Abusing Privates

Duty-Honor-Country. Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, and what you will be. They are your rallying points: to build courage when courage seems to fail; to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith; to create hope when hope becomes forlorn.

General of the Army Douglas MacArthur (Speech at West Point, May 12, 1962)

Our service academies have long-standing traditions of honor and sacrifice. They have produced Presidents and distinguished warriors on the field of battle. Their curricula is rigorous, the required discipline legendary and the demands for physical strength and courage enormous. They are training some of the most important leaders that the United States will have in the coming decades. But with the admission of women to these institutions comes evidence of frailty and failure at one of the most confounding levels: the practice, seemingly increasing over the years, of sexual assault.

The numbers are bad enough, but when you factor in the Department of Defense calculation that as few as 10% of such assaults are ever reported, the probable actual numbers are staggering. The December 15^th Washington Post gives us the officially reported statistics (from an annual Report on Sexual Harassment and Violence at the Military Service Academies prepared by the DOD - http://www.sapr.mil/): “A total of 41 sexual assaults involving students were reported to authorities at West Point, the Naval Academy and the Air Force Academy in 2009-10. In the previous academic year, 25 were reported…. The Air Force Academy, in Colorado Springs, Colo., had the largest increase, from eight reported sexual assaults in 2008-09 to 20 in 2009-10, a jump of 150 percent…. West Point - officially, the U.S. Military Academy - in West Point, N .Y., reported 10 assaults in 2009-10, an increase of one…. The Naval Academy, in Annapolis, Md., reported 11 assaults in 2009-10, an increase of three.”

A sample survey suggested that 56% of female cadets and 12% of males have experienced sexual harassment at their respective academy. What’s wrong with this picture? A couple of guys just blowing off steam in the pressurized machismo academy environment? Is there really more stress these college years than on a battlefield where civilians are particularly vulnerable to well-armed soldiers? Can we ever trust a field commander who cracked as an undergraduate? Of course not! The academies have all emphasized sensitivity training, but the numbers are going the wrong way. Why?

Some suggest that more “victim-friendly” rules are simply encouraging more women to make reports, that the numbers have been this bad since women were admitted. And indeed, the Air Force Academy, with a vastly higher approval rating as to its sexual assault response coordinator, may have more reported violations as a result: “The survey showed 47 percent of female respondents and the same percentage of males at the Air Force Academy regarded the coordinator as a valuable resource to ‘a large extent.’… At the Naval Academy and West Point, the percentages for the same answer ranged from 14 percent to 19 percent for female and male respondents.” The Post. Perhaps a new telephone “hot line” will make it easier for women to make the report… no eye contact or being seen going into the coordinator’s office; it will be in effect starting in March.

But while it takes time to change the macho ethos – some say a decade, and the anti-assault program is only halfway there – there needs to be a much greater effort to weed out potential future officers who believe, sober or inebriated, that it ever OK to assault sexually, humiliate or harass anyone, much less someone who has no or little power to resist. The photograph above from the Abu Ghraib military prison (Iraq), with one version or another printed or telecast or Webcast in every country on earth, did more damage to our credibility than any loss of any battle fought during that entire military campaign. Who were the officers who allowed such conduct? The DOD needs to dig deeper, screen better and send a vastly clearer message to young men and women who think that they should find a career through one of these great institutions.

I’m Peter Dekom, and a U.S. military commander is a person in whom this nation places a most sacred trust.