Not all rape in DRC — Parallels USA

Some may mourn more than celebrate International Women’s Day

March National Women’s History Month (USA)

Re-reporting, Editing by Carolyn Bennett

Brutal weapon of/in 

conflict and war — RAPE

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC CONGO

“Down the mountain in Sake [eastern DRC], I meet 40-year-old [woman],” Stephen Puddicombe reports on CBC’s Dispatches. “She walks with a baby on her back, product of a gang rape by rebels a couple of years ago. Her husband is dead, she tells me. She’s heading for the water pump, yellow plastic jugs dangle from a rope tied to her waist. She asks, ‘how do you think it feels when a woman who has been raped by a rebel now sees that same man in the army or police.’ She carries on with her chores, slowly plodding toward the line for water.”

There are “about a hundred soldiers all with guns,” Puddicombe reports from the villagers, “so they can’t fight back.”

In 2009 alone, people report there were at least 8,300 rapes in eastern Congo. Aid workers say the true toll is much higher. Among the victims were a month-old baby boy and elderly women. The UN peacekeeping force of 18,000 troops, the largest UN force in the world, has been unable to end the violence.

Now a military colonel has been tried and sentenced to 20 years. Lt. Col. Mutuare Daniel Kibibi has stood “accused of ordering his troops on New Year’s Day to attack the village of Fizi, a sprawling community 20 miles (35 kilometers) south of Baraka on an escarpment of mountains covered in banana trees.”

At trial, according to an AP account today from Baraka, Congo, one after another rape survivor “relived their attacks for a panel of judges: A newly married bride flung her torn, bloodied clothing onto the courtroom floor. A mother of six dropped to her knees, raised her arms … and cried out for peace. Nearly 50 women poured out their stories in a wave of anguish that ended Monday with the soldier’s conviction … for crimes against humanity.”  The verdict constitutes “a landmark decision in a Central African country where thousands are believed to be raped annually by soldiers and militia groups — who often go unpunished. This was “the first time a commanding officer has been tried in such an attack.…”

CBC’s Nick Czernkovich last spring spent three weeks in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He visited relief camps and interviewed people who were trying to stabilize the country.

“Most people here are poor farmers, hoping for enough food to feed their families and maybe a little extra to sell at the market,” he reports, “but that already fragile existence is fraught with the uneasy feeling that at any moment their village could be the target of an attack. … These attacks often happen at night. Armed men break down doors, loot, murder and rape indiscriminately. Entire villages have been robbed, sometimes burned to the ground in a show of force and intimidation.…

“Women are also especially vulnerable, because they are usually the ones who fetch the firewood and work the fields. Alone in the countryside, they fall prey to the roving militiamen who happen to stumble across them.… In the vilest way, women and girls are violated, sometimes beaten, mutilated and gang-raped while their families are forced to watch.”

It was around 1 a.m., one woman in a village near Masis, in North Kivu province, related her story to Nick Czernkovich, “‘when three men came into my house. …  They took all my goods and beat me. Then two of the men took turns raping me. When they [had] finished, the third one came in and asked for money. I told him I didn't have any so he beat me again.’”

This woman “was four months pregnant at the time.” Her husband “had been killed in a previous attack in December 2009.” The woman explained, “The group known as FDLR ‘looted our village and told him to carry their loot into the forest.’” Along the way, “‘they killed him.’”

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC USA

Rape is “epidemic in U.S. armed forces” so much so that women veterans have taken to suing the U.S. Department of Defense. The class action lawsuit was filed last Tuesday in the Federal District Court for the Eastern District in Virginia on behalf of seventeen plaintiffs including two men. The women gave a press conference about the suit at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Democracy Now gave some attention to the issue last Wednesday.

One of the plaintiffs in the suit is Panayiota Bertzikis, a veteran member of the U.S. Coast Guard who was raped in 2006 by a shipmate. She was off duty and on a social hike at the time. Bertzikis is now executive director of the Military Rape Crisis Center in Somerville, Massachusetts.

“The problem of rape in the military,” Bertzikis said, “is not only service members getting raped, but it is the way the military as a whole is deals with it — survivors having to be involuntarily discharged from service [and] the constant verbal abuse. Once a survivor does come forward your entire unit [turns its] back on you. The entire culture needs to be changed.” On the February 16 Democracy News program, plaintiff Kori Cioca of the U.S. Coast Guard said when she informed her command that she had been raped by another member of the Guard, the command did nothing.

“They didn’t do anything to help me,” she said. “It’s like they didn’t care, it wasn’t important—I wasn’t important. The Coast Guard is the life-saving service, yet they didn’t save mine.”

Continuing the story, Democracy Now reported that in another case, “an Army Reservist says two male service members raped her in Iraq, left her with severe bruises, and then distributed a videotape of the attack. The reservist says no charges were filed after her commander concluded [that] she ‘did not act like a rape victim’ and ‘did not struggle enough’ on the tape.”

The lawsuit against the Pentagon calls for replacing military commanders with a newly created “independent third party to handle sexual abuse complaints.”

Sources and notes

“… [I]n the Democratic Republic of Congo, where former rebels are getting away with murder,” Dispatches Featured Audio, CBC, February 17 and 20: from Lampedusa, Italy - Kingi, Democratic Republic of Congo - Uganda - Iran via Washington - Urumqi, China, February 16, 2011, http://www.cbc.ca/dispatches/2010season/2011/02/16/february-17-20-from-lampedusa-italy---sake-democratic-republic-of-congo---uganda---iran-via-washingt/

The CBC’s Stephen Puddicombe reports from the Democratic Republic of Congo, with a story of men in uniform, terrorizing the countryside, February 17, 2011, Dispatches, The state has claimed it’s successfully brought former rebels into the national army, in an attempt to pacify them but people there tell Stephen something else.

“Congo colonel gets 20 years after rape trial” (Michelle Faul— Baraka, Congo — AP), February 21, 2011, http://www.statesman.com/news/nation/congo-colonel-gets-20-years-after-rape-trial-1270578.html?printArticle=y

Sake is a town in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the eastern province of North Kivu. It is located at the northwestern extremity of Lake Kivu, 25 kilometers (15 miles) west-northwest of Goma on National Road No. 2 at the edge of the volcanic lava plains in the bottom of the Great Rift Valley, western branch, at an elevation of about 1500 m. The western escarpment of the rift valley rises to 800 m above Sake. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goma

“The sexual violence that fuels a twisted war - Canada - CBC News” (Nick Czernkovich CBC News), August 3, 2010, http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2010/07/30/f-congo-sexual-violence.html

“Class action lawsuit,” http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/pentagon-faces-class-action-suit-exposing-military-sexual-abuse-crisis/legal-issues/2011/02/15/1743

http://servicewomen.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/R-SASH-Quick-Facts

-02_12_11.pdf

“U.S. Army ignores rape epidemic within its military and makes it difficult for victims to seek justice — US vets file abuse lawsuit against military,” http://www.wikio.co.uk/video/army-ignores-rape-epidemic-military-justice-5055022

“Veterans File Class Action Suit over Sexual Abuse in Military — Over a dozen U.S. veterans have filed a class action lawsuit seeking to force the Pentagon to reform its handling of sexual abuse. The group of more than a dozen women and two men each claim to have been victimized by rape and other abuses within the military. The suit alleges that sexual crimes generally go unpunished and that victims are often forced to continue serving alongside the perpetrators,” February 16, 2011, http://www.democracynow.org/2011/2/16/headlines#9

Entire text of lawsuit, http://servicewomen.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/48879866-Military-Rape-and-Sexual-Assault-Litigation.pdf

http://servicewomen.org/our-work/litigation/class-action-lawsuit/

Rape, Sexual Assault, and Sexual Harassment in the Military

The Quick Facts, Service Women’s Action Network (SWAN, Brittany L. Stalsburg), February 2011

Author’s Note: The phrase Military Sexual Trauma (MST) is the official term for the psychological trauma that may result from military rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment.

SWAN considers the term a euphemism and prefers to call these crimes and violations what they are—rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment. The term MST masks the severity of this crisis, and it is important to properly name these egregious acts committed against our men and women in uniform.

CRISIS

3,230 military sexual assaults were reported in 2009, an increase of 11 percent from fiscal year 2008.  

215 sexual assaults were reported in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2009. 

While sexual assaults are notoriously under-reported, this problem is exacerbated in military settings. The Department of Defense (DoD) estimates that 80 percent of sexual assaults in the military go unreported. This means that in 2009 alone, approximately 16,150 sexual assaults occurred in the military. 

Prosecution rates for perpetrators of rape and sexual assault are astoundingly low 

In 2009, less than 18 percent of reported cases went to trial.

CONSEQUENCES of Military Sexual Trauma (MST) 

Rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment are the primary causal factors of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) for women, whereas combat experience is the strongest predictor of PTSD for men. 

 Rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment and their attendant consequences are often risk factors for homelessness among women veterans. 

40 percent of homeless women veterans have reported experiences of sexual assault in the military. 

Stress, depression, and other mental health issues that accompany surviving rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment make it more likely that survivors will experience high rates of substance abuse and will have difficulty finding work after discharge from the military.

AFTERMATH — problems with accessing benefits and treatment 

Rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment survivors who have used Veterans Health Administration (VHA) services report experiencing a ‘second victimization’ while under care, often reporting increased rates of depression and PTSD.  

Female rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment survivors who have used VHA services reported a lower quality of care and dissatisfaction with VHA services compared to women using outside care.  

Women are less likely to receive a PTSD diagnosis compared to men, most likely because PTSD is strongly associated with combat experience.

COSTS of Military Sexual Trauma (MST) 

In 2009, the VHA treated 65,264 patients in connection with MST. 60 percent of survivors were women. This means that 40 percent of patients being treated for conditions associated with MST in 2009 were men.  

The Veterans Administration (VA) spends approximately $10,880 on healthcare costs per military sexual assault survivor. Adjusting for inflation, this means that in 2009 alone, the VA spent almost $820 million dollars on sexual assault-related healthcare expenditures. 

The Department of Defense (DoD) estimates that legal expenses that result from military sexual assault cases average $40,000 per case. 

With 181 sexual assault-related courts-martial in 2007, DoD legal expenses totaled more than $7 million dollars.  

Of women seeking VA disability benefits for PTSD, 62.9 percent of combat veterans and 74.5 percent of noncombat veterans reported an in-service sexual assault. Sexual harassment increases turnover risk by up to 32 percent. Adjusting for inflation, the average cost of attrition per service member in 2010 ranges from approximately $34,621 to 53,251

Service Women’s Action Network (SWAN) is spearheading a national movement to end rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment in the military using litigation, legislative remedies, and grassroots public education through —

National help lines, providing legal referrals, counseling referrals, and peer support to both service women and service men, veterans, and family members of survivors of rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment in the military. SWAN advocates for justice and healing the wounds

P.O. Box 1758, New York, NY 10156-1758, www.servicewomen.org

Phone: (212) 683-0015 x324, http://servicewomen.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/R-SASH-Quick-Facts-02_12_11.pdf

“U.S. Army ignores rape epidemic within its military and makes it difficult for victims to seek justice — U.S. vets file abuse lawsuit against military,” http://www.wikio.co.uk/video/army-ignores-rape-epidemic-military-justice-5055022

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