The Lavena Johnson case has yet to be reopened, the Army refusing to acknowledge the large lie in which they had the audacity to categorize the brutal murder post rape of this 19 year old honor student from Missouri, only weeks into her service in Iraq, as suicide. Comforted only by the gratuitous posthumous PFC promotion given to her, how easy it must have been for them to throw a bone to the family of their murdered soldier like this, Lavena’s family still has no answers, no truth.

They can give all the classes they want, review and revamp their policies, it takes only a few clicks of the mouse to see that for years there have been calls for revamping and renewing commitments to address and correct the pervasive problem of sexual abuse and brutality toward women in the military, yet in real life it doesn’t appear anything has changed. From this article written in 1995, Sex Abuse of Military Women Alarming rates of harassment, rape reported, to Colonel Ann Wright’s Sexual Assault in the Military: A DoD Cover-Up, we continue to see no progress, if anything it appears to be getting worse.

As jobs become more difficult to come by military service is going to become an ever more attractive option for those whose alternatives are limited, those who feel they have no other option. As they dangle the carrot of education in front of women who might otherwise not be able to afford it, those with fewer resources for recourse should they be put in a situation where they suffered a sexual assault or worse, I wonder if they will willingly flaunt the history of sexual misconduct and abuse along with the record of how they deal with those situations.

In an Oversight Hearing on Sexual Assault in the Military last summer Rep. Jane Harman cited Veterans Administration statistics that one in three women in the military has been sexually assaulted, but prosecution rate of those accused of raping fellow military service members is abysmally low,with only 8 percent of the cases ending in court-martial of the perpetrator.The statistics are alarming, but even if you look and say “ah that’s not so bad”, woman considering military service should be made aware of both the statistics and the history of the military in dealing with sexual assaults of their own soldiers.

The Sharp Program is useless when deeds go unpunished or unacknowledged. Here is to the hope that in the future women will be able to serve in our military without fear of being sexually assaulted, and to the hope that the practice of falsifying the cause of death of any our soldiers, male or female, becomes a thing of the past.

In Their Boots – Angie Peacocks Story

Army Sergeant Angela Peacock joined the military in February 1998. She wanted to travel, serve her country and gain some life experience. In 2001, while deployed in South Korea, Angie was raped by a fellow soldier. She was encouraged by her command not to tell, so she held it in, and in 2003 she took it to Iraq with her. She led her unit courageously, but silently struggled until she couldn’t stay quiet any longer.

Victims of sexual abuse in military share stories.
Congress Hears Voices of Sexual Assault Survivors in Military.

War With Ourselves: Sexual Violence In The Military. Contains a list of practical policy solutions.

Sexual assault in military ‘jaw-dropping,’ lawmaker says
Lavena Johnson Site

An addendum link added thanks to Melissa’s commet, Stop Military Rape Dot Org. Please check it out.

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International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women – Statement from the Executive Director

The first year-long phase of UNIFEM’S Say NO to Violence against Women campaign concluded today, when signatures collected worldwide were presented to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at a high level UN event.

In December 1999, at their 54th Session, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution declaring November 25th the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. This was in recognition of the magnitude of the problem and the urgent need for serious commitment by the world community to make finding solutions a key priority.

The origins of November 25th go back to 1960, when the Mirabal sisters, activists from the Dominican Republic, were violently assassinated for their political activism. The sisters, known as the ‘Unforgettable Butterflies,’ became a symbol of the crisis of violence against women in Latin America. November 25th was the date chosen to commemorate their lives and promote global recognition of gender-based violence, and has been observed in Latin America since the 1980s.

With the UN’S growing understanding of the link between gender and violence, the gender-based nature of violence against women and its linkage to subordination, inequality between women and men, and discrimination, rape as an act of war, violence against women finally became a matter of Human Rights in 2006 with a published report classifying violence against women — whether it happens in the home or elsewhere — as a human rights violation the report argued that states are obliged by international human rights standards to hold perpetrators accountable. “This report acknowledged for the first time from the highest levels of the United Nations what human and women’s rights advocates had documented for decades: violence against women is a massive human rights violation that is both a cause and a consequence of deeply ingrained inequality between men and women”.

In the fall of 2007 The Security Council

stressing the importance of women in conflict prevention and resolution and in peacebuilding, and the need for their full and equal participation in peace processes at all levels. And concern about the low number of women appointed as Special Representatives or Special Envoys of the Secretary-General to peace missions.

and a fall 2008 Security Council meeting in which

Sarah Taylor, Coordinator, NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security drew attention to the fact that women were “dramatically” underrepresented in the United Nations’ 30 missions and should be appointed to more leadership positions.

Women remain underrepresented as functionaries of the United Nations.

With women continuing to be affected by the tool of rape as an act of war — most notably and viciously at this time in The Congo — it is evident we have a long way to go.

For More on Violence Against Women, Violence Women during conflict and information on how you can get involved:

Gender and
Armed Conflict (pdf)

Women, war, and international law: The historical treatment of gender-based war crimes

To Watch For: A book by Dr Nicola Henry on “mass rape” in contexts of war focusing particularly on processes of collective memory (or forgetting) of sexual violence that respectively acknowledge or omit women’s experience of sexual violence in war and conflict. Wartime rape Collective memory and the law: Interview with Dr Nicola Henry

Links
Stop Rape Now
UNIFEM
V-Day
Women War Peace
Women to Women International
Congo Crisis: More Help is Needed for Women and Girls in North Kivu as Sexual Violence Escalates
When Women are the Spoils of War
UNHCR ( where the search term violence against women will bring you to volumes of reports)
Volunteer UN

Books:

The European Women’s History Reader where you’ll find
Hsu-Ming Teo’s, The Continuum of sexual violence in occupied Germany, 1945-49.

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Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape

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A Selected Socio-Legal Bibliography On Ethnic Cleansing, Wartime Rape And Genocide In The Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda

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Violence against women is not inevitable, and is never acceptable.

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