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Ryan Leigh Dostie: She Didn't Act Like a Rape Victim
Source: New York Times
She Didn’t Act Like a Rape Victim
Rape victims must yell, cry and fight, says the Army that trained us for years to be silent, strong and obedient.
By Ryan Leigh Dostie
Ms. Dostie is a writer and a veteran.
July 22, 2019
Last month, three judges on an Army appeals court — two women and a man — overturned a 2017 rape conviction at West Point. They did so on the grounds that they did not believe there was sufficient evidence to show that the sex had not been consensual. One key piece of exculpating evidence, the judges found, was that Cadet Jacob D. Whisenhunt had made no effort to avoid being detected, or even to clean up his semen from the sleeping bag of the woman who had accused him of raping her — a sign that he thought he had nothing to hide.
But why would he hide? He had nothing to fear.
I was raped during my first year as a military linguist in the United States Army in 2002. So were at least two other women in our camp in Baghdad, but only one specialist and I had the audacity to report it. I spent years wishing I hadn’t.
The first woman’s story I only know about through Rumint — rumor intelligence, the surprisingly accurate mill around which the entirety of a low-ranking soldier’s existence revolves.
-snip-
She reported — and then the Army said it wasn’t rape. They said that this shy, happily married woman simply had sex with four different guys at once in a wild orgy under the Iraqi night sky. Sure, she’d reported it herself — but only because she might get caught, the reasoning went.
Worse, she hadn’t acted like a rape victim. She’d had a rifle. Why didn’t she just shoot them? A real rape victim would have fought back. This ignores the obvious, of course: she did have an M-16. Her rapists had four.
-snip-
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/22/opinion/armed-forces-rape.html
Rape victims must yell, cry and fight, says the Army that trained us for years to be silent, strong and obedient.
By Ryan Leigh Dostie
Ms. Dostie is a writer and a veteran.
July 22, 2019
Last month, three judges on an Army appeals court — two women and a man — overturned a 2017 rape conviction at West Point. They did so on the grounds that they did not believe there was sufficient evidence to show that the sex had not been consensual. One key piece of exculpating evidence, the judges found, was that Cadet Jacob D. Whisenhunt had made no effort to avoid being detected, or even to clean up his semen from the sleeping bag of the woman who had accused him of raping her — a sign that he thought he had nothing to hide.
But why would he hide? He had nothing to fear.
I was raped during my first year as a military linguist in the United States Army in 2002. So were at least two other women in our camp in Baghdad, but only one specialist and I had the audacity to report it. I spent years wishing I hadn’t.
The first woman’s story I only know about through Rumint — rumor intelligence, the surprisingly accurate mill around which the entirety of a low-ranking soldier’s existence revolves.
-snip-
She reported — and then the Army said it wasn’t rape. They said that this shy, happily married woman simply had sex with four different guys at once in a wild orgy under the Iraqi night sky. Sure, she’d reported it herself — but only because she might get caught, the reasoning went.
Worse, she hadn’t acted like a rape victim. She’d had a rifle. Why didn’t she just shoot them? A real rape victim would have fought back. This ignores the obvious, of course: she did have an M-16. Her rapists had four.
-snip-
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/22/opinion/armed-forces-rape.html