http://www.truthout.org/111108WA
Tuesday 11 November 2008
by: Penny Coleman, AlterNet
This outrage gives "supporting the troops" a whole new meaning.
Sarah Palin's decision not to pay for rape kits when she was
mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, was an issue in the campaign for the White
House. But allow me to introduce the large pink elephant that has
been sitting quietly in the corner of the room: TRICARE, the
Pentagon's Military Health System that covers active duty members,
doesn't pay for rape kits, either.
Spec. Patricia McCann, who served in Iraq with the Illinois Army
National Guard from 2003 to 2004, raised the issue at the Winter
Soldier Investigation in March. McCann read a memo issued to all
MEDCOM commanders clarifying that "SAD kits" - which are forensic
rape kits - "are not included in TRICARE coverage." *
That would put Alaska and the military in a very special category.
Women in the military are twice as likely to be raped as their
civilian counterparts. In fact, "women serving in the U.S. military
today are more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by
enemy fire in Iraq," Congresswoman Jane Harman, D-Calif., told the
House Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs in May.
Harman said, "The scope of the problem was brought into acute
focus for me during a visit to the West Los Angeles VA Health Center
where I met female veterans and their doctors. My jaw dropped when
the doctors told me that 41 percent of the female veterans seen there
say they were victims of sexual assault while serving in the
military, and 29 percent said they were raped during their military service."
In July, a House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee
hearing subpoenaed Kaye Whitley, director of the Pentagon's Sexual
Assault Prevention and Response Office (SAPRO), to explain what the
department is doing to stop the escalating sexual violence in the
military. Her boss, Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, ordered her
not to appear.
Whitley was finally made available to the committee on Sept. 10,
but only after having been threatened with a contempt citation.
Whitley first informed the committee that the DoD was conducting
a "crusade against sexual assault."
She then sought to reassure the committee with an accounting of
all the heroic measures the Pentagon is planning to implement in the
very near future.
But finally, she had to admit that in 2007 there were 2,688
sexual assaults in the military, including 1,259 reports of rape.
Just 8 percent (181) of those cases were referred to courts martial,
compared to a civilian prosecution rate of 40 percent. And almost
half of those cases were dismissed without investigation. (And I say
Whitley "had to admit" the number of cases because in 2004, Congress
woke up to the fact that the DoD was blowing off the issue and
required the military to make yearly reports on all matters relating
to sexual assault in the Armed Forces. But those reports did not
indicate either prioritizing or progress - hence the hearings.)
Rep. John Tierney, D-Mass., asked the committee if anyone
thought that "ordering its employees to ignore subpoenas to discuss
the topic" sounded as if DoD was taking any of this seriously. "Let
me be very clear. Preventing and responding to sexual assault
perpetrated against our soldiers is simply much too important to be
playing a game of cat and mouse." He later told Stars and Stripes
that there are only seven people on Whitley's staff to devise and
implement the military's sexual assault program for the entire
military. That number speaks for itself.
This is not news. As far back as 1995, Reuters reported that
"Ninety percent of women under 50 who have served in the U.S.
military and who responded to a survey report being victims of sexual
harassment, and nearly one-third of the respondents of all ages say
they have been raped."
Furthermore, the Pentagon acknowledges that 80 percent of
military rapes are not reported in the first place, suggesting that
the actual number, if it were known, would be astronomical.
Cat-and-mouse games may sound like kid stuff, but refusing to
pay for a rape kit is anything but. It implies that the victim is to
blame. It does not encourage victims to come forward. And it makes it
far more likely that soldiers will interpret the permissive climate
as institutionally sanctioned misogyny.
In her Winter Soldier testimony, McCann noted, "The assistant
secretary of defense is soliciting legislative changes to TRICARE
benefits which will include these kits within covered TRICARE supplies."
I have been in touch with the office of the assistant secretary,
S. Ward Casscells, M.D. It seems that he has indeed solicited such
legislation, and it is due to go into effect in December as an
amendment to the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for
fiscal year 2007. The amendment contains some "background" that is
worth sharing.
Currently, forensic examinations are not covered for
beneficiaries in civilian health care facilities through TRICARE
medical plans because TRICARE "may cost share only medically or
psychologically necessary services or supplies. Forensic examinations
are not conducted for medical treatment purposes, but for the
preservation of evidence in any future criminal investigation and/or
prosecution."
The decision to treat rape kits as purely evidentiary, ignoring
the very real medical and psychological benefits to the victim, is
reprehensibly primitive thinking. Making sure that those legislative
changes happen as planned would be a long overdue step out of the
primal ooze that has slimed our military in the eyes of our citizens
and the world.
Speaking to Palin's decision not to pay for rape kits, the
former governor of Alaska, Tony Knowles, was quoted in Palin's
hometown paper, the Frontiersman, as saying, "We would never bill the
victim of a burglary for fingerprinting and photographing the crime
scene, or for the cost of gathering other evidence. Nor should we
bill rape victims just because the crime scene happens to be their bodies."
When Barack Obama decides who he will appoint to head the
Department of Veterans Affairs in his administration, he should
consider appointing someone who also understands how important it is
that women's bodies, souls, dignity and health be taken seriously.
Tammy Duckworth, who is reported to be at the top of his list,
certainly has had personal experience with a health care delivery
system she has called "a little bit arcane."
Duckworth is now director of the Illinois Department of Veterans
Affairs, but in 2004, she was a Blackhawk helicopter pilot in Iraq
and lost both of her legs in a crash. She describes the care she
received at Walter Reed Army Medical Center as "excellent," but adds,
"the comfort package I received contained men's Jockey shorts, and
the local VA hospital carried Viagra but not my birth control."
There are currently about 1.7 million female veterans in the
United States, and the Department of Defense estimates that there are
about 200,000 women, 15 percent of the military, on active duty.
Thirty-nine percent of those women return from Iraq or Afghanistan
with mental health issues, and, for more than a third who seek VA
health care, the precipitating trauma was a sexual assault.
Every VA center now screens both men and women for sexual
trauma. That is an improvement. Still, Duckworth says, "I don't think
the VA mental health care system is ready for (female veterans)." It
would be encouraging to see a VA director who has some understanding
of how important that is to fix.
--
* The overwhelming indictment of the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan - and the heartbreaking devastation they have wrought on
the souls of young American soldiers - are now the subject of an
invaluable book edited by Aaron Glantz and issued by Haymarket Books.
Penny Coleman is the widow of a Vietnam veteran who took his own
life after coming home. Her latest book, "Flashback: Posttraumatic
Stress Disorder, Suicide and the Lessons of War," was released on
Memorial Day 2006. Her Web site is Flashback.
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