Military Rape, Enemy Within the Ranks

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PERPIGNAN, France â€" Mary F. Calvert has dedicated herself to covering under-reported stories of women and children in crisis around the world, including the effects of systematic rape in the conflict-torn Democratic Republic of Congo.

After being laid off from The Washington Times in 2011, along with all of the newspaper’s photographers, Ms. Calvert searched for a story close to home that she could feel passionate about and finance herself. She found one: sexual assault in the United States military.

“Over 26,000 rapes and sexual assaults took place in the military last year, and most of the woman that actually reported it were basically kicked out of the military,” she said. “When I was doing this story on rape as a tool of war in Congo, I remember being completely horrified â€" but I was also shocked at the rate of sexual assault in our own military.”

Ms. Calvert started going to sparsely attended Congressional hearings on the military’s response, or lack thereof, to its rape problem. She met with victims who testified or came to offer support. By word of mouth, she was introduced to other female rape survivors and photographed them at their homes and around their communities.

Mary F. Calvert/Zuma Press Survivors of sexual assault in the military and their advocates listened to rape survivors testify during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

She soon realized that almost all of the women she was photographing bore the scars of what the Veterans Affairs Department refers to as military sexual trauma, with symptoms including depression, substance abuse, paranoia and feelings of isolation.

“Not only are they victimized by the actual sexual assault, but also by what happens afterward, in the military,” she said. “It injures them further, And I’ll tell you, of the people I photographed, virtually no one is holding a regular job. They’re so traumatized and paranoid that some of them can’t leave their houses. “

Only one in seven victims reported the attacks. And of the ones who did file reports, about 92 percent were drummed out of the military.

Mary F. Calvert/Zuma Press Tiffany Berkland, left, and Elisha Morrow, middle, who were assaulted by the same commander, attended a workshop in Washington. Ms. Morrow said she had thought about faking a suicide attempt to get away from the attacker. “He haunts your person by day and your dreams at night,” she said. She and Ms. Berkland did not report the harassment at first, for fear of being kicked out of the Coast Guard. Eventually, they met a third victim and came forward. When their case went to trial, they met a fourth woman who had been raped recently by the same commander. Ms. Berkland and Ms. Morrow say they feel guilty for not coming forward sooner.

The military has been widely criticized, including by many members of Congress, for its response to the sharp increase in sexual assaults within its ranks, and for the way rape victims are treated when they press charges. The Pentagon estimates that less than 20 percent of military rape victims come forward.

Because Ms. Calvert has been financing the project by herself, she has concentrated on people who live within driving distance of her hometown, Washington.

But this week she will receive 8,000 euros as she receives the Canon Female Photojournalist Award at the Visa Pour l’Image photography festival in Perpignan, France. She will use that money, she said, to photograph women throughout the United States who have been sexually assaulted in the military.

“I feel like I’m not quite done with the story yet,” she said. “I want to find a subject who is a homeless person, because most of the women I talk to cannot hold a job because they’re so traumatized by this. Some of my subjects have friends who committed suicide after being raped, and I’d like to go visit their families and talk to them. A lot of victims do have support networks, but there are always people who don’t. And what happens to them?”

When she is done with this project, she said she hoped to turn her attention to another story on rape in the military: men who have been sexually assaulted by other soldiers or officers.

Mary F. Calvert/Zuma Press Jessica Hinves smoked in her garage in Hampton, Va. The case against her rapist was thrown out the day before the trial was to begin by a commander who said, “Though he didn’t act like a gentleman, there was no reason to prosecute.”

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