They fear ambush, snipers - and an enemy within

[almaty 19]

WASHINGTON — Like the rest of the soldiers stationed with her in the now notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad in the early months of the war, Rebekah Roberts, 24, worried about snipers, ambushes and belligerent prisoners. But Roberts and the handful of other women in her Pennsylvania Army Reserve unit stationed in Iraq also worried about another threat — the male soldiers stationed with them.

They worried about being raped when they went to the restrooms or showers, attacked when they ran for exercise, assaulted when they were alone in a secluded area with a male soldier.

So, they, like female soldiers throughout Iraq, developed special regimens to avoid attacks. They traveled in pairs to the bathroom or shower, ran with a partner and made it a practice to be in the company of at least three men. Advertisement

Their caution was understandable.

According to the military, more than 500 women serving in Iraq or Afghanistan were raped or otherwise sexually assaulted from 2002 to 2006. The actual number of women who have been assaulted is probably much higher. Many women don't report the incidents, military officials said, either because of shame, fear of retaliation and alienation from their superiors or fellow soldiers, or a feeling that it won't matter.

Roberts, now a mortgage broker and mother of a 2-year-old and in Scranton, Pa., is one who did. She said her captain assaulted her one night in her tent as she was preparing to sleep.

A military policeman assigned to guard Iraqi prisoners in Iraq, Roberts said she was lying in her bunk when the captain arrived, sat down on her bunk and began talking about nothing in particular, she said. Suddenly, he pulled down his pants, Roberts said.

"I told him, 'I don't fly like that,'"Š" she recalled. "He said he was sorry and then he grabbed me and tried to kiss me and started groping me. I pulled a knife out. My battle buddy came in just as he was buttoning his pants."

Roberts reported the incident, but not until she returned to Fort Dix in New Jersey while on her two-week Christmas leave. She waited, she said, because she was worried about the response from her superiors and the other soldiers at Abu Ghraib.

The Department of Defense would not comment on the case, saying military regulations prevent it from releasing any information about sexual assault complaints unless the suspect is court-marshaled.

'It was scary'

At Balad Air Base, about 50 miles north of Baghdad, there are constant reminders that women are at risk of assault, according to one woman soldier stationed there who spoke to the Post-Dispatch on the condition of anonymity.

A sign outside the base cafeteria warns women to always travel in pairs. "Prevent Sexual Assault," the sign says. The doors to each woman's trailer have been equipped with an additional lock to avoid unwanted entry, she said.

The woman said she was attacked by a warrant officer who invited her back to his room under the guise of helping him fix a computer.

"But when I got there, he wouldn't let me leave," said the woman, who has been in Iraq for nine months with her Pennsylvania National Guard unit. "It was scary for a while."

The woman, a 23-year-old college student, said she was able to get away and didn't report the incident for fear of reprisals or because of what she perceives as the military's indifference and the disdain from fellow soldiers associated with such complaints.

She remembered the talk among the male soldiers after a female soldier at the base reported she had been raped by a fellow soldier while they were stationed in a tower on guard duty.

"Most of the guys said they thought she was making it up to get attention," she said.

Kelly Dougherty, 29, of Philadelphia, was never assaulted while she was stationed at Tallil Air Base in southern Iraq in 2003 and 2004, but she remembers feeling the same anxiety as Roberts.

She also remembers the day she was told that women were required to run in pairs because a female soldier had been sexually assaulted by a male soldier while running inside the base.

"As a woman, it's always in the back of your mind," said Dougherty, who served in the National Guard before getting out in 2004. "But over there, it's a lot more intense. You're around way more men than you would be around in your daily life, and you have all of these men who aren't having sex like they did before."

numbers grow

The issue of sexual assault in Iraq and Afghanistan has caught the attention of Congress. After a series of media reports of women being sexually assaulted in Iraq in 2004, the House and Senate Armed Services committees held hearings on the issue and ordered the Department of Defense to submit an annual report about sexual assaults in the military.

In March, the department reported the number of cases of sexual assault by service members on other service members throughout the military increased from 880 in 2004 to 1,072 in 2005 and to 1,167 in 2006.

Consequently, women suffering post traumatic stress disorder because of sexual assaults are showing up at Department of Veterans Affairs facilities, such as the Women's Health Center and the Women's Trauma Recovery Program in Menlo Park, Calif. That's where Darrah Westrup works as the program director and lead psychologist of the trauma recovery program.

She said sexual assault was perhaps the highest risk factor for stress disorders, especially during war.

"One of the things that soldiers say gets them by in Iraq is knowing that their buddy, their fellow soldier, has their back," she said. "Then those very comrades turn against you. I just can't imagine the level of fear and betrayal, just how unsafe you feel after that."

Those were some of the emotions that Roberts said she felt after her attack.

"The first two days after the incident, I just got physically ill," she said. "I just kept throwing up. After two days with the medics, I came back to the unit. But after that happened, I was so paranoid. It screwed me up for a while."

It didn't help, she said, that she and the two other woman in her unit bunked in a prison bay with about a dozen men who, she said, often played pornographic movies in their presence. And when they took showers at night, they did so initially right next to male soldiers in the dark because they were no lights in the shower area.

Roberts said she complained about the darkness and lights were installed.

Men as victims

Military officials said while sexual assaults on men are rare, they make up the highest number of cases annually because the military is so heavily male.

Robert Jenkins, attending psychologist for the post traumatic stress disorder program at the VA's Palo Alto Health Care System in Menlo Park, said he hasn't treated any men yet who have been sexually assaulted in Iraq or Afghanistan, "but I'm sure they're out there."

"There's usually a longer delay with men," he said. "We're seeing guys from Vietnam and Desert Storm. Some of them, it took 30 to 40 years to come in. ... Most people want to bury it and try to forget it."

The military has found that sexual assault is higher in the military than in the civilian population. A 2003 report financed by the Department of Defense found that nearly one of every three women treated through the VA said they had been raped or sexually assaulted during their service. Another study financed by the VA after the Persian Gulf War found that rates of sexual harassment and assault appear to rise during wartime.

Westrup said the increase might be because violence, such as sexual assault, escalates in times of stress.

"During a natural disaster, you'll see more child abuse, more sexual assaults, more domestic violence," she said. "So, in a time of war, it stands to reason that you're going to see more of that."

Many women who have been assaulted want out of the military because of an intense feeling of betrayal and massive disillusionment, Westrup said.

"Many of them say they intended to devote their entire careers to this, but they feel they have been turned on, and many have the feeling of not being supported," she said.

As for the men, they have difficulty establishing stable, long-term relationships because of the shame associated with the assault and the secrecy associated with hiding the incident from others.

"They have difficulty being close to people, their children, their wives, a friend," Jenkins said. "There's a deep sense of mistrust because the people who attacked them were people who they trusted. So, they have trouble on their jobs. And they are worried about their judgment because they believe it was their fault that they were attacked."

[almaty 19]

this is wrong on so many different levels....

[metta 0]

this is wrong on so many different levels....

I agree with you totally!

Last year i read a book by Kayla Wlliams called " I love my rifle more than you" http://www.powells.com/biblio?isbn=%200393060985

It was a very good read.

If I recall correctly, she described the options for female soldiers are rather few: Either put out, or de branded as a ####### or ostracised. I really enjoyed the book and could'nt put it down once I strated on it.She also ended up married to one of the nice guys she met in Iraq.

The Military Brass need to tackle this issue very seriously and promptly.

<h3 id="synopses_and_reviews">Synopses & Reviews</h3> <h4 class="ir publishercomments">Publisher Comments:</h4> "A woman soldier has to toughen herself up" writes Kayla Williams in this fiercely honest account of what it's like to be part of the female 15% of today's Army. "Not just for the enemy, for battle, for death. I mean to toughen herself to spend months awash in a sea of nervy, hyped-up guys..." By turns irreverent, vulnerable, angry, and humane, Williams describes what it's like for a young woman to be surrounded by an ocean of testosterone, respected for her skills and qualifications, but treated variously as a soldier, a sister, a mother, a ######, and a #######.

During her five years of service — including a year of deployment to Iraq during and after the invasion — Williams and her female peers navigate both extreme physical danger and emotional minefields. As a specialist in Military Intelligence, fluent in Arabic language skills, Williams finds herself at the forefront of the troops' interaction with local people. Brave and patriotic, with a strong sense of duty to her country and her fellow soldiers, she is unafraid to level complaints and criticism against the inefficiencies and errors of the military — sketching a blunt portrait, inspired by Ayn Rand, of the U.S. Army as "a vast communist institution."

Taking us from Baghdad to Mosul to a remote mountainous outpost on the Syrian border, Williams demonstrates a keen eye for the complexity of the U.S. military's evolving and ultimately deteriorating relations with the Iraqis. Before she leaves the country, she witnesses death up close and sees soldiers cross the line in the handling of prisoners.

Through it all — the violence, boredom, and fear as well as the light-hearted moments of humor, comraderie, and flirtation — Kayla Williams brings home with vivid intensity and empathy what it is like for a woman soldier to serve her country today. 8 pages of photographs.

<h4 class="ir review">Review:</h4> "Williams's account of her Iraq service tries very hard to be a fresh and wised-up postfeminist take: Private Benjamin by way of G.I. Jane. Showy rough language peppers every paragraph, and Williams's obsessive self-concern, expressed in a lot of one-sentence paragraphs beginning with 'I,' verges on the narcissistic. The surprise is the degree to which the account succeeds and even echoes military memoirists from Julius Caesar to Ernie Pyle. The fear, bad weather, intermittent supplies, inedible meals (especially for the vegetarian author) and crushing boredom of life in the field are all here. Williams's particular strength is in putting an observant, distaff spin on the bantering and brutality of barracks life, where kids from the Survivor generation must come to terms with a grim and confusing reality over which they have little control. The differences are less in the sexual dynamics (which mostly are an extension of office politics) than the contradictions of the conflict in which the troops are engaged, which Williams embodies more than illuminates. She learns Arabic; there's a Palestinian boyfriend and a short, failed marriage to an Iraqi civilian. While an ex-punk, Chomsky-reading liberal, Williams questions the day-to-day conduct of the war without ever really engaging with its underlying rationale. Such nuance, though, might be too much to ask. Agent, Sydelle Kramer. 8-city author tour; 20-city radio satellite tour. (Sept.)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Edited June 4, 2007 by metta

[Robor007 0]

this is wrong on so many different levels....

Definitely true. I had no idea this was going on at the levels the story is talking about.