there's a movie about rape and sexual assault in the U.S. military

Last night, at the invitation of the head of the local Iraq Veterans Against the War chapter, I saw TheInvisible War (IMDB, Wikipedia), a documentary by Kirby Dick about both rape in the military and the military's response to rapes in the military. The movie is showing at the Music Box Theater until July 5.

This is going to be a long blog entry. So, I'm going to include an outline. You can skip to the points that are interesting to you.

1. The film
   A. The list of reasons why this is a good film
   B. Who are the “bad guys” in the film?
   C. Congress gets a pass in the film
2. Connecting the film to my military experience
A. I was sexually molested
B. Rape at Navy Recruiting District Chicago
C. M Division on USS St. Louis (LKA-116)
D. Kicking a waitress in Phnom Penh
3. Connecting the film to my activist experience
   
   A. Dorothy Mackey
   B. What could Congress do?

Continued below the fold.

The Film

Why is The Invisible War a good film?

1. It's about a compelling subject.
2. It has sympathetic characters.
3. It has a narrative arc. Both Kori Cioca's VA claim and the lawsuit alleging civil rights violations create a narrative arc which create the sense of movement and tension as to the resolution of the conflict. Without this, I suspect the film would have become a draining experience of dumping information and negative experiences on the audience.
4. It conveys a point of view.
5. The cinematography, audio and other film making techniques are transparent and don't draw attention to themselves.

The bad guys: Kaye Whitley and Major General Mary Kaye Hertog

The film includes interviews with the current director of the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office (SAPRO), MGEN Hertog and her predecessor, a civilian named Kaye Whitley.


Whitley comes across as a clueless, privilege woman, raised wealthy and married wealthy at a young age. She has had a few appointments to do nothing jobs in her life thanks to her connections. And she's never encountered a problem that couldn't be solved by telling a powerful man that everything he's doing is OK.


That Whitley was appointed in 2005 fits. She's exactly the type of woman you'd expect the Bush administration to appoint from their network of Susan G. Komen/GOP fundraisers.


Hertog struck me as a more sinister figure. Whereas, Whitley was fucking clueless, Hertog knew enough that I could tell she was lying.


Hertog was completely dismissive of the idea that commands would ever weigh the performance of a servicemember or officer as part of deciding whether to move ahead with a rape or sexual assault investigation or charges after an investigation is complete.


This is the whole point of giving commanders total proprietorial discretion. It's so the commanders can use their judgment. If the cases are 100% clear, then there's no discretion or judgment involved. To turn Hertog's argument around, if it's always clear what the right thing to do is, then the military won't mind relinquishing these decisions to a third party, right? After all, it's obvious what the right call is and military readiness never enters into the decision.


Hertog also claimed that the solution to commands not investigating (or not prosecuting) rape allegations was for the victim to call the DOD Inspector General. Hertog's answer was bullshit in general and in the specific.


When someone hears the name DOD Inspector General they probably picture the G-man version of a private detective. The reality is closer to a call center in India. Here's what DOD IG does with a complaint. 1. Write down the information. 2. Look at which military service is being complained about. 3. Send it to that applicable service to investigate. 4. Wait for a response.


Then the services send the complaint back down the chain of command until it gets to the commander who shirked his/her duty in the first place.


The Invisible War did expose Hertog for being 100% full of shit by noting that in the past year DOD IG investigated ZERO rape allegations.

Congress gets off easy

The issue of rape in the military is currently being considered. The Department of Defense and Congress are considering it, if not considering taking action. The director and his allies presumably want policy changes.

The film is tough on DOD personnel, but is gracious to members of Congress. This is a natural bi-product of telling the story from the point of view of the plaintiffs in the sexual harassment case. Members of Congress were quite gracious to them.

But this misses an important point. Congress has been made aware of the issue of rape and sexual assault in the military in the past. And Congress either couldn't take effective action or declined to take effective action.

Connecting the film to my experience

After graduating from high school in 1985, I attended the U.S. Naval Academy. I graduated in 1989 and was an active duty Navy officer until Halloween, 1996. I'm going to talk about experiences as a midshipman, a division officer on USS St. Louis (LKA-116) and as an officer recruiter at Navy Recruiting District Chicago, part of Navy Recruiting Command.

I was sexually molested

On midshipman cruise in 1988, I was assigned to USS Iwo Jima (LPH-2). When I became ill, I sought medical attention. As part of the medical examination, the corpsman, Petty Officer D molested me.

After the cruise, I had a conversation with another midshipman who had an experience with Petty Officer D. The other midshipman commented on Petty Officer D behaving strangely. It's not hard to connect the dots that the other midshipman probably received an unwanted sexual advance. An LPH is a big ship, crew almost 700. It seems improbable that we both had an interaction with one particular corpsman.

This is a weak data point, but consistent with the movie's thesis that men who perpetrate sexual assaults are mostly serial predators and repeat offenders.

Which means, if the military got serious about discharging abusers, the situation would significantly improve in a short period of time.

On a personal note, this is the second time I have revealed this to anybody. The first time was about ten years ago to a woman I was dating. She asked me about it. I had brought it up. But I got quite prickly and didn't want to talk about it.

Rape at Navy Recruiting District Chicago

At NRD Chicago, a chief petty officer who recruited in western Illinois (I think it was either the station in Galesburg or Sterling) was accused of raping a 17 year old girl who was in the Delayed Entry Program. CDR GE, the commanding officer, was committed to doing the right thing, as he understood it. He assigned a female chief petty officer to do the investigation.

The chief said she was uncomfortable interviewing the accused because they were both chiefs at the command, so LT W and I were assigned to interview him. The accused chief waived his rights and gave an interview.

His story made no sense. And he just came across as a creepy guy who didn't have any friends.

The chief claimed he stopped at his place to get a Navy book for his DEPper. When he went to his place she snuck by him to get into his place. And that's how she knew what the inside of his place looked like.

He had some BS story for why he dropped her from the Delayed Entry Program within three days. Recruiters don't drop people from the DEP until 1. they are forced or 2. the recruiter is +1 (or more) for the month and can take the loss.

(BTW, local law enforcement was shit in this case. Once they learned that she was in his place without coercion they refused to even investigate. She did the right thing and reported the rape promptly. It took about two weeks for her family to figure out how to raise the issue with the DOD bureaucracy.)

In the end, the chief was disciplined at Non-Judicial Punishment. He was fined a half months pay for two months and, IIRC, got a suspended reduction in paygrade. NRD Chicago did get him out of recruiting, but he was convicted for violating regulations by having the girl in his personal residence, not rape. So, his next command wouldn't know he was a predator and nothing would show up on any kind of civilian background check.

Should the chief had been prosecuted at a special or general court-martial? In my view, yes. I don't know for certain, but I suspect that the admiral in charge of Navy Recruiting Command, the Navy Recruiting Area Five commander and maybe the JAG Corps officers were all pushing for a quick disposition at NJP that disciplined the chief, but avoided a finding that a rape occurred.

It's bad PR for Navy Recruiting Command to acknowledge that a recruiter raped a 17 year old girl in the DEP.

And this is the kind of bias that works against anyone who reports a rape. It's never a good time to report a rape to the chain of command. The chain of command is always going to prefer to make the allegation go away.

 M Division on USS St. Louis (LKA-116)

As much as it's an ego boost to tell the story where I'm the hero or at least morally pure, it's not always the case.

On the Lou, there was one main machinery room. The equipment forward belong to the Boilers Division and included two 600-psi boilers. The equipment aft belonged to Machinery Division and included the ship's turbine and reduction gear that drove the shaft (propeller).

I was the B Div officer and DG was the M Div officer. In addition to having the same boss (chief engineer, aka cheng) we shared a stateroom and lived together off the ship. DG and I spent a bunch of time together. We talked. We did stuff together.

At some point I became aware of a hazing incident in M Division. A number of petty officers took Fireman J to the ship's classroom. They then restrained him and beat him with their penises.

As far as I knew, Fireman J was not raped, but it went further than the routine stuff that happened in the main machinery room. Swiping a penis on a coffee mug was pretty common. And some of the petty officers like to whip out their penises by unzipping the bottom of their coveralls. They would then start a conversation and keep eye contact and move close enough until they were rubbing the penis against the other person's hand.

In hindsight, I--and other chiefs and officers--should been more assertive at nixing the hijinks. If I and other disallowed the environment where whipping out one's dick was normal then probably the assault on Fireman J wouldn't have happened.

But I failed to do the right thing. And that created an environment where a culture of bullying and sexual harassment was allowed to grow and it claimed a specific victim. 

To be continued...