Reply #3: Maybe it's some of the additional stressors they face that males don't

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

Military women say they face sex harassment

By PAMELA MARTINEAU and STEVE WIEGAND
Sacramento Bee
March 09, 2005

- Gina W. went to Iraq, and came back with a different kind of war story. Her battlefields were in the barracks and the mess hall. The weapons were innuendoes and threats. And the enemy? Her own boss.

"When you go there, you have to be prepared for war," she says. "And then you have to be worried about being raped by your own people."

The former Army specialist is one of dozens of military women who say they faced some kind of sexual harassment while in the combat theater in Afghanistan or Iraq.

Though publicity about sexual misconduct in the war zone has focused on rape, female soldiers said unwelcome advances, demeaning comments - and a feeling that being alone around male comrades in arms meant being unsafe - were far greater concerns.

"I think every female (soldier in Iraq) has been sexually harassed," said Sgt. Yolanda Medina of Long Beach, who is doing her second tour there with the California National Guard's 2668th Transportation Company.

The exact number of U.S. military women who have been assaulted or harassed is probably somewhere between Medina's "every female" and the number reported by the Department of Defense.

Defense Department numbers show that from August 2002 through October 2004, 118 cases of sexual assault on military personnel were reported in Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan. But the Miles Foundation, a nonprofit organization that helps victims of military domestic violence and sexual assault, reports that it was contacted by 258 military assault victims in the combat theater during that same time span. That number rose to 307 through mid-February, according to the foundation.

A Pentagon official said the military would release more up-to-date numbers sometime this month. Yet military officials acknowledge their numbers don't reflect the true situation because many women are reluctant to report an assault. One study by the Department of Veterans Affairs found nearly 75 percent of military women who said they had been assaulted did not tell their commanding officer.

No statistics are kept on cases of sexual harassment that fall short of physical assault, and none reflect what many women interviewed by The Sacramento Bee described as a bawdy combat zone environment that made them feel like second-class soldiers:

http://www.knoxstudio.com/shns/story.cfm?pk=IRAQ-HARASSMENT-03-09-05&cat=AN