so high-ranking she was left alone, one who was a friend who was the base PAO who was left alone (they probably thought she was gay), one who was as raucus at the student naval aviators and became one herself (though I don't know if she made it through aviation training), and one who was a gung-ho type who was allegedly very cozy with the high-ranking female (cannot confirm, but that was the rumor on the base).

Re: This doesn't surprise me

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Well, as a woman in an environment like this, I'd try to make friends with the highest ranking female I could find, in the hope that such a friendship would protect me from harrassment or worse.

Re: This doesn't surprise me

[sffilk.livejournal.com]

Uh, it wasn't exactly a friendship, at least as I would understand it, if you catch my drift.

Damn.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

Damn. That's awful. And of course it's not the first time, either. It can pretty much be set at the C-in-C's door, too; Clinton would never have stood for it.

Though, I have enough wish they'd "stay on the front pages until something serious is done" issues to fill a whole newspaper, or perhaps a telephone book. Of such volumes are radical politics made.