Rape Isn't Romantic-- Or Sexual-- What About When The Victim In A Man?

Gary Jones, Army, 1984-'86:

At first I thought he was playing around. He managed to wrestle me onto my back, and I started freaking out. He pinned my arm above my head and my knee in the crook of his arm and covered my mouth with his right hand and looked at me and said, 'You will not make a noise.'

This week a friend pointed me to a twitter hashtag, #WhyIStayed, that illustrates why women stay in abusive relationships. The arguments on it, many of which are pretty universal, work for men who stay in abusive relationships too. You know the old saw about how if men could get pregnant, abortion and birth control wouldn't be controversial? Many people have also said that if men could be raped, rape would be treated different-- far more seriously-- by the legal system. Of our men are raped-- and not infrequently-- but it's a crime generally hidden from society. The new issue of GQ focuses in on sexual assault in the military and makes it clear that "more than half of the victims are men." Writer Nathaniel Penn: "According to the Pentagon, thirty-eight military men are sexually assaulted every single day. These are the stories you never hear-- because the culprits almost always go free, the survivors rarely speak, and no one in the military or Congress has done enough to stop it."

The moment a man enlists in the United States armed forces, his chances of being sexually assaulted increase by a factor of ten. Women, of course, are much more likely to be victims of military sexual trauma (MST), but far fewer of them enlist. In fact, more military men are assaulted than women-- nearly 14,000 in 2012 alone. Prior to the repeal of "Don't ask, don't tell" in 2011, male-on-male-rape victims could actually be discharged for having engaged in homosexual conduct. That's no longer the case-- but the numbers show that men are still afraid to report being sexually assaulted.

Military culture is built upon a tenuous balance of aggression and obedience. The potential for sexual violence exists whenever there is too much of either. New recruits, stripped of their free will, cannot question authority. A certain kind of officer demands sex from underlings in the same way he demands they pick up his laundry. A certain kind of recruit rapes his peer in a sick mimicry of the power structure: I own you totally. "One of the myths is that the perpetrators identify as gay, which is by and large not the case," says James Asbrand, a psychologist with the Salt Lake City VA's PTSD clinical team. "It's not about the sex. It's about power and control."

To understand this problem and why it persists twenty-two years after the Tailhook scandal, GQ interviewed military officials, mental-health professionals, and policy-makers, as well as twenty-three men who are survivors not only of MST but also of a bureaucracy that has failed to protect them.

…Terry Neal, Navy, 1975-'77: "The part that I remember before I passed out was somebody saying they were going to teach me a lesson… One of the doctors said to me afterward, 'Son, men don't get raped.'"Asbrand, the Salt Lake City V.A. psychologist explained one of the prevalent dynamics to GQ: "There's the fear that 'if other people know this about me, well, then, my life is over. No one's gonna want to be around me. They'll know that I'm less of a man.'… I was starting to hallucinate that people were coming to get me. I barricaded myself in my room in the barracks because I heard a key in the lock and thought they were coming in. It was my roommate, but I was screaming, 'Don't hurt me!' They took me to the hospital, and that's where I finally told the psychiatrist what had happened. It was a huge mistake. I was put into a mental ward out of One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. The doctor would say, 'You enjoyed it, didn't you? Come on, tell me the truth.'"

…An overpowering shame prevents many enlisted men from reporting an assault-- a sense that they must somehow be complicit in what has happened to them. Straight men often question their own sexual orientation, while gay men may struggle to find intimacy in relationships because they don't trust other men (or their own judgment). Telling the secret ruptures families and friendships. So does not telling.

The rape of a male soldier has a particular symbolism. "In a hypermasculine culture, what's the worst thing you can do to another man? Force him into what the culture perceives as a feminine role," says Asbrand of the Salt Lake City VA. "Completely dominate and rape him."

But shame isn't the only reason these men so often say nothing. Another is fear-- of physical retaliation, professional ruin, social stigma. Research suggests that the military brass may have conspired to illegally discharge MST victims by falsely diagnosing them with personality disorders. "The military has a systemic personality disorder discharge problem," write the authors of a 2012 Yale Law School white paper. Between 2001 and 2010, some 31,000 servicepersons were involuntarily discharged for personality disorders. It is likely that in many cases these were sham diagnoses meant to rid the ranks of MST victims. "If they want you to be schizophrenic," says Trent Smith, an MST survivor currently fighting his discharge from the Air Force, "you're schizophrenic." These diagnoses also spare the government the costs of aftercare: The VA considers a personality disorder to be a pre-existing condition, so it won't cover the expense of treatment for PTSD caused by a sexual assault.

Above all, MST victims keep quiet because they do not believe their attackers will be punished. And they're almost certainly right. The conviction rate in MST cases that go to trial is just 7 percent. An estimated 81 percent of male MST victims never report being attacked. Perhaps it should astonish us that any of them do.

…Heath Phillips, Navy, 1988-'89: "The two main guys-- their nickname was the Twin Towers. They held themselves like they were God and untouchable. They were both six feet five or above, 250 pounds. I weighed maybe 120 pounds soaking wet. As soon as the Twin Towers came near you, you instantly wanted to pee yourself.

"The main attacks were at night. When you're being dragged out of your bunk literally by your ear, you can't fight, because they're doing these funky things with your fingers, twisting them, and they're ripping your mouth open, and then they got another guy that has his fingers in your nose or in your eyes to make you open your mouth. That's what always used to bother me: I'm screaming, yelling, fighting, and nobody is even moving their curtains to look.

"I went AWOL; I couldn't take it no more. I tried hanging myself. I was living in the streets, and I got arrested shoplifting, and they sent me to the brig. Then I got sent back to the same berthing area, where they started terrorizing me again. The final straw was, I was taking a shower and these guys beat me up and raped me with a toilet brush. Medical told me I probably had a hemorrhoid. I went AWOL again, then turned myself in a couple of days later. Finally my executive officer came back [proposing] I take an other-than-honorable discharge.

"To this day I don't know why they did it, because they had beautiful girlfriends. I just happened to be one of their victims."

I guess most normal people would be horrified by what happens to men in the U.S. military who undergo this terror. Probably less so to men in prison:

After Throwing His Own Christian Wife Under The Bus, Whose Wife Will Bob McDonnell Be In Prison?

Will Bob McDonnell start a song and dance group in prison?

Yesterday, when I first heard-- well, read-- on twitter the jury in Virginia declare Bob McDonnell guilty on one corruption charge after another, 11 in all, I just couldn't wait to watch Rachel Maddow's show. She may not know much about electoral politics beyond a "D" or an "R," or anything at all about telling a Balkan from a Baltic, but no one knows as much about the intricacies of the Bob McDonnell case as Rachel. And no one has presented the case in a more delightful and informative way.

The moment I saw the verdict coming in, I begged out of a 6 PM meeting so I could watch her show. And there is is below. I didn't use it up top, because the second thing thing that crossed my mind was the DWT art staff. I figured that if McDonnell doesn't wind up in a Club Fed playing cricket or learning how to do needlepoint, and if he really does have to serve 30 years behind bars, he'll have no choice but to join a prison gang for self-protection. Now, I don't think Bob McDonnell is a Mexican Mafia or a Crips kind of guy. And La Nuestra Familia, Black Guerrilla Family, the Bloods, Black Gangster Disciples, MS-13 (Mara Salvatrucha) aren't gangs where he'd probably feel that comfortable. He's going to have to pick between the Aryan Brotherhood, the Texas Syndicate, the Nazi Low Riders or Dead Man Inc.

In preparation, I asked the Art Director to see if he could work up a good picture of McDonnell in the not so distant future but without picking between the Aryan Brotherhood, the Texas Syndicate, the Nazi Low Riders or Dead Man Inc specifically. I mean, if McDonnell was able to navigate between Regent "university" and Liberty "university" so successfully, he can certainly pick between the Aryan Brotherhood, the Texas Syndicate, the Nazi Low Riders and Dead Man Inc with no help from DWT. I just hope Lock Up Raw realizes how powerful a special on Bob McDonnell will be for their ratings.

Prison Rape And You

I was 20 when I first got to Afghanistan and I was 21 when I was arrested on the Afghan side of the Soviet border with 50 kilos of the best grade Mazar-i-Sharif black hash built into new cabinets in my beautiful Volkswagen camper. The border guards knew exactly what they were looking for. They got the car and the hash and I got tossed into prison. Within minutes I felt like I was in hell; it was-- to put it mildly-- the worst thing that had ever happened to me. I came to the realization that I would probably be dead by morning. My business partner back in Kabul was a relative of the king's and the son of a governor. He wasn't a prince but... was he ever a prince in my world. I was out of prison in less than an hour (and the next day I had my van and my hash back; hash wasn't illegal in Afghanistan although exporting it was, at least on the books). I didn't get raped, something that is common in these barbaric countries, like Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, Russia... the U.S.A. It's really bad in Texas, of course. Society, and the authorities, seem to take a perverse and self-righteous satisfaction, if not glee, in prison rape. It's part of the system.

Even by the standards of the Texas justice system, the number of rapes committed in our prisons is astounding. And it's even more appalling that most of the rapists are corrections officers-- the very people charged with enforcing our laws.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that of the 10 U.S. prisons with the highest rates of sexual abuse, five are in Texas. The Estelle Unit, in Huntsville, is No. 1 on that wretched list.

Nationwide, 4.5 percent of prisoners report that they've been sexually victimized in the last 12 months. At the Estelle Unit, it's 15.7 percent. Assuming that Estelle is running near its capacity, that means roughly 470 people are raped there each year; many of those victims are raped more than once.

...Most often, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics surveys, the rapists are corrections staff. The prisoners most at risk tend to be the weakest: women, gay men, juvenile offenders, the mentally disabled, the physically small and those new to life behind bars.

In every state, it's a crime for corrections officers to have sex with prisoners, whether it's consensual or not. But that crime is rarely prosecuted.

That needs to change. And lately, we have reason to hope that it will.

In 2003, George W. Bush signed the Prison Rape Elimination Act, which prompted the studies we're quoting. Attorney General Eric Holder hopes that soon he'll be able to implement the actions those studies suggested. Some of those common-sense standards seem easy to put into effect: Have a written policy of zero tolerance toward all forms of sexual abuse, whether by prisoners or corrections personnel; make it mandatory that staff report any suspicions; assess inmates' risk of abuse; protect those most in danger. (Meaning: Don't put a scrawny, new-to-prison 18-year-old in the same cell as a big, violent known rapist.)

Yesterday was the last day of Sexual Assault Awareness Month and, as Lovisa Stannow, Executive Director of Just Detention International explained at Huff Po, "Every year, more than 100,000 men, women and children are victimized while behind bars, usually by corrections officials whose very job it is to keep them safe. The U.S. Attorney General is currently reviewing national standards aimed at preventing and addressing this type of abuse. Until May 10, these measures are open for public comments."

If fully implemented, the national standards will spare countless Americans the horror of sexual abuse. But the standards are under threat. The reason: Prison officials claim that it will be too expensive to implement them-- too expensive to prevent staff from raping detainees.

Sexual assault anywhere is devastating, physically and emotionally. When such abuse happens in prison, victims face extreme challenges.

Incarcerated rape survivors tend to suffer in silence and are forced to remain in regular contact with their assailants. And prisoners have no access to rape crisis counseling in the aftermath of an attack.

In 2003, Congress recognized that the victimization of inmates constitutes a national crisis and so it unanimously passed the U.S. Prison Rape Elimination Act.

The national standards currently under review by Attorney General Eric Holder were developed by a bipartisan federal commission through extensive consultation with corrections officials, criminal justice experts, advocates and prisoner rape survivors. They are basic, common-sense measures, highlighting the need to train staff, identify likely rape victims and likely predators and ensure that prisons are subjected to independent audits.

By law, Attorney General Eric Holder has until June to review the standards and codify them as federal regulations, making them binding on detention facilities nationwide.

Sadly, it now looks like Holder will not meet his deadline. The delay is due, in large part, to a problematic cost projection study commissioned by the Justice Department in response to pressure from corrections leaders.

The moral case for these federal regulations is unassailable. But there is also a strong financial case since the standards would help eliminate sexual abuse that, in the past few years alone, has resulted in litigation costing corrections systems many millions of dollars in damages.

Contrary to what some critics say, the standards do not require substantial financial outlays. Corrections departments that already have started implementing the standards have been able to do so without increasing their spending. The experiences of these agencies refute the arguments of corrections officials who speculate that the standards will have a hefty price tag.

Last week Cliff Schecter also did a post at Huff Po on the subject. He reminds us of the shocking photos at Abu Ghraib that revolted the entire country world. When I spoke with him on the phone and told him I was going to blog about it as well, he asked me to be sure to include a link to the petition to Attorney General Holder. I hope you watched the short film up top. Watch this one too: