Rape is a huge problem in the US military
December 12, 2011
Posted by:Philippa Tuckman
Research by Guardian journalists has highlighted the horrible fact that a female US soldier in Iraq is more likely to be raped by a “comrade in arms” than to be killed by enemy fire. It seems that a shocking one in three women in the US forces has been sexually assaulted.
Could it happen here? I think it’s unlikely. Like so many of the problems we see in our work at this firm, such as failure to recognise PTSD or Non-Freezing Cold Injury, avoiding sexual assaults starts with management. If the attitude at the top is that it won’t be tolerated, it happens less.
I’m not saying that, as solicitors representing injured Service people, we deal with no military compensation claims for sexual assault at all. We do, for both men and women, and it’s terrible when it happens. What I would say is that incidents of this extreme kind, once they happen, often are properly dealt with by the UK chain of command, and so repetitions are discouraged.
But there are still plenty of areas where a positive management attitude has yet to break through.