Military Sexual Assault Victims Cannot Sue for Damages
Care2 reports:
Janet Galla was 21 when she joined the Navy in 1999, following a proud family tradition. She served as a Hospital Corpsman where she earned high praise for her work. In 2004, Galla had returned to her ship from dinner and checked her email in the ship’s Medical Department. A fellow Corpsman asked for assistance with something in one of the operating rooms. Once in there, he tried to kiss her. She resisted and tried to leave the room, but he prevented her from leaving and then raped her. She immediately reported the rape and her attacker was ultimately convicted and sent to prison.
It was then that Galla’s nightmare really began.
From the time she reported the rape, Galla’s chain of command continued to torment her. She was unable to perform her job after they refused to allow her to work in confined spaces with male colleagues “for her own protection.” Since she wasn’t able to do her job, she started receiving poor performance evaluations and was told her presence was bad for the ship’s morale. After transferring to a land duty station and suffering from PTSD, the chain of command continued the retaliation by singling her out for drug and alcohol testing and accusing her of using the rape to justify her poor performance. One commander even told her that “the rape was only five minutes of her life” and that she needed “to get over it already.” In 2005, she accepted the Navy’s offer for immediate separation.
