Service, Not Subservience: The U.S. Military’s Sexual-Violence Problem

With women now serving in combat roles, it’s high time the military does more to ensure they don’t live in fear of sexual abuse.

Women’s Issues

I have a confession to make. I used to belong to a group that has killed and maimed thousands of women since I joined in 2004. Within this same organization, numerous sexual assaults on its own women occur year after year, often unchecked and unreported. I turned a blind eye. I tried to convince myself I wasn’t involved. I even blamed the victims—anything to keep from becoming one of them.

I wasn’t in a gang. I wasn’t brainwashed in some fundamentalist cult. Nor was I one of the hundreds of thousands of women forced into prostitution every year by human traffickers. I was a sergeant in the United States military.

The above excerpt was originally published in The Daily Beast. Click here to view the full article.

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