Rape victims say military labels them 'crazy'

[Yogi]

Editor's note: CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta will report further on allegations of sexual assault in the military Saturday and Sunday April 21 and 22 at 7:30 a.m. ET on "Sanjay Gupta MD" on CNN.
(CNN) -- Stephanie Schroeder joined the U.S. Marine Corps not long after 9/11. She was a 21-year-old with an associate's degree when she reported for boot camp at Parris Island, South Carolina.
"I felt like it was the right thing to do," Schroeder recalls.
A year and a half later, the Marines diagnosed her with a personality disorder and deemed her psychologically unfit for the Corps.
Anna Moore enlisted in the Army after 9/11 and planned to make a career of it. Moore was a Patriot missile battery operator in Germany when she was diagnosed with a personality disorder and dismissed from the Army.
Jenny McClendon was serving as a sonar operator on a Navy destroyer when she received her personality disorder diagnosis.
These women joined different branches of the military but they share a common experience:
Each received the psychiatric diagnosis and military discharge after reporting a sexual assault.
"I'm not crazy," says Schroeder, who is married now, with two daughters. "I am actually relatively normal."
McClendon says she had a similar reaction.
"I remember thinking this is absurd; this is ridiculous. How could I be emotionally unstable? I'm very clear of mind, especially considering what had happened." McClendon says. "It was a ludicrous diagnosis."
A similar pattern
CNN has interviewed women in all branches of the armed forces, including the Coast Guard, who tell stories that follow a similar pattern -- a sexual assault, a command dismissive of the allegations and a psychiatric discharge.

Schroeder says a fellow Marine followed her to the bathroom in April 2002. She says he then punched her, ripped off her pants and raped her. When she reported what happened, a non-commissioned officer dismissed the allegation, saying, "'Don't come bitching to me because you had sex and changed your mind,'" Schroeder recalls.
Moore says she was alone in her barracks in October 2002 when a non-commissioned officer from another battery tried to rape her. When she filled out forms to report it, she says, her first sergeant, told her: "Forget about it. It never happened," and tore up the paperwork.
"It felt like a punch in the gut," Moore says. "I couldn't trust my chain of command to ever back me up."
McClendon says she was aboard a Navy destroyer at sea when a superior raped her on the midnight to 2 a.m. watch. After reporting the attack, she was diagnosed with a personality disorder and deemed unfit to serve.
"I was good enough to suit up and show up and serve, but I wasn't good enough after the fact," McClendon says.
Despite the Defense Department's "zero tolerance" policy, there were 3,191 military sexual assaults reported in 2011. Given that most sexual assaults are not reported, the Pentagon estimates the actual number was probably closer to 19,000.
"The number of sexual assaults in the military is unacceptable," Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said at a news conference in January. "Our men and women in uniform put their lives on the line every day to keep America safe. We have a moral duty to keep them safe from those who would attack their dignity and their honor."
Related: Military sex assault complaints have leveled off
Transcript: Panetta condemns military sexual assaults
But Anu Bhagwati, a former company commander in the Marines and executive director of Service Women's Action Network, a veterans advocacy group, says she sees a pattern of the military using psychiatric diagnoses to get rid of women who report sexual assaults.
"It's convenient to sweep this under the rug. It's also extremely convenient to slap a false diagnosis on a young woman ... and then just get rid of them so you don't have to deal with that problem in your unit. And, unfortunately, a lot of sexual assault survivors are considered problems," Bhagwati says.
From 2001 to 2010, the military discharged more than 31,000 service members because of personality disorder, according to documents obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request by the Vietnam Veterans of America.
Asked by CNN how many of these cases involved sexual assault cases, the Defense Department says it does not keep such figures, nor would the Pentagon comment on individual cases.
The diagnoses
The latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, known as the DSM-IV, defines a personality disorder as a long-standing, inflexible pattern of maladaptive behavior and coping, beginning in adolescence or early adulthood.

That would mean women like Schroeder, Moore and McClendon had a pre-existing personality disorder when they joined the military. Someone with personality disorder tends to get fired from jobs, get in trouble with the law or at school or is unable to maintain relationships.
"It makes absolutely no sense medically for people to be diagnosed all of a sudden after being sexually assaulted as an adult in the military to say 'No, you've had this all along,'" says Bhagwati, of the Service Women's Action Network.
"These women have clearly been able to function. They've made it through basic training. They've made it through all the follow-on training. Many of them are deployed overseas in war, and they've done fine there. But, when they're sexually assaulted, and then report it, it seems very suspicious that the military would suddenly stamp them with a pre-existing condition that bars them from serving anymore."
Dr. Liza H. Gold, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Georgetown University School of Medicine, says it's a rule of thumb among psychiatrists not to diagnose someone with a personality disorder in the middle of a traumatic experience like a divorce, litigation or the aftermath of a sexual assault.
The DSM-IV says: "When personality changes emerge and persist after an individual has been exposed to extreme stress, a diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder should be considered."
Also, by definition, a personality disorder diagnosis cannot be caused by another psychiatric condition, such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Gold says.
In 2003, when she returned to Germany from a deployment in Israel, Moore says a new Army counselor changed her diagnosis from severe depression to borderline personality disorder after only a half-hour session.
Gold is not familiar with Moore's case, but she says a personality disorder was not a diagnosis that typically could be made quickly.
The numbers
Military records show the personality disorder diagnosis is being used disproportionately on women, according to military records obtained by Yale Law School's Veterans Legal Services Clinic under a Freedom of Information Act request.
--In the Army, 16% of all soldiers are women, but females constitute 24% of all personality disorder discharges.
--Air Force: women make up 21% of the ranks and 35% of personality disorder discharges.
--Navy: 17% of sailors are women and 26% of personality disorder discharges
--Marines: 7% of the Corps and 14% of personality disorder discharges
The records don't reflect how many of those women had reported sexual assault.
The cost
A personality diagnosis discharge can carry a heavy financial burden.
In the military's eyes, a personality disorder diagnosis is a pre-existing condition and does not constitute a service-related disability. That means sexual assault victims with personality disorder discharges don't receive benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs to help with their trauma. They can still apply for benefits, but it's considered an uphill battle.
There are other costs. For example, members of the armed forces who receive a personality disorder discharge lose education benefits under the GI Bill.
Moore, now 32 and married, says the Army came after her for $2,800 of the enlistment bonus she received when she signed up for six years. With interest and penalties, the bill topped $6,000. Moore says she's still paying it off.

17-year vet Celeste Santana was diagnosed with a disorder and lost her pension after reporting a sexual assault.
Celeste Santana, a former Navy lieutenant commander, lost her pension when she was involuntarily separated from the military in 2011 after 17 years of active duty -- three years short of being eligible to retire. Santana says the Navy gave her an adjustment disorder after she reported being sexual assaulted in the middle of the night at a forward operating base in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. She says no medical evaluation ever took place.
An adjustment disorder is an excessive response to a stressful experience, typically lasting three to six months. For example, Gold says, someone who is fired from a job, stops eating, refuses to get out of bed and won't talk to anyone might be suffering from an adjustment disorder.
Secondary injury
Veterans who talked to CNN all say lack of military response to their reports of assault added to their emotional trauma. Gold says therapists call this a "secondary injury." McClendon, Moore and Schroeder each say they became suicidal.
Panayiota Bertzikis received an adjustment disorder diagnosis and was forced out of the Coast Guard in 2006 -- after reporting to her superiors that she had been punched in the face and raped by a shipmate during an off-duty hike.
When she reported the attack, Bertzikis says the chief of her Coast Guard station ordered her and her attacker to clean out an attic on base together and told to work out their differences.
"I am the victim of this crime, and then you report it, and then I felt like I was the one on trial -- I was the one who did something wrong," Bertzikis says. "He got a free pass. I was the one fighting to stay in."
Bhagwati, who runs the Service Women's Action Network, says the sense of betrayal is profound for sexual assault victims whose allegations are not taken seriously.
"Very commonly victims will hear that they're lying whores. It's very common," Bhagwati says. "That kind of betrayal deepens the trauma so, so much, and it's hard to recover from that. I mean, it's akin to incest where you grow up with a family, with someone you trust, admire and in many cases, salute, is your perpetrator. It's a huge betrayal that often entails guilt, embarrassment, shame. You're made to feel that you did something wrong and you could have prevented it from happening."

In the civilian world, sexual assault victims can quit their jobs, go to court, go to the media, says J.D. Hamel, a Marine veteran and Yale Law student involved at the Veterans Legal Services Clinic. If higher-ups don't follow-up on allegations, Hamel explains, there is no other recourse.
"If the command doesn't deal with it, no one is going to deal with it," he says. "It's just a very lonely position to be in. It's hard for people who have never been in the military to realize how all-encompassing military life is."
Rep. Jackie Speier, D-California, says the military has used personality and other psychiatric diagnoses "almost robotically" to force women who report sexual assaults out of the service.
"It's the default position the military uses," says Speier, a member of the House Armed Services Committee. "The problem we have in the military is the unit commander is in charge of the entire process."
Speier has introduced legislation that would take sexual assault cases out of the chain of command and assign them to an autonomous office at the Pentagon.
Bhagwati says victims of sexual assault in the military should be able to sue for damages in civil court.

"Until there's a deterrent, you're going to have far too much incentive to the average commander, to the average perpetrator, to do the wrong thing," she says. "It's far too convenient to do the wrong thing now."
Military response
The Pentagon has made changes in policy on personality disorder diagnoses and discharges.
Army guidelines enacted in 2008 require commanders to review administrative separations, such as personality and adjustment disorder discharges, for sexual assault victims. The commander must assess whether the separation "appears to be in retaliation" for reporting the sexual assault or involves a medical condition like Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
After congressional hearings in 2008 looking into Afghanistan and Iraq combat veterans who received personality discharges, the Pentagon also changed the rules to require a psychiatrist or PhD-level psychologist to diagnose personality disorder on troops who "served or are currently serving in imminent danger pay areas."
The new rules require personality disorder diagnoses for combat veterans to be corroborated a by a peer or higher-level mental health professional and endorsed by the surgeon general of the relevant military branch. This added layer of protection against misdiagnoses does not affect sexual assault victims.

Bertzikis started blogging about her case and says she found other women -- and some men -- who described similar experiences. She has started two websites: stopmilitaryrape.org and mydutytospeak.com, a chance for victims of military sexual assault to share their stories.
"For me, writing has been very helpful," Bertzikis says.
At his January news conference, Secretary Panetta announced that for the first time service members who reported a sexual assault would be allowed to make an immediate request to transfer to a different unit. The commanding officer would then have 72 hours to decide whether to grant the request.
Panetta also ordered an assessment of the training that commanding officers and senior enlisted personnel receive on sexual assault prevention and response. That report is scheduled to be completed next month.
Moore and Schroeder each say they'd still be in the military if the military had aggressively pursued their attackers and allowed them to switch units. But Schroeder is skeptical about the Pentagon's efforts.
"It's all just talk. It's for show," Schroeder says.
Bertzikis started and runs the Military Rape Crisis Center, which helps victims of sexual assault in the military. She and Schroeder have joined a lawsuit suing the Defense Department for unspecified monetary damages for a culture that permitted sexual assaults.
Asked by CNN about the lawsuit, the Defense Department says it does not comment on pending litigation.

As for the personality and adjustment disorder discharges, the Pentagon tells CNN: "We encourage all separating service members who believe their discharges were incorrectly characterized or processed to request adjudication through their respective military department's Discharge Review Board and Board for Correction of Military Records."
McClendon, 41, is married and the mother of four. She teaches college humanities courses. Two or three times a week, she says she's awakened by nightmares.
Schroeder, 30, is getting a business degree and taking care of her daughters, who are in second and third grade. She says she suffers from anxiety and depression and is fighting the Department of Veterans Affairs for a PTSD diagnosis.
Moore, 32, received a diagnosis of PTSD from the Veterans Affairs and is on full disability.
"I have nightmares all the time and flashbacks and things like that," Moore says. "I'm still paranoid of the outside world and how cruel people can be -- because what my chain of command did to me was cruel and unnecessary."

I really shouldn't be surprised at this any more. The Military has been male dominated for a long time and is one of the last bastions of Macho Bullshit. Support our Troops indeed.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Well, it seems that the second wave feminists have a point about Rape Culture insofar as the military is concerned...

I mean, if your working hypothesis is that the US military likes to psych-discharge rape victims--and not just any psych discharge, but a personality disorder discharge which does not qualify them for benefits--one would not expect them to want to link said diagnoses to people who report rape. OK. What other data do we have? Well, we would expect that the US military would have higher rates of personality disorder discharges for women. Given that we are working with the population under study from military stats, rather than a sample of the population, you do not even need to run statistical tests (statistical power is Yes) to know that in the marines for example, a woman is twice as likely to be diagnosed with a personality disorder as a man. This is really strange, because they are more common among men, and people with them never would have made it through basic training or MOS school.

This... this is insane. I remember (reading about) when women in the military was being debated. One of the big arguments was that women would induce men to want to "protect them" and combat effectiveness would be reduced. Granted, I dont see how that necessarily follows. Just look at the sacred band of thebes for how effective couples can be in battle, but I digress.

Apparently, the argument should have been the exact opposite. Conservatives should have said that there would be an epidemic of rape and subsequent cover-up of said rape (only 8% are referred to military courts, compared to 40% of civilian cases), with widespread condemnation from higher up--combined with useless measures to correct the situation. They should have said that the rate at which women in the military are raped would reach 30%. At least had they done that, their argument would have been true. Hell, with a rate of 30%, there is a VERY high probability of being raped multiple times.

So yeah. Rape Culture.

[Aaron MkII]

Man, 15 years and another country but the excuses trotted out by the boys are still the same.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Man, 15 years and another country but the excuses trotted out by the boys are still the same.

And people claim there is no stigma in being raped anymore... I call BS, at least in regard to the DoD. Hell, it is not even content to rape them once. It feels the necessity of doing it twice.

[Aaron MkII]

Well, at least there is a chance for a VA pension from it, that's something. Small progress.

[Aaron MkII]

Hopefully counselling as well, but I'm not sure what the US VA does or offers.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Hopefully counselling as well, but I'm not sure what the US VA does or offers.

Considering the issues with mental health... I am not sure either. One thing I am certain of however, is that mental-health services in the military need to be completely independent of the military. Civilian shrinks employed directly be Health and Human Services, I should think. That way there is no way in hell for a base commander or some sort of higher directive to pressure them into making false diagnoses, or refusing to diagnose and treat psychological casualties.

[Aaron MkII]

Yeah ours were and are generally civvie contractors. VAC is of course entirely separate.

An actual commitment to zero tolerance, with enforcement from the top down would be good as well, or things won't change. We did that and rape seems to be limited to a few a year followed by the wrath of God descending, say goodbye to your pension and hello to jail.

[Grumman]

I really hate this. I hate that there seem to be so many awful people in the military, without much effort at rooting them out. I hate the way I've heard people talk about military women. And I hate that I can't believe it's going to change any time soon. Treating women soldiers with the respect they deserve shouldn't be the stuff of fucking science fiction.

[Aaron MkII]

You know the blue wall? There's a green wall, and this is part of it. Now I'm Canadian so I can't say for certain that yanks do this, but there was a lot of us vs them in regard to cities, they don't understand, their not good enough to do our job, they don't like us, etc.

It makes it easier to cover for your friend's.

[Alyrium Denryle]

I really hate this. I hate that there seem to be so many awful people in the military, without much effort at rooting them out. I hate the way I've heard people talk about military women. And I hate that I can't believe it's going to change any time soon. Treating women soldiers with the respect they deserve shouldn't be the stuff of fucking science fiction.

Take heart. The number of actual rapists is not that high. Sure, 30% of female marines get raped, but they only make up 7% of the service branch. So, at maximum you are looking at ~2% of male marines being rapists. Then you factor in that most rapists probably do it more than once...

The problem is the Rape Culture. Something completely different. It is a cultural attitude that devalues and stereotypes women, and accepts Rape-Myths (like, they were asking for it, or have buyers remorse) in such a way that rapists more likely to be able to get away with it.

[SpaceMarine93]

These are brave women, soldiers who risk their lives on the front lines, who give up their innocence to face the horrors of war, who dedicated their efforts to defend their nation, who stand as tall and proud as their male compatriots. After all their sacrifices and dutiful service over half the century, this is all they get in return? Still stereotyped, looked down, belittled, objectified and scorned by some of the male population, whom they saw and trusted as comrades?

How many is 30%? How many victims are there in the thousands? Why are such avoidable, rare but unimaginably abominable evil even allowed to exist at all? Why are some military leaders tolerate this with their Green Wall of Silence?

It is frankly unacceptable.

Let's talk solutions, My suggestions:

-> Pass laws that guarantees harsher military and legal punishment for military rapists. I would suggest Execution as max punishment, not bound by state.

-> Judicial retribution to military commanders who failed to prevent this from happening in their area of command

-> Internal department set up to deal with such cases (optional, depending on resources available)

-> More thorough and specific psychiatric reviews of new recruits to ensure none of them would harbor tendencies that might caused to become potential rapists.

Might not be entirely practical. Ideas anyone?

[Raw Shark]

-> More thorough and specific psychiatric reviews of new recruits to ensure none of them would harbor tendencies that might caused to become potential rapists.

Might not be entirely practical.

What could possibly go wrong with weeding unusually high aggression out of the military!?

[Haruko]

I wonder how the U.S. military culture as it pertains to treatment of women (including reporting of and rooting out of rape) specifically compares to the countries that have been more inclusive of women (e.g., making explicit that women may be on the front lines), such as Israel (which requires their service), Australia, Canada, New Zealand...

[tim31]

Re 'inclusive of women' and 'Australian military' in same sentence, the ADF have had a lot of bad press in the last year after a case went public(consensual sex between cadets at the Academy, but the guy set up a webcam for his mates in the next room) and the dam of secrecy burst. And it needed to. Because you can't break a culture without a mass of inertia, and stuff like this is still tragically likely in a workforce dominated by young males.

[Yogi]

Rape is already illegal, so making it more illegal is not the issue. It's the chain of command that doesn't give a shit that's the problem. We'd need a separate oversight department to deal with it. It should also be civilian to completely insulated from the chain of command.

[Broomstick]

After all their sacrifices and dutiful service over half the century, this is all they get in return? Still stereotyped, looked down, belittled, objectified and scorned by some of the male population, whom they saw and trusted as comrades?

You do realize this is not an uncommon occurrence for women in civilian life, too? It's not just the military, the attitudes of society as a whole also contribute to this.

How many is 30%?

Is there where I point out that the incidence of sexual assault in the civilian US is 20-25%?

Which in no way excuses anything - indeed, one would hope that the rate of such things would be lower in the military but I bring it up to point out that a high rate of rape is hardly limited to the military. I can't help but think the civilian rape problem ties into the military rape problem.

It is frankly unacceptable.

Yes, it is. Unfortunately, what solutions there are aren't easy to implement and won't solve the entire problem.

-> Pass laws that guarantees harsher military and legal punishment for military rapists. I would suggest Execution as max punishment, not bound by state.

I see two problems with this:
1) Harsher punishments will do jackshit if no one is found guilty. The problem is not the lack of punishments for convicted rapists in the military, it's that the military rapists know they likelihood of having such a punishment imposed is extremely unlikely.
2) I can't condone execution for rape. Frankly, I don't condone execution even for murder, being morally opposed to the death penalty, though of course people will differ on this point.

-> Judicial retribution to military commanders who failed to prevent this from happening in their area of command

I believe this is already on the books. Again, the problem is not a lack of defined punishment, it's that the guilty aren't being held accountable and subjected to punishment.

There is still a LOT of sentiment that women don't belong in the military, that women who want to have the military as a career must have something wrong with them (frequent subtext: they're dykes), that women lie about rape, that women are teases, and so on. A military woman gets raped? What did she expect, playing with the boys? Or she got what she deserved for stepping outside of her proper role.

[Broomstick]

Rape is already illegal, so making it more illegal is not the issue. It's the chain of command that doesn't give a shit that's the problem. We'd need a separate oversight department to deal with it. It should also be civilian to completely insulated from the chain of command.

Nope, civilian oversight committee won't do it - look at the rate of rape in the civilian world, it's not that far away from the military problem.

Nope, the oversight committee has to be entirely female. Even then, it won't solve the problem entirely as far too many women play blame the rape victim, too. By making the oversight committee entirely women, though, I think you'll have your best odds of making an improvement.

It will never happen, though - too many men are too terrified of yielding control, especially when it comes to sex. There would all manner of outcries about men being unjustly tarred and stigmatized - nevermind that that happens to women all the damn time. Society is accustomed to the damage done to women by rape, it's completely unacquainted with men suffering the same even if that levels the playing field and makes rape/sexual assault less likely for anyone in the end. The Green Wall would be terrified by the Vagina Wall, and we just can't have that!

[Alyrium Denryle]

Rape is already illegal, so making it more illegal is not the issue. It's the chain of command that doesn't give a shit that's the problem. We'd need a separate oversight department to deal with it. It should also be civilian to completely insulated from the chain of command.

For some time, I have been in favor of a new branch of the FBI for exactly this reason. It is not the military judicial system that is the problem. They have lawyers and judges etc who would be happy to prosecute these cases. I dont imagine that someone would become a prosecutor in the military courts if they did not have a particular zeal for it, actually. A commitment to both the law, and the ideals of military service sufficiently profound for them to zealously prosecute members of their own service branch.

The issue is at the level of NCOs ,line-officers and base commanders. The people responsible for receiving and processing reports and forwarding them for investigation. There are massive conflicts of interest. No one wants to prosecute their friend, or admit that something happened in the unit they command, even once you remove abhorrent misogyny from the picture. This is why base commander review of psych discharges and "training" said officers does not work.

A branch of the FBI and US Attorney secunded to the military responsible for receiving and processing reports of military crimes including war crimes and sexual assault, collecting evidence, and then prosecuting them in military courts with full prosecutorial discretion independent of the chain of command would do wonders. Hell, this same branch could also be given overall responsibility for doing the same thing with legislative, judicial, and even executive crimes and corruption. The FBI is a civil service branch. Its personnel are not political appointees, barring the director. The US Attorney's are (as I recall) but that can easily be changed.

Is there where I point out that the incidence of sexual assault in the civilian US is 20-25%?

That is over a lifetime though. 4-6 years nets 30%. That is pretty fucking horrendous.

Nope, civilian oversight committee won't do it - look at the rate of rape in the civilian world, it's not that far away from the military problem.

The rate of rape in the military world per year is an order of magnitude higher though. Remember, that 20-25% is over a lifetime. 7 Decades or so. The 30% of the military is over half a decade or so.

What could possibly go wrong with weeding unusually high aggression out of the military!?

No. That is not how it works. There are not enough naturally violent people to create a military as large as we have. Military training works by manipulating the psychology of normal people to make them willing to kill and risk their lives in a controlled way. So they can go into the field, do things that would be considered horrific in civilian life, and then be sent back into the civilian world with minimal risk. The military does not WANT hyper-aggressive people, because those people are hard to control and are a risk to their unit, themselves, and civilians. It is not reliant on abnormally high levels of aggression, sexual or otherwise. More intensive psychological screening would be a benefit, because it would do two things.

A) Assure that hyper-aggressive individuals, who the military do not want in the first place, even in the marines, do not ever enlist

B) Provide a back-stop. It is hard to keep a straight face when diagnosing someone with a personality disorder after they report a rape, when the initial psych screen should have weeded them out in the first place. Either you have to admit that your screening process is incompetent (in which case, the accuracy of your own diagnosis is called into question because you are part of the same incompetent establishment) or you leave a HUGE dead fish that the person you are trying to kick out can slap you with.

[Yogi]

Nope, civilian oversight committee won't do it - look at the rate of rape in the civilian world, it's not that far away from the military problem.

You think so? I disagree. If someone in my company (a large, semi-evil corporation) were raped by another employee, reported it, and was fired because of it, the Human Resources Lawyers would crap their pants. The offenders would be fired instantly and the rest would have to attend sexual harassment seminars. Much like the Military, rape, covering up rape, and retaliation for reporting rape are illegal. However unlike the military we (my company) don't enforce the rules on ourselves. We have the courts and other regulatory agencies for that, and unlike what many people think large corporations are terrified of being fined and sued since they like to make money.

Nope, the oversight committee has to be entirely female. Even then, it won't solve the problem entirely as far too many women play blame the rape victim, too. By making the oversight committee entirely women, though, I think you'll have your best odds of making an improvement.

Both genders can be rapists and rape victims, so I'd have to disagree on entirely female as well.

[Block]

B) Provide a back-stop. It is hard to keep a straight face when diagnosing someone with a personality disorder after they report a rape, when the initial psych screen should have weeded them out in the first place. Either you have to admit that your screening process is incompetent (in which case, the accuracy of your own diagnosis is called into question because you are part of the same incompetent establishment) or you leave a HUGE dead fish that the person you are trying to kick out can slap you with.

The screening process isn't incompetent, it was intentionally lax from '03-'08, because we needed people. A lot of people who wouldn't have gotten through, did. The case in that the article talks about is unfortunate but over the last 5-10 years there's been a massive effort to set up people outside the chain of command to report Rape and sexual assault, there's literally 6 or 7 people that any Private can walk up to, file an EO complaint and have it be completely anonymous. There's also a hotline to call if the person doesn't feel safe with anyone on base. All therapists are civilians, they may be overseen by military doctors, but the ones who interact directly with the troops are civilian.

[Alyrium Denryle]

The screening process isn't incompetent, it was intentionally lax from '03-'08, because we needed people. A lot of people who wouldn't have gotten through, did. The case in that the article talks about is unfortunate but over the last 5-10 years there's been a massive effort to set up people outside the chain of command to report Rape and sexual assault, there's literally 6 or 7 people that any Private can walk up to, file an EO complaint and have it be completely anonymous.

How does an anonymous rape complaint actually help with enforcement though? One can use it for statistics purposes, but that is about it. I dont see that actually doing anything to, you know... keep rapists from getting away with it.

As for reporting... with a ~10% reporting rate, and 8% prosecution rate (not sure if that is 8% of all rapes, or 8% of reported rapes. Given the comparison to 40% of civilian rapes, which are calculated from reported rapes, I will assume it is reported, which means .8% of actual rapes)... Um... Good job!

All therapists are civilians, they may be overseen by military doctors, but the ones who interact directly with the troops are civilian.

Are these the same therapists responsible for false personality disorder diagnoses, or are those still handled by someone directly inside the chain of command? If so, how much influence do the military docs have over the final diagnosis someone gets?

[Block]

The screening process isn't incompetent, it was intentionally lax from '03-'08, because we needed people. A lot of people who wouldn't have gotten through, did. The case in that the article talks about is unfortunate but over the last 5-10 years there's been a massive effort to set up people outside the chain of command to report Rape and sexual assault, there's literally 6 or 7 people that any Private can walk up to, file an EO complaint and have it be completely anonymous.

How does an anonymous rape complaint actually help with enforcement though? One can use it for statistics purposes, but that is about it. I dont see that actually doing anything to, you know... keep rapists from getting away with it.

It makes it easier to report without fear of reprisal? Thus increasing the number of cases reported and decreasing the likelyhood it gets swept under the rug? If it's reported it's investigated.

Are these the same therapists responsible for false personality disorder diagnoses, or are those still handled by someone directly inside the chain of command?

Those diagnoses were never made by people in the chain of command and anyone claiming otherwise is wrong. You've always had to go through some sort of mental health professional to get any kind of psychological evaluation.

[Alyrium Denryle]

It makes it easier to report without fear of reprisal? Thus increasing the number of cases reported and decreasing the likelyhood it gets swept under the rug? If it's reported it's investigated.

Hard to actually investigate when you do not know the compainant's name. Unless your definition of anonymous is different than mine. Besides, even if it does get investigated, people will find out eventually, and there will be reprisals. You know, like being discharged for being "crazy".

Those diagnoses were never made by people in the chain of command and anyone claiming otherwise is wrong. You've always had to go through some sort of mental health professional to get any kind of psychological evaluation.

Yes, but are military doctors who supervise civilian contractors part of the chain of command?

How much influence does the chain of command exert over these contractors? Because somehow or another, people are being intentionally misdiagnosed. If it is not a direct order from a commanding officer, how the fuck does this occur, there needs to be some sort of structural reason for it. Even if that reason is that the military hires people to do the work who could not cut it in civilian practice.

[Block]

Yes, but are military doctors who supervise civilian contractors part of the chain of command?

How much influence does the chain of command exert over these contractors? Because somehow or another, people are being intentionally misdiagnosed. If it is not a direct order from a commanding officer, how the fuck does this occur, there needs to be some sort of structural reason for it. Even if that reason is that the military hires people to do the work who could not cut it in civilian practice.

No, unless the person reporting the assault is in a medical unit, they're two seperate commands. There's not a lot of proof that people are being misdiagnosed, other than claims from lawyers of people who stand to gain something, diagnoses of the same person vary from doctor to doctor based on how a person presents themself to that doctor. "I don't feel damaged" or whatever doesn't mean much. Also remember that, after 9/11 they were even taking Felons, something we'd never done, so I'm sure a lot of people slipped through with undiagnosed mental issues.