Air Force Brochure Tells Sexual Assault Victims to ‘Submit’

[ismnotwasm]

All this comes as the Air Force, and the U.S. military more broadly, deals with the fallout of the service’s sexual-assault prevention and response chief, Lt. Col Jeffrey Krusinski, getting arrested on sexual-battery charges on Sunday. During a Senate hearing today, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), grilled Air Force officials on how Krusinski was placed in his post. “His record is very good,” Gen. Mark Welsh III, the Air Force’s chief of staff, said, citing a lack of warning signs in Krusinski’s prior service.
Welsh said he and outgoing Air Force Secretary Michael Donley were “appalled” to hear of Krusinski’s arrest. “We will not quit working this problem,” Welsh continued.

Pages from the brochure were provided to Danger Room by Protect Our Defenders, an advocacy group that raises awareness of sexual assault within the military. The organization’s spokesman, Brian Purchia, described it as an example of the military’s myopia about a problem that top leaders like Welsh have sworn to take seriously.

The brochure is “an affront to victims”, Purchia told Danger Room. “The Air Force should be passing out pamphlets to our men and women in uniform on how not to commit sexual assault. … This brochure is just the latest in a long history of failed programs and policies. The military’s sexual assault prevention campaigns are rooted in a wrong headed 1950?s paradigm.”

The military does some of that — not without controversy. An improv group called “Sex Signals” has performed for airmen to teach scenarios about sexual assault in what an official Air Force release called “a ‘lively and humorous’ way.” The Army has a video game designed to instruct soldiers about the dangers of “alcohol-induced date rape.” The military has also come under criticism for a poster advising servicemembers to “Ask When She’s Sober,” which the New York Times blasted as a “grotesque parody of an etiquette poster.”

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013/05/air-force-sexual-assault-brochure/

[niyad]

1. more of the same--making it the responsibility of the attacked, not the attacker.

[Sekhmets Daughter]

2. Just when you think it can't get any worse,...

it does. Submit? Consider the circumstances? I think, perhaps, it's time to teach women to be as brutal and violent as these men who would rape them. 40+ years of trying to raise awareness of these atrocities has done little to change the attitudes of men who think they have some right to do as they please, to whomever they please.

The older I get, the more I appreciate the myths of the Amazons!

Oh, I am in a foul mood now.

[MotherPetrie]

3. The military is an ancient model of violent male group think.

Contempt for women is inbred in its culture and will never be rooted out.

[redqueen]

4. I tried to read it...

Can't do it. Not all at once.

Sigh.

[mercuryblues]

5. So if you are a rapist

The best job to have would be in the military.




Update, 4:45 p.m.: According to the newly-released report (it’s a huge, two-volume .PDF) the Pentagon indeed estimates there were 26,000 incidents of sexual assault over the past year, and 3,374 reported cases of such. Out of those reported cases, 1,174 service members were recommended for “command action” — either judicial or administrative punishment. Of those, 594 were proffered for criminal charges; and 460 cases have been completed. Thus far, 238 people were convicted of at least one charge of sexual assault. (See page 73 in the first volume for these stats.)

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013/05/air-force-sexual-assault-brochure/