Military seeks to help sexual-assault victims

Patricia Hayes, left, and Antonette Zeiss, deputy chief consultant for the Office of Mental Health Service at the Department of Veterans Affairs in Washington, D.C., are helping to address sexual assault and harassment of women in the military.

? It took Diane Pickel Plappert six months to tell a counselor that she had been raped while on duty in Iraq. While time passed, the former Navy nurse disconnected from her children and her life slowly unraveled.

Carolyn Schapper says she was harassed in Iraq by a fellow Army National Guard soldier to the extent that she began changing clothes in the shower for fear he’d barge into her room unannounced – as he already had on several occasions.

Even as women distinguish themselves in battle alongside men, they’re fighting off sexual assault and harassment. It’s not a new consequence of war. But the number of women serving – more than 190,000 so far in Iraq and Afghanistan – is forcing the military and Department of Veterans Affairs to more aggressively address it.

The data that exists – incomplete and not up-to-date – offers no proof that women in the war zones are more vulnerable to sexual assault than other female service members, or American women in general. But in an era when the military relies on women for invaluable and difficult front-line duties, the threat to their morale, performance and long-term well-being is starkly clear.

Of the women veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan who have walked into a VA facility, 15 percent have screened positive for military sexual trauma, The Associated Press has learned. That means they indicated that while on active duty they were sexually assaulted, raped, or were sexually harassed, receiving repeated unsolicited verbal or physical contact of a sexual nature.

In January, the VA opened its 16th inpatient ward specializing in treating victims of military sexual trauma, this one in New Jersey. In response to complaints that it is too male-focused in its care, the VA is making changes such as adding keyless entry locks on hospital room doors so women patients feel safer.

Depression, anxiety, problem drinking, sexually transmitted diseases and domestic abuse are all problems that have been linked to sexual abuse, according to the Miles Foundation, a nonprofit group that provides support to victims of violence associated with the military. Since 2002, the foundation says it has received more than 1,000 reports of assault and rape in the U.S. Central Command areas of operation, which include Iraq and Afghanistan.

In most reports to the foundation, fellow U.S. service members have been named as the perpetrator, but contractors and local nationals also have been accused.

Connie Best, a clinical psychologist and professor at the Medical University of South Carolina who retired from the Navy Reserves, said people typically think of sexual harassment as someone making a comment about someone’s appearance, but it goes well beyond that. In a war environment, living and working with someone exhibiting harassing behavior can have long-term effects on troops’ health and performance.