Senator Jon Tester and Representative Chellie Pingree introduced the “Ruth Moore Act of 2013.” Named in recognition of Navy veteran, military sexual assault survivor and activist Ruth Moore (subject of our Action), the bill would lower the evidentiary burden needed to prove service-related PTSD for survivors so that they can receive benefits and necessary services from the Department of Veterans Affairs. The passage of this bill would fulfill one of the three objectives of Equality Now's campaign, and we will be following this process closely as it progresses.
Ruth Moore giving testimony at hearing on
veteran affairs
Approximately 19,000 sexual assaults take place in the U.S. military each year; Ruth Moore, at the age of 18, survived two of them. Ruth enlisted in the U.S. Navy during her senior year of high school in search of a better life. Her family couldn’t afford college and the military was her best chance at obtaining a college degree. In 1987, after boot camp and service school, Ruth was posted overseas in the Azores.
Less than three months after arriving, her direct supervisor raped her and infected her with a sexually transmitted disease. Ruth reported this rape to the chaplain, whose role is to provide counseling and assistance. To her knowledge, her rapist was never investigated. The only response to her outcry was retaliation – Ruth was raped a second time by her supervisor.
Without any way to access help, Ruth became depressed and attempted suicide. After surviving this attempt, she went to the chaplain again seeking assistance. She was sent back to the US, placed in a psychiatric unit and wrongfully diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, which was a common diagnosis given to military sexual assault victims at the time. She was discharged from the Navy. It was easier for the military to get rid of her than to admit that she’d been raped.
Ruth’s rapist was never charged or disciplined. From her sexual assaults, Ruth suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), including panic attacks, migraine headaches and insomnia. She applied for disability benefits through the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) multiple times, but was denied. She was told she could not obtain benefits because she did not submit enough evidence to prove she was raped; she continued to challenge this assertion and fight for her rights. Finally in 2010, over 20 years after her assault, the VA acknowledged that she had been raped and was entitled to disability benefits. Ruth is now actively advocating for the rights of the many military sexual assault survivors.
Women are an integral and dynamic part of the U.S. military, and have served their country since the American Revolution. Women make up more than 14% of the U.S. Armed Services and more than 280,000 U.S. women have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. But despite their contributions and sacrifices, the U.S. military continues to be a hostile environment for women. Sexual assault and harassment in the military is fueled by the widespread gender-based discrimination within the U.S. military and exacerbated by policies and practices which victim-blame, don’t allow for the civil remedies available to non-military Americans, and fail to hold perpetrators accountable. For example, studies show that men in the military are more likely to believe in traditional sex-role attitudes and in rape myths, such as women “ask for it,” than a comparable group of civilian men. In military units where sexual harassment is tolerated or initiated by senior officers, incidents of rape triple or quadruple.
Service women raped by fellow service members rarely obtain justice or the services they need to recover. Approximately 1 out of every 100 sexual assaults in the military results in the conviction of the perpetrator. This is due to the multitude of obstacles rape survivors face in pursuing justice, including in reporting the crime, getting a thorough and impartial investigation, and seeing their assailant face appropriate charges and punishment.
Instead of an independent party, an officer within the perpetrator’s chain-of-command is charged with investigating sexual assault complaints and is given an enormous amount of discretion. This discretion leads to conflicts of interest and abuse of power, especially as both the survivor and perpetrator may be under the same officer’s command. Commanders also have an incentive to downplay or cover-up sexual assaults happening within their chain-of-command, as these crimes reflect poorly on the unit. Survivors must obtain justice through the military justice system. Unlike civilians, they cannot seek to hold their employer – the U.S. military - accountable through civil litigation for failing to protect them from sexual assault or harassment.
Sexual assault and harassment causes the same rates of PTSD in women veterans as combat does in men. However, sexual assault survivors face particular challenges in accessing disability benefits from the VA as VA employees often disbelieve survivors’ accounts of assault – even when backed up by physician’s reports – and require evidence from other sources that corroborate the survivor’s account. Tellingly, only 32% of PTSD claims related to sexual assault are approved by the VA, while 54% of overall PTSD claims are approved. The VA must lower the evidentiary burden needed to prove service-related PTSD and accept the survivor’s testimony alone as proof that the sexual assault occurred.
The failure to protect service women from sexual assault while in the military and to enable survivors to obtain justice and services violates the United States’ international legal obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which requires States to protect fundamental human rights that are commonly violated in these cases – including equal protection of the law, the right to be free from discrimination (including gender-based violence), and the right to an effective remedy. In her June 2011 report, the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women noted the “prevalent incidents of rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment” in the U.S. military and called on the United States to “ensure the effective implementation of a no-tolerance policy for rape…in the military, [and] ensure adequate investigation of all allegations by an independent authority.”
The Service Women’s Action Network (SWAN) is actively campaigning against impunity for sexual assault in the military and working to address the needs of survivors like Ruth, so that others don’t have to wait more than 20 years to obtain the help they need. Given that years of Congressional hearings, taskforces and reports have made no discernible change, it is clear that more assertive actions must be taken to better prevent sexual assault and enable survivors to access justice and services.
