Esquire: So Now What Do We Do About Military Rape?
Lt. Col. Robert Bateman writes for Esquire Magazine:
Now we should start talking about solutions, because it is damned clear that despite all the rhetoric, despite all the press releases, regardless of the promises and pleas for more time, we are failing to stop sexual abuse, harassment, and rape in the Armed Forces.
Nothing I have seen — no statistic, no pabulum from press releases, nothing — has countered this. The cold hard fact is that the number of rapes and instances of sexual harassment in the military is apparently going up, not down. Taken all together, since women joined the Armed Forces in 1976, there are an estimated 500,000, at least, who have been abused while in uniform.* This shall not stand. But, at the same time, I do acknowledge that in some small ways it might be possible that we are making progress. Even I can see that, though it was too long coming and had to come in from the outside. The problem, sadly, is my culture.
