sexual assault

I wanted to share some stories with everyone. I have been doing a lot of research as of late on rape/sexual harassment/assault in the military. A lot of the statistics are hard to find, probably something swept under the rug for a while.75-85% of accused rapists get HONORABLY discharged. Anyway. I was talking/ranting with some of the other women that I work with about harassment, and how the cases of rape/assault in deployed areas are staggering and underreported. We’re scared of our soldiers when we’re fighting for our country? That doesn’t make sense, but it can be true.

Almost every woman I work with has been harassed in some form in her military career. During my first deployment to Iraq my HGFL (Home Girl for Life), Lewy woke up to a man standing over her bed. (After she found shorts, she chased him with a 9mm, too bad she didn’t catch him.) Turns out he was this creep I told to eff-off at the gym. He must have followed us to our building. (I never liked when he was near us, he stared up my shorts when I was benching, all creepy-weirdo like.) She reported it, and since he never actually touched her, NOTHING happened. Our commander (A civilian sex crimes Detective) tried to explain the importance of him getting brought up on charges to the upper echelons, but notta. I think towards the end of the tour they caught him walking in on more female soldiers and he had to be permanently escorted by 2 guards, and his weapons got taken away. Whether or not he was punished under UCMJ, I have no idea. I am going to put that on the list of “Reasons Why I Will NEVER Re-Enlist.”

The other night, I was talking to Irmelin about custody/ divorce issues and It made me want to go ahead and post a blog here about what my thoughts are and some of the issues that have affected me in this topic personally.

I saw this statistic the other day “In the USA 63% - 84% of men who attempt to win custody succeed – Even when there is a history of domestic violence.” (1993 study: National Center Protective Parents)

That seriously just makes me so mad. Yes it was in 1993 but if I remember correctly that was even true as of 2000 as said in the book “Manifesta”.
What gets me, Is that you hear men as Irmelin says say “Men are discriminated against and almost never given custody of their children simply because they're men!” Yet there it is an actual statistic showing that women are the ones being discriminated even in a custody dispute where the men was a known abuser. It’s just sad.

Being a Northern Virginian at heart, I have always found the state of Maryland to be a little bit suspect, a little bit sketchy. Yesterday morning? They blew my mind.

Montgomery County is the affluent Maryland county bordering the District and also the site of a case that a Maryland appellate court overruled yesterday. Judge Kenney Davis in this appellate court overturned the conviction of a rapist because the trial judge should have answered "no" when the jury asked if a woman could withdraw her consent once sex had begun.

It speaks for itself, and I have very little to add to that travesty of justice. Apparrently this is not a crime under current Maryland law, which leads the legal-minded side of me to grudgingly agree with the ruling (a fact that I unabashedly despise); the law requires consent prior to penetration, and that's all. The judge concedes that refusal to stop could constitute assault. Wait, but not sexual assault? Ri-damn-diculous.

When I was seventeen years old, my life changed. It was not a gradual change and not a decision I’d made. It was just something that happened to me. It was spring, late May. I had a free period at school and decided, on a whim, to leave the stuffy building and go to the park to study. It was a typical Milan spring day – warm enough to wear shorts and a t-shirt. Nothing too terribly showy or flashy, but nevertheless bare arms and bare legs. I’d always felt safe in that city and the thought that I should worry about my safety had never occurred to me. So that morning, I packed up my things and walked across the street to Parco Sempione, intending to follow the path past the Arena to Castello Sforzesca. Like any other day, the area was full of tourists and I was just one of many young women walking through the park. Why he picked out me, from all of them, I don’t know. But he did.