“The Invisible War”, the investigative documentary about military sexual trauma (MST) is out now and is also available to stream online. I have not seen it, but the topic inspires many “I wonder…” and “what if…” scenarios.
The trailer for “The Invisible War”.
“This goes everywhere with me. You always have protection with Jesus,
but sometimes you need just a little bit more.”
- military victim of rape, about her knife
I think about my reserve unit and the Marines I know there and what the reaction would be if I was raped by one of them. Or if another female Marine was raped, or if one of the male Marines was raped. If we reported it, what would happen?
Would I even feel comfortable reporting it?
What if it was a high-ranking Marine?
What if it was someone in my direct chain of command?
How far would the news spread?
Would the rapist hide behind the typical “she was drunk and regretted it!” story?
Which of our Marine coworkers would believe us?
If they believed us, would they get angry and do their best to make sure the rapist was punished?
Or would it be an annoyance and yet another thing to deal with?
Would the unit rally around us and get rid of the rapist?
Or would he be allowed to stick around, forcing me to leave to avoid him?
Which ones would roll their eyes and assume I made it up?
Who would talk trash behind my back?
Who would step up and tell the trash-talkers to cut it out?
How would the reaction differ if the rapist was a well-liked Marine versus a shitbag or an unpopular Marine?
How violent would the assault have to be for the victim to be widely-believed?
What if no one believed us?
I am a female Marine currently in the Individual Ready Reserve. I like to sleep, travel, read, eat, explore, and take photographs. I read lots of news and I like reading about life in other countries. I am easily amused and my dream job is to be snoozing in a warm patch of sunlight, hopefully with a piece of tasty cheese nearby for when I wake up hungry.
We just finished our new Sexual Assault training yesterday. I liked the way they organized it. For example, when they started the training last month, they held it separately for all the ranks, one for junior Marines, one for NCOs… Staff NCOs, officers, etc. Then our last training yesterday was conducted with discussion groups of combined ranks. I think it was pretty effective, although, there are always mixed emotions and strong opinionated solutions from everyone. I haven’t seen the documentary yet. I missed it when it came to San Diego. There’s also a short film on Youtube highliting the topic called Lauren, which stars Troian Bellisario and Jennifer Beals. Have you seen it?
I’m not evens ure how I ran into your website, but here is my experience with rape in the Marine Corps. In my short few years here it seems there are 5-10 rapes each year, so far 2 of them have not been the product of regret. So let so I’ve been in 1 year. That’s 20-40% truth, 2 years 10-20% so on and so fourth. I’m not saying no commands have been unlucky enough to have a greater amount of predators but so far, in my experience, the numbers speak for themselves. Has personal responsibility gone out the window? Yes.