Op-Ed by Nancy Parrish for San Antonio Express-News: Military’s handling of sexual assaults a national shame
Protect Our Defenders President Nancy Parrish writes in the San Antonio Express-News:
Rather than assure victims that their distress about their attacks is a normal response, a prime route to mistreatment of victims is to slap them with errant diagnoses of personality or mood disorders. Then, based on such classifications, they are stigmatized and often discharged without benefits or health care. Their perpetrators usually go free, at least partly because it is easy to challenge the credibility of a victim who is psychiatrically labeled.
Personality disorder is defined as a stable, enduring mental illness, one that develops in adolescence or early adulthood and persists over time. In contrast, post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, develops in the aftermath of a traumatic event — such as combat or a sexual assault. Too often, military doctors or personnel wrongfully attribute symptoms experienced by victims of sexual assault to nonexistent pre-existing personality disorder or bipolar disorder.
Nancy Parrish, For the Express-News
May 19, 2013
The military justice system is broken.
Service members who report being raped or otherwise sexually assaulted face overwhelming obstacles to achieving justice and receiving adequate care. According to the Department of Defense’s own statistics, perpetrators are rarely punished. Victims face blame, ostracism, harassment and retaliation.
Rather than assure victims that their distress about their attacks is a normal response, a prime route to mistreatment of victims is to slap them with errant diagnoses of personality or mood disorders. Then, based on such classifications, they are stigmatized and often discharged without benefits or health care. Their perpetrators usually go free, at least partly because it is easy to challenge the credibility of a victim who is psychiatrically labeled.
Personality disorder is defined as a stable, enduring mental illness, one that develops in adolescence or early adulthood and persists over time. In contrast, post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, develops in the aftermath of a traumatic event — such as combat or a sexual assault. Too often, military doctors or personnel wrongfully attribute symptoms experienced by victims of sexual assault to nonexistent pre-existing personality disorder or bipolar disorder.
In 2006, the Air Force diagnosed personality disorders among its population at double the frequency of the civilian population. A 2009 internal DOD review concluded that 91 percent of these were not processed properly. Since 2001, more than 31,000 service members have received discharges based on a personality disorder label. For service members who are erroneously diagnosed after experiencing a traumatic rape or sexual assault, the ramifications are severe.
With the number of sexual assaults skyrocketing above 26,000 in 2012, there is growing concern about the military’s lack of sincerity about supporting victims and ending this epidemic, as they too often treat the victim as the problem and dispose of them through administrative or involuntary discharges based on these errant diagnoses.
By saddling victims with harmful diagnoses and labeling them “troublemakers,” the military undermines victims’ ability to speak out and ask for help. This virtually guarantees that justice will not be served.
Immediate action is required to halt the systemic abuse of discharges based on errant psychiatric labels and make it easier for victims to gain access to the support and care they desperately need.
The military should be required to fully adhere to the American Medical Association’s standards and procedures for diagnosing serious psychiatric disorders. For victims having passed the mental-health screenings necessary to join the military, there should be increased scrutiny of diagnoses made after a sexual assault.
The Department of Defense announced in 2010 that it would stop discharging service members with personality disorders if they had seen combat, unless the diagnosis was cleared by a peer reviewer and the surgeon general. This standard should be immediately extended to all cases involving a report of rape or sexual assault.
Congress should enact the service members Mental Health Review Act, bipartisan legislation introduced by Sen. Amy Klobuchar and U.S. Rep. Tim Walz. This legislation would direct the secretary of defense to review all 31,000 discharges based on diagnoses of serious psychiatric disorders and correct any that were improperly applied.
With reporting and prosecution rates at abysmal levels, the majority of victims are left with little proof that they were sexually attacked. This should not preclude a victim of sexual assault from receiving vital care. The Ruth Moore Act of 2013 would improve the disability compensation evaluation process for veterans with emotional suffering related to military sexual trauma. The standard of proof for such suffering should not be higher simply because an individual was the victim of sexual violence.
The fallout from the ongoing epidemic of military sexual assault is a stark reminder of why this problem must be eradicated. Commanders have complete discretion to determine the paths these cases take, and they are not making the right calls, too often failing to take action to hold perpetrators accountable. The inherent biases, conflicts of interest and victim-blaming that pervade the process must end. Congress must take reporting, investigation, prosecution and adjudication of military sexual assault out of the chain of command. Nothing short of fundamental reform will suffice.
We must all come together to hold the military accountable for doing right by those who have volunteered to serve our country. Anything less is a national shame.
Nancy Parrish is president of Protect Our Defenders.
Read the full op-ed.
