While many female officers and enlisted are experiencing unbridled misogyny to the point of rape. Two recent rape convictions were struck down by the rapists commanders. Increasing the likelihood of predation and empowering rapists with the knowledge that their sexual assaults even if revealed, tried and convicted will result in no career difficulties.
Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) said Friday that she would be sustaining her hold against Lt. Gen. Susan Helms to become vice commander of U.S. Space Command.
In a statement entered into the congressional record, McCaskill said that she was blocking the nomination because Helms had overturned a guilty verdict in a sexual assault case last year.
“With her action, Lt. Gen. Helms sent a damaging message to survivors of sexual assault who are seeking justice in the military justice system,” McCaskill said.
And even at the academy level cadets are punished for reporting sexual assaults while the rapists continue to predate with impunity.
All I need to do is look back a few years to see a different tune being played by the military. The fact that LGBT's were actively hunted down arrested and imprisoned for consensual activities. They not only lost their jobs but their good name.
As recently as 1986 consensual off base activities were given harsh sentences.
For the first two weeks of his confinement, Lt. (j.g.) Daniel Miller was kept in solitary in the Navy's Subic Bay brig in the Philippines, where his activities were limited to reading the Bible, the Stars and Stripes newspaper and the prison regulations.
Then, Miller, 24, was transferred to the military prison at Ft. Leavenworth, Kan., to begin a one-year sentence at hard labor alongside convicted killers, rapists and muggers.
Miller's crime: engaging in homosexual activity with two consenting sailors on his own time in his own apartment. Navy officials say it was the harshest sentence for consensual homosexual conduct in recent Navy history.
The Miller case has provoked outrage among many homosexuals and puzzlement among many military officers, and the Navy recently backtracked by abruptly cutting Miller's sentence to two months. He was released Friday.
And the military devoted time and effort to hunt down Gay service members:
Records show he was stationed at England Air Force base in Louisiana. He was a second lieutenant who supervised 55 people in four maintenance shops. In 1989, his operation was named branch of the year.
Performance reviews from that period describe Marose as an efficient, enthusiastic and innovative leader whose proposals saved the Air Force time and money. Superiors praised his performance. "He continuously seeks ways to improve the readiness of his branch," said one report, which also noted Marose's positive influence on morale.
On base, he was respected. Off base, he was watched. The Air Force learned he was homosexual and began a six-month investigation that Marose now calls a witch hunt.
He says his friends were questioned and he was followed, even to the Mardi Gras celebration in neighboring New Orleans
.
So when I read about how hard it is for the military to address rape I really can't swallow it. They gleefully went on witch hunts for LGBT's a short time ago. Because they wanted to.
Rapists get away with harming troops and general morale and from what I see that is how the military wants it to be.