Disordered
Interesting. It seems that if you’re in the military, reporting rape=having a “personality disorder” and getting discharged.
Hundreds of female members of the Armed Forces who accused their colleagues of rape were “misdiagnosed” with having a personality disorder, The Telegraph can reveal.
You can kind of see the logic, I guess. No one but a personality disordered person would accuse a colleague of rape. It’s such a…disordered thing to do.
The victims claimed that after they sought help for sexual assault from the military’s departments of community mental health (DCMH), they were “written off” with emotionally unstable personality disorder and subsequently medically discharged.
Very community mental health. I’m sure it did wonders for them.
Paula Edwards, the chief executive of Salute Her UK, a charity for female military personnel who have experienced sexual assault and rape, said that victims were being “overdiagnosed and misdiagnosed” so that the military can “get rid of the problem”.
By throwing out the victims and keeping the perps. It’s a very good idea to keep the military well stocked with rapists.
Ms Edwards told The Telegraph that it became a “common theme” for young women to have the diagnosis on their medical records when accessing support from her charity.
“It is a worrying pattern,” she said. “A woman is raped so she goes to DCMH. She’s understandably all over the place. She might be suicidal. But instead of the medical practitioner seeing it as post-traumatic stress disorder [PTSD], they diagnose her with a personality disorder.
“You can’t serve in the military with this diagnosis, which enables the military to get rid of the problem.”
It’s not at all personality disordered to rape, but it’s very personality disordered to report rape. That’s the long version of bitches be lyin’.
Read the whole thing. It’s infuriating.
Well of course. If they have no qualms about committing violent sexual attacks on their fellow soldiers in their own army, then surely they will not be afraid to commit violent attacks — sexual and otherwise — on soldiers, and possibly civilians, of enemy countries. And isn’t that the whole point of the military?
Yes that’s what I meant. Encourage rapists in the military and you’re going to be dealing with war crimes down the road. Not all that clever.
Isn’t literally the whole point of a military to commit violent attacks? Wouldn’t it make more sense to abolish the institution altogether than to expect them to be moral?
No, it’s not the whole point of the military to attack civilians. The military is forbidden to attack civilians. Surely you know that.
This phenomenon is about power using bureaucratic tricks to make problems go away. They pull the misdiagnosis, and then the problem goes off their desk, without making waves for them. This trick may even, in some cases, have been suggested by the rapist himself, or his commander. Once they figure out it works, they’ll do it again and again. “Personality disorder” discharges used to be the easiest way to get rid of someone.
And, yes, it’s been going on for years.
https://www.hrw.org/report/2016/05/19/booted/lack-recourse-wrongfully-discharged-us-military-rape-survivors
The prevalence of rape in the armed services is high, and rarely reported. Only about one in four report the rape, as most justifiably fear retaliation. Very few cases are successfully prosecuted.
https://www.hrw.org/report/2015/05/18/embattled/retaliation-against-sexual-assault-survivors-us-military
It’s almost as bad as it is outside the military.
Almost? I think Hollywood may be easily AS BAD. Academia probably very close, especially if said rapist is a high profile prof who brings in a lot of research money – or a football player who is revered (or one who is not revered, but the coach doesn’t want to lose).
The one time I reported sexual misconduct (not to the level of rape) at work, I was treated as being totally zogborst. They acknowledged the instance, but claimed it could not be sexual misconduct because he was not my supervisor, only a colleague. They also said he could not have been taking advantage of my mental health issues because, since he was not my supervisor, he had no way of knowing about them unless I told him – which I did not. But…he walked into the psychiatric ward during my hospitalization to deliver paperwork for me to sign. Since that hospital kept the psychiatric patients in a different building, it is not the case that he happened to notice me there when visiting someone else, happened to be carrying just the exact paperwork I needed to fill out, and just happened to bring that paperwork to me. No, someone who knew I was there told him to bring me the paperwork, because he had a friend he was visiting in another part of the hospital. Yes, this was the same man who later committed sexual misconduct.
The military isn’t any different than anyone else, at least from what I see. They brush it all under the rug, and if something blows up in their face, they will have a public expulsion of one individual, say they are fixing things with investigations, and things go back to normal. Nothing changes, except there may be one new face where there was one a different one.
Harvey Weinstein could be sacrificed; as I understand it, his career was already beginning to wind down, so not much loss. A few others could be sacrificed, at least in the interest of maintaining the status quo for everyone else.
Yes, iknklast, almost.
If about five percent of sexual assault cases in the military actually result in consequences for the rapist, that’s not as bad as it is outside the military. The proportion of sexual assaults even reported in the military is shockingly low, but it’s still higher than the proportion reported outside the military.
It’s awful, it’s crap, but let’s not pretend the civilian justice system is really doing better than the military justice system (or, for that matter, that academia is).
Sorry, Papito, I misread your comment! I thought it said “almost as bad outside the military” instead of “almost as bad as outside the military. I was disagreeing with something you didn’t say.
According to this, more than 75% of those killed in wars are civilians. If that is so, then the prohibition on attacking civilians seems to be on paper only. Attacking civilians is evidently a feature, not a bug.
GW the link you provided I think clearly makes the point that attacking civilians is generally considered wrong. On paper, sure. I suspect there are military forces where they do seek people who are prone to attack anyone they feel like, with little regard to rules of engagement and the like, but my impression is that this kind of person is considered uncontrollable and a liability, in the US military and other places. The fact that many civilians are killed is not proof that targeted killing of civilians is generally the goal, nor that the military seeks people who are likely to kill civilians without regard to regulations.
Rape is yet another matter. The fact that military operations kill large numbers of civilians doesn’t in any way that I can see imply that civilians are also likely to be raped and that rapists and potential rapists have a home in the military.
Reporting on Putin’s war on Ukraine has a lot to say about his relentless genocidal attacks on civilians. Hitler made war on civilians, and so did the Allies when their turn came. The bombing of Dresden was a war crime, as was the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. What happened at My Lai was a war crime. Wars entail war crimes these days. That’s not a reason to make sure the military has plenty of rapists.
Don’t forget the secondary benefit of slapping women who complain about rape with a misdiagnosis and a discharge–other women WILL hear about it, and they’ll get the message: “If it happens to you, next, keep your mouth shut, or that military career you’ve sacrificed so much for will be over.” Cover up the present, extort the future, all in one simple maneuver–evil can be surprisingly efficient.
Ugh, truth.
Yes isn’t it weird that some will doggedly insist a rape occurred and that there should be consequences for it, despite us stonewalling and making clear by means both direct and indirect that the accusation should be dropped. She must be addled.