Rape in the military

Kirby Dick’ gut-wrenching documentary The Invisible War explores the preponderance of rape in the U.S. military.

The film uses interviews of victims of sexual assault with cases going back to the 1960s and up to the present. While each story has its particular differences, all reflect the double horror of not only being raped but seeing their perpetrators walk away.

In addition, many are injured in the assaults and can’t get proper medical care for the long-term effects of those injuries, physical and psychological.

The film reveals the unjust military system that provides no accountability to rapists. There is no court these victims can appeal to. Instead, each unit is under the authority of a unit commander, who serves as judge and jury in such cases. At times, this person is the perpetrator, and the victim is left with no recourse but to resign, often with a dishonorable discharge.

Those interviewed for the film joined the armed services (whether Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines or Coast Guard) out of a strong patriotism. Many had other family members who had military careers.

The statistics, which, the film notes, all come from the Department of Defense, are alarming:

• more than 20 percent of women in the U.S. military have been sexually assaulted;

• in 1991, over 200,000 had reported sexual assault;

• 80 percent of assaults are not reported;

• 15 percent of recruits have committed rape before entering the military;

• 40 percent of homeless female veterans have been raped;

• women who have been raped have a higher PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) rate than men who have been in combat;

• 1 percent of men (20,000 per year) in the military are sexually assaulted (and not by homosexuals);

• the average sex offender has 300 victims.

The film also interviews military counselors in the film who point out that when there is no accountability for sexual assaults, that is an invitation for sex offenders to do as they wish.

Congress has tried to address this travesty, and each time, spokespeople for the military insist they have a no-tolerance policy. Yet it continues without abate. And since the military is outside the civil court system, victims have no recourse. The courts have ruled that rape is an occupational hazard of the military.

The military does acknowledge some cases. In 2010, it cataloged 3,158 cases of sexual assault, but only a sixth of these came to court-martial, and only 175 men, one in 20 of those charged, did any jail time.

Major General Mary Kay Kellogg, director of the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office, tells the camera that assault victims should petition the Defense Department’s Attorney General. But of the 2,994 cases forwarded to the AG, not one was investigated.

We learn that one woman’s assailant “is still in the Air Force and was awarded Airman of the Year during her rape investigation.” Another assailant “became a supervisor at a major U.S. corporation and sexually assaulted a female employee. He was never charged and lives in Queens, N.Y.”

Last April 14, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta watched the film. Two days later he took the decision to prosecute away from commanders.

It’s something, but it’s not nearly enough. 

Today, The Invisible War received an Academy Award nomination for best documentary. I hope this means more people will see it and that action is taken to address such injustice.

An Ojibwe storyteller

Louise Erdrich has created an oeuvre that is unique in American fiction. She combines excellent prose with captivating storytelling while unveiling a community much neglected, that of Native Americans. While other good writers address this diverse group, she has done so now with 14 novels, along with short stories, poetry, nonfiction and children’s books.

While her novels are primarily stories, they also provide information and greater understanding of Native people. The Round House, her latest, is no exception. Set primarily in 1988, it tells the story of the rape of an Ojibwe woman, Geraldine Coutts, and what follows.

Set in a North Dakotan community where Erdrich set her 2008 novel, The Plague of Doves, the story is told by Geraldine’s 13-year-old son, Joe, some 20 years later.

Geraldine is a lawyer, and Bazil, her husband and Joe’s father, is a judge. An important element in the story is “the tangle of laws that hinder prosecution of rape on many reservations,” as Erdrich writes in an Afterword. There she mentions a 2009 report by Amnesty International that included these statistics: “1 in 3 Native women will be raped in her lifetime (and that figure is certainly higher as Native women often do not report rape); 86 percent of rapes and sexual assaults upon Native women are perpetrated by non-Native men; few are prosecuted.”

Geraldine is traumatized and reluctant to give any details about the attack. Bazil wants to know just where it happened, because if didn’t happen on reservation land, the rapist cannot be prosecuted.

Meanwhile, Joe is anxious to find his mother’s attacker. He and his three friends search the area near the Round House, a sacred space and a place of worship for the Ojibwe that sits near the border of the reservation. He uncovers details about his mother’s attack but also learns secrets about the tribe’s history.

Erdrich grounds her story in a time and place and includes details about Indian life: “the only way you can tell an Indian is an Indian is to look at that person’s history.” One character says, “You go to your doodem first. … Find the ajijaak,” noting that Joe’s father and grandfather were ceremoniously taken into the crane clan, or Ajijaak. And the crane was Joe’s “doodemag,” his luck.

Later, the narrator explains that “an Ojibwe person’s clan meant everything at one time and no one didn’t have a clan, thus you knew your place in the world and your relationship to all other beings.”

At times, this kind of detail feels intrusive, as if imparting an anthropology lesson that interrupts the story. Yet it also feels needed. Even if this borders on being didactic, it’s good to learn such details.

Erdrich also shows her poetic skills, as in this passage: “Through some refraction of brilliance the wings arched up from the slender body. Then the feathers took fire so the creature was consumed by light.”

Much of the novel is taken up with Joe and his friends’ exploits as rambunctious boys. They encounter danger and learn surprising things about the local priest. The book is a coming-of-age story as well as a mystery. And while the suspense eventually builds and comes to a riveting end, the narrative meanders too much along the way.

Although The Round House is not among Erdrich’s best, it is one more piece of a remarkable body of work that deserves reading. She is one of our literature’s treasures.