Eugene Delgaudio: Obama presides over Thousands More "Man on Man Rapes" in Military Sexual Assaults -- Men Are Overlooked Victims
"VASTLY UNDER REPORTED"
Public Advocate president Eugene Delgaudio says "We must not forget who also suffers from homosexual misconduct. Marriage is under attack. Children and their virtue are under attack and now a majority of the violent rape victims in the U.S. Military are adult men in service to our country according to Pentagon itself. We must stand for the victims of sexual assault, no matter how protected a group commits these crimes. "
The liberal New York Times reports: Sexual assault has emerged as one of the defining issues for the military this year. Reports of assaults are up, as are questions about whether commanders have taken the problem seriously. Bills to toughen penalties and prosecution have been introduced in Congress.
But in a debate that has focused largely on women, this fact is often overlooked: the majority of service members who are sexually assaulted each year are men.
In its latest report on sexual assault, the Pentagon estimated that 26,000 service members experienced unwanted sexual contact in 2012, up from 19,000 in 2010. Of those cases, the Pentagon says, 53 percent involved attacks on men, mostly by other men.
"It's easy for some people to single out women and say: 'There's a small percentage of the force having this problem,' " said First Lt. Adam Cohen, who said he was raped by a superior officer. "No one wants to admit this problem affects everyone. Both genders, of all ranks. It's a cultural problem."
Though women, who represent about 15 percent of the force, are significantly more likely to be sexually assaulted in the military than men, experts say assaults against men have been vastly underreported. For that reason, the majority of formal complaints of military sexual assault have been filed by women, even though the majority of victims are thought to be men.
"Men don't acknowledge being victims of sexual assault," said Dr. Carol O'Brien, the chief of post-traumatic stress disorder programs at the Bay Pines Veterans Affairs Health Care System in Florida, which has a residential treatment program for sexually abused veterans. "Men tend to feel a great deal of shame, embarrassment and fear that others will respond negatively."