Bloomberg Businessweek: Sex-Assault Victims May Be Eligible for VA Disability Pay
Bloomberg Businessweek reports:
Military personnel who were the victims of sexual assault can seek disability pay for the psychiatric trauma even if they didn’t officially report the incident, a U.S. appeals court ruled today.
The decision orders the Department of Veterans Affairs to review the rejected disability requests of two women who said they suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder after being assaulted. While acknowledging most victims never report attacks, the agency denied the women disability pay because there was no military record of the assaults supporting the psychiatric diagnoses.
The Department of Defense estimates that fewer than 15 percent of sexual assaults were reported to a military authority between 2006 and 2012. In May, the department estimated 26,000 military men and women may have experienced unwanted sexual contact last year, compared with 2,949 victims identified in criminal reports.
