Disclaimer

This Blog is about helping Male disabled veterans find useful information,This is not advice but research and our opinions. The information provided at this website is of a general nature provided for educational purposes, and is not meant to be specific to any veteran or other claimant in matters related to claims for benefits.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Does this happen to males?

Male Sexual Trauma is severely underreported in the military.

There has recently been great effort put forth within the Department of Defense (DoD) to establish support networks to create awareness of sexual trauma, however the efforts are in large part geared towards women service members. This is a great accomplishment as sexual trauma among females is only just beginning to get recognition and attention. There is still a long way to go for before male sexual trauma is close to fully aknowledged by the DoD.
It is widely known that sexual assaults are carried out for exhibition of power. For the most part sexual attraction is not part of the reasoning for the assaults, however that is not to say that some perpetrators have not sexualized the violence in their own mind and become attracted to their victim.
There are many bizarre tactics that are used by perpetrators that attempt to make the victim feel complicit in the acts. Often, the perpetrators will act in a playful, joking manner while carrying out the assaults.
Some call it "hazing", saying that this is an initiation ritual and that afterwards you will be part of the group. This is a frequently used mentality and is also why newcomers to a unit are often the targets of this type of abuse.
After the incident(s) a perpetrator may proclaim thier innocence, insisting that they were only playing around. This is an attempt to make the victim feel like it is their problem if they are upset. This is one way of preventing the victim from seeking help. Of course, the attempts to dissuade only get more violent from there. If you or someone you know has survived sexual assault you should know that it most certainly not your fault. Do not think about what you "could have done". Get help.
There are many regulations that are violated in any for of sexual assault along the spectrum from sexual harrassment to hazing to rape. Perpetrators should face UCMJ action for their violence.
Many survivors of MST are afraid of seeking help from their company, battalion or brigade; their immediate sources of support, because they fear retribution, being labeled and ridiculed, not believed, and worse. This is not an unreasonable fear. Often a chaplain may be a good source of support in these instances.
Maria Crane, a psychologist at VA working with trauma cases in St. Petersburg, FL says, "The military is a macho organization, and if a man is sexually assaulted, there is a stigma that means the man was weak in some way or homosexual or he did something to warrant the rape."1
The fact that the stigma exists is true, but obviously we know that the survivors of these attacks are not weak and did not want the attacks and if they are homosexual it has nothing to do with the incidents. The perpetrators are more likely to show homosexual tendencies than the survivors themselves, of course they are always veiled with machismo and bravado.
In the VA system, males make up more than 50% of all those who have reported surviving sexual trauma. This large number is due to several factors, a few of which are that there are less females in the military than males, and outreach and services to female veterans within the VA system has been less than adequate.
Do not let the statistics fool you!
While more than half of those enrolled in VA care who claim surviving MST are males, the amount of male survivors still goes extremely underreported.
References
1. Snel, Alan. (Jan 19, 2009) Sex abuse revealed in ranks. Florida Today, Melbourne, FL.

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