Coming Home: A Field Guide (Part 6: Understanding Military Sexual Trauma)

While researching this series, I’ve become most disturbed by this little known and mostly uncovered “unseen wound of war,” Military Sexual Trauma (MST).

Maybe it’s mostly unknown because of the name, which is meant to obfuscate the seriousness of the matter. Just like how, as a civil affairs Marine (a nation-building Marine) in Iraq we used to call refugee camps, “displaced civilian” camps because it sounded nicer, the denotation of Military Sexual Trauma is much darker than the term implies: sexual assault, date-rape, harassment, coercion, unwanted touches or approaches, that occurs against men or women while on active duty.

Unfortunately, it happens all the time and no seems to know. The New York Times barely knows the term. For a search using Military Sexual Trauma in quotation marks, only six results for the term appear in any stories since 1851. The Washington Post doesn’t recognize the term as presented in quotation marks at all. Despite this, even the VA admits that the prevalence rates of veterans experiencing MST are “alarming.”

According to the VA, MST is an especially traumatic situation, in difference to civilian sexual assault (the blanket term for sexual trauma that occurs amongst the civilian population), because the “trauma that is associated with military service most often occurs in a setting where the victim lives and works. In most cases, this means that victims must continue to live and work closely with their perpetrators, often leading to an increased sense of feeling helpless, powerless, and at risk for additional victimization.”

Another cold reality of sexual assault in the military: “sexual victimization that occurs in this setting often means that victims are relying on their perpetrators (or associates of the perpetrator) to provide for basic needs, including medical and psychological care. Similarly, because military sexual trauma occurs within the workplace, this form of victimization disrupts the career goals of many of its victims.”

While solid data about the current incidences of MST are hard to come by, I can say that I’ve spoken to female veterans (while MST can occur to men, it is a truth that it happens to women more) who have been given classroom sessions about how to protect themselves while forward deployed to combat zones. Never walk alone at night, they were told; stay away from dark corners of the base. I know one veteran who decided that she needed to carry a knife when getting off her late-night shifts at the surgical hospital in Afghanistan.

Beyond addressing this issue just because of general human decency, unfortunately, it is well known that many survivors of sexual assault, just like survivors of combat, will go on to develop PTSD. Can you imagine in addition to your mind-busting experiences at war, adding the mind-screw of a sexual trauma on top of that. No doubt, this is special issue that needs more attention; and the victims need more care.

Unfortunately, I think I’ve only begun to just superficially uncover how tremendous of a problem this might be.

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