VICTIMS FOR JUSTICE
COALITION OF WINDSOR/ESSEX
COUNTY
MILITARY LETTERS PAGE
Welcome to the VICTIMS FOR JUSTICE MILITARY LETTERS PAGE
Women don't belong on military bases or ships
By: Mordecai Richler
Date: July 27, 1998 Appeared in the Windsor Star
Here's an old joke no gentile dare repeat lest he suffer the wrath of the B'nai Brith Anti Defamation League avengers; on the other hand, it is the sort of story Jews delight in telling each other. The scene is the shtetl,
in the Pale of Settlement, in late 19th century Russia. Suddenly an out of breath husband comes roaring into the family hovel from the corn fields. "Quick," he hollers. "Everybody into the root cellar. The Cossacks are coming! It's a progrom!" Everyone, but the man's 82 year old mother, flees. "Mamma, into the cellar right now. We're in for a pogrom. And those animals would not hesitate to rape even a woman of your age." The old woman refuses to budge. Instead, she begins to apply rouge to her cheeks. "A pogrom's a pogrom," she says. This joke is in appalling taste. It makes fun of Jews, a terrible thing to do, and it suggests there are women out there who have a taste for sex with violence. I'm ashamed of myself, I apologize for repeating this old chestnut here. Actually, what brought it to mind was Maclean's, Canada's Weekly Newsmagazine. Its most recent issues have been running with cover stories of sexual harassment and rape in the military, exposes that have reverberated in our newspapers and CBC©TV's National, just about everybody feigning outrage, simulating astonishment that such things could happen in what Jean Chretien has assured us is the greatest country in the world.
As for me, far from being shocked, I'm surprised there hasn't been more hanky panky in our military, where women, dare I say it, are clearly regarded as sex objects, which is flattering, given those uniforms.
Let me make my position clear. I believe in equal pay for equal work. I am a supporter of free choice, albeit grudgingly. But frankly, I don't think women belong on air bases or on ships at sea or in infantry battalions. However, if they insist on intruding on such masculine terroritory, they should certainly expect to be propositioned and, unfortunately, to be handled roughly at times. The men who volunteer for our peacetime armed forces are not sensitive plants, but, for the most part, ill educated beer guzzlers given to brutish behaviour. A horny 19 year old man, obliged to share a narrow foxhole overnight with a fetching young woman private, is not likely to ask her if she prefers Glenn Gould's interpretation of Bach to that of Angela Hewitt, or if she has read the latest Jundera. He is more likely to say,"Hey, if we're like gonna be here until morning, you know, like I've got a great idea of like how we can keep warm, eh?" Feigning amazement, Maclean's has reported " The unwritten rule: rank has its privileges," as if this weren't a truism but something new under the sun. The magazine's investigative reporters, who can see around corners and then some, go on to state that officers tend to cover up each other's sexual indiscretions, even as doctors will defend each other against malpractice suits ("How was Doctor Birenbaum to know the patient was wheeled in backwards and, consequently, he removed the wrong kidney?") and lawyers tend to forgive brethren who have been caught in a fraud. In fact, in my experience, only writers have no loyality to their kind. Corner one, and he will gleefully denounce his contemporaries as second rate hacks at best. Or, as James Thurber once put it in a different context, no writer will sit at another writer's feet unless he has been knocked there.
But to return to Maclean's fast breaking story of obloquy in the military. In a recent issue, it took up the case of one Pte. Sylvie Savard, who was allegedly sexually harassed by an officer during her tour of duty as an administrative clerk working in the NORAD complex a mile underground in North Bay, Ont. According to Ms. Savard, an officer sat down beside her and invited her to share a litre of wine with him at a staff only Christmas bash. The colonel and Ms. Savard left the party together, stopping at his apartment, where he changed out of his uniform, and stopping again to buy a bottle of plonk, before checking into a local motel together. Maclean's reports, "A motel?" said a startled Savard as they drove up. "I remember saying very clearly to him," she recalls, "well, as long as talking is all you have in mind." Now, arguably, a woman who serves as a private in our air force need not be rocket scientist intelligent, but she would have to be very dim indeed not to know what a guy has in mind when he checks into a motel room with her in the early hours of the morning. In the event, once that dastardly colonel got Ms. Savard into the motel room, he actually started to unbotton her blouse. Then, according to her own testimony, when he protested, he promptly drove her back to the officer's mess parking lot. The colonel, it seems to me, is the injured party here, having been grievously misled by a young woman who thought a late night check in to a motel room was real opportunity for some conversational give and take. Ms. Savard's complaint, instead of being the subject of a Maclean's cover story, titled Abuse of Power, should have been promptly dismissed.
A former serviceman from Windsor wants the public to know women aren't the
only
victims of sexual assault in the Canadian Armed Forces.
Wayne says he was raped by a fellow junior non-commissioned officer in the
early 1980s
but never reported the attack for fear of being branded a homosexual.
"I know how the military views homosexuals," he says. "I didn't want to be
labelled. I
couldn't report it, couldn't risk the guy who did it saying it was
consensual. I didn't want to
fight for my career."
Wayne, who is unwilling to reveal his identity, is not alone in his anger,
humiliation and
shame. At least 40 men are among the 118 callers who have contacted a
hotline at
Department of National Defence headquarters to report that they were
sexually assaulted
by fellow service personnel while in the forces, said Capt. Bruce Poulin,
a DND
spokesman in Ottawa.
The calls came between May 27 and July 5, the first six weeks the sexual
assault hotline
was in operation. They came in from across Canada, but to put the statistics
in perspective Poulin noted there are 60,000 people
serving in the three branches of the forces of which 6,841 are women.
The armed forces was rocked by allegations of sexual assault after media
reports earlier this year revealed that complaints by female
personnel were not taken seriously or pursued by military brass.
Poulin said many of the allegations by male callers are considered
"sufficiently serious" to warrant further investigation. He added that
possible legal action will depend upon the merits of each individual case.
He explained that callers would be first referred to a social worker and
their accounts categorized to determine whether their complaints
constitute harassment, sexual assault or some other form of abuse. If
preliminary findings indicate a crime has been committed the
matter would be referred to the department's National Investigation Service
and the Military Police for possible charges.
He could not say how many of the alleged sexual assaults had happened
recently with personnel still on active duty and how many may
go back a number of years.
Wayne said he called the hotline and was assured action would be taken if he
were willing to file a detailed complaint. But the former
sailor insists he will take no formal action against the man he says
attacked and raped him. He still cannot face the possible public
humiliation and stress of cross examination in a court of law.
For Wayne, taking steps to heal the traumatic memories of being sexually
assaulted while serving as a cook at a maritime military base,
CFB Shearwater, in 1983 means seeking counselling and telling his story in
the hopes of convincing other victims to come forward.
Pat Ing, a clinical social worker at Windsor's Sexual Assault Crisis Centre,
confirmed that Wayne has been coming regularly for
counselling. She said the former serviceman shows the symptoms of post
traumatic stress disorder consistent with the effects of "sexual
victimization."
After seeing media reports of sexual abuse against women in the military,
Ing suggested Wayne tell his story as a way of shedding light
on the fact that males in the military are also vulnerable to sexual attack.
Wayne said the macho, authoritarian culture of the military makes it very
easy for such secrets to remain hidden. It is easier to keep the
crime covered up than to risk the consequences of reporting.
"So I convinced myself not to say anything," he said. "I didn't trust
anyone. I kept it inside for years."
To survive, Wayne dulled his pain with alcohol. But it was when he began to
notice his pre-adolescent son developing his own social
problems at school that Wayne finally decided to seek help.
"He was getting into a lot of fist fights at school," said Wayne. "I had a
lot of anger inside me and I was raising him with that same anger
and hate. I didn't want to see him raised that way."
Wayne finally decided to tell his story to Windsor's Sexual Assault Crisis
Centre. He said the regular counselling has released much of
the pressure that had built up inside of him. While he still does not want
to pursue charges against his attacker, he does want to speak
out, if only to convince other men who may have been victimized to seek help.
"It changed everything," he said. "I'd always been a very trusting person.
After it happened, I didn't trust anyone any more. If someone
came up from behind me I'd turn around swinging.... It pushed me away from
my family. I knew I had to change. This is just the
beginning of getting it resolved."
Barb MacQuarrie, head of the Ontario Coalition of Rape Crisis Centres, said
Wayne's story would be typical of males who have been
sexually assaulted and added that his reluctance to report the attack would
likely be even greater because it happened in the military.
Statistics kept by rape crisis centres show that only 10 per cent of women
who have been sexually assaulted ever come forward. For
men the statistic is between two and three per cent. But the "macho" culture
of the military makes it likely that even fewer servicemen
victimized than that would ever dare speak out, said MacQuarrie.
"It would be difficult enough to disclose let alone to someone in
authority," she said. "I think the military is a very closed society. The
barriers would be even more intensified."
A spokesman for the Sexual Assault Centre in Barrie confirmed that that
centre has handled a number of calls from male military
personnel based at nearby Camp Borden but added the actual number is
difficult to gauge because of the confidentiality issues with
clients.
Wayne said his attack happened after an evening of drinking with about a
dozen fellow enlisted men and junior non-commissioned
officers at a bar near the Nova Scotia air force base. Later, the party
continued at a private home.
He believes he was drugged because he became increasingly disoriented as the
night wore on. Finally, he was left alone with two men.
When the attack began he was so intoxicated from the combination of drugs
and alcohol he was no longer able to defend himself.
Lee Lakeman, of the Canadian Association of Sexual Assault Centres, said she
expects the incidences of male-on-male sexual assaults
would be even higher in the military than in the general population. Sexual
bullying is more common in "authoritarian" institutions such as
the military, prisons, or all-male private schools, she explained.
"There is entirely too much gang mentality in those places," she said.
"You're either part of the gang or you're not. Had he had any real
power himself, this would never have happened to him."
Lakeman said those at risk are the ones perceived as vulnerable or
different, such as men who are lonely, who may not be physically
strong or men of color. Wayne has an average and wiry build.
But she suggested his status as a navy cook at an air force base may have
made him an outsider. Lakeman predicted more service
personnel will come forward with stories of men raping men.
"It happened with orphanages, with reform schools, residential schools," she
said. "Women telling their stories will make it easier for the
men to speak out."
Wayne said he could not bring himself to report the attack but he couldn't
stand to be at the same base with his attacker either. He
asked for transfers but each new posting did little to to subdue his guilt,
pain and humiliation.
"I went from base to base," he said. "But I was just running from my
problem, not dealing with it.... I couldn't take being on a ship for
months at a time with 180 men. It petrified me to be alone with a group of
males."
He decided to abandon his goal of a career in the military. Eventually, his
attacker also left the military when "word got around" that he
was homosexual. Wayne married two years later. But neither domestic life nor
time could heal the memory.
"Doing this (interview) is helping me," he said. "I want to bring it to
light that it's not just females but males too. If it happened to me
once, who's to say it hasn't happened thousands of times."
Poulin urged anyone with a complaint to come forward.
How to get help
Resources for victims of male sexual assault are slim, dealing mainly with
sexual abuse suffered as a child.
It's important to make the distinction between abuse and assault. Abuse
usually refers to crimes against children while assault usually
refers to crimes against adults.
But dig deep enough and resources for adult male victims of rape are
available. The Internet is the best place to find contact
information. Some resources include:
VFJ Client Services Page
Last Revised: July 09, 2006