ACLU sues for records documenting rapes and sexual harassment in the military
This ACLU press release reports:
The Service Women’s Action Network (SWAN), the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Connecticut filed a lawsuit today with the U.S. District Court in New Haven, Connecticut against the Department of Defense and Department of Veterans Affairs for their failure to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests seeking government records documenting incidents of rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment in the military. Tens of thousands of service members each year are estimated to have experienced some form of military sexual trauma (MST). These acts occur nearly twice as often within military ranks as they do within civilian society.
. . . .
The lawsuit filed today states that the goal of the lawsuit is to “obtain the release of records on a matter of public concern, namely, the prevalence of MST within the armed services, the policies of the DOD and VA regarding MST and other related disabilities, and the nature of each agency’s response to MST.”
Let’s just go ahead and go to court-martial for every single allegation for the next two years. And when the overall number of convictions doesn’t go up and the percentage of acquittals skyrocket perhaps folks can see that at worst the military is at least as good on this issue as the rest of society and probably better.
Don’t we already do that?
Zing!
Anon 1844–the only thing that will be taken as meaning is that “it’s even harder to get a conviction of guilty people in the military because just look at the conviction rate in the military vs. the conviction rate in the civilian world!”
Of course, maybe I’ve missed the bus and that’s what is claimed already.
Wait a minute … there’s a term for rape in the military: Military Sexual Trauma? What’s wrong with calling rape by its name? Which one is worse; being raped, or being militarily sexually traumatized? Is sex assault in the military quantifiably different to require a unique appellation? How about College Sexual Trama (“CST”), City Park Sexual Trauma (“CPST”), or United Nations Peacekeeping Sexual Trauma (“UNPST”)? I realize I’m being glib about a very serious subject, but the term MST is absurd.
I assume the intent is to capture all sexual assaults short of rape in one term.
And thereby blur the lines between rape and sexual harassment.
The purpose of this lawsuit is to avoid being castigated by their constituency for failing to engage in the “simple math”; it’s too easy to look at numbers and “conclude” that sexual assaults occur at a higher rate in the military than in civilian society (despite clear evidence that the reporting rate is higher due to other factors such as increased education, military orders requiring reporting, greater availability of support structures such as counseling-the list goes on). This is the classic “ice cream causes crime” rationale: crime rates increase during the summer, and the summer months represent the *prime* market for ice cream, therefore ice cream causes crime. The very existence of a higher frequency within a particular community or timespan becomes the proximate cause of that frequency.
This puts the ACLU in a problematic position politically. Should they argue otherwise or fail to act on this “evidence”, they would be criticized as accepting the efforts and explanations of the only employer, agency or entity that devotes as much time, resources and talent to the prevention, detection, treatment, and punishment of sexual assault as DoD does. (To the best of my knowledge, WalMart does not have uniformed victim advocates, although I confess ignorance on the nature of their counseling plan coverage; I strongly doubt they would offer transitional compensation to a non-employee spouse who was sexually assaulted by an employee).
Based on political agendas alone, it is reasonable to conclude that this suit represents little more than agenda litigation on the part of the ACLU, and may be dismissed as such politically. Rhetorically however (and confirmation bias aside, one hopes), an ad hominem strategy would be a mistake in approaching the FOIA suit. Dismissing the suit legally may be significantly more difficult-depending on why the FOIA suit was brought.
For example, were the ACLU suit filed on grounds of constructive denial due to DoD failure to respond to the FOIA request within the allotted time, DoD would look very bad. On the other hand, if the ACLU filed prematurely, or on grounds that DoD did not produce information it either doesn’t have or wasn’t in the precise form ACLU wanted, then their agenda becomes more clear.
In either case, the litigation represents an excellent opportunity to educate the public on the depth, range and nature of DoD efforts in education, prevention, treatment and accountability. Let’s hope this dialogue includes amplification of what we know, not just what the ACLU thinks.
As I understand it, MST is the umbrella term used by the medical community, not a legal term. Under current military policy, sex crime victims have the option to proceed with restricted or unrestricted reporting. Restricted gets them medical care and counseling, while unrestricted gets that plus initiates a criminal investigation. I’m sure the bureaucratic wonder that is the U.S. military keeps statistics even on the supposedly confidential restricted reports. The statistics of rape and other Article 120 violations would only reflect the unrestricted numbers; presumably the actual number of rapes/sexual assaults/etc. is higher when those reported under the restricted system are included, and higher still if “sexual harassment” (not a stautorily defined term under the UCMJ, though it is defined in DoDD 1350.2) is included, though I’m not sure if only a certain degree of harassment rises to the level of “trauma.”
Where do they get their stats?
Well Velasquez went before a court-martial – so we’ve got that going for us.