What is Military Sexual Trauma?

Military sexual trauma or MST combines both:

• The distress of the initial sexual trauma and

• The persecution from the victim’s command that the active-duty victim cannot escape or circumvent.

The sexual trauma can include anything from sexual harassment, sexual assault or rape. A detailed description of the sexual trauma is defined within the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

 “According to the VA, more than 50% of people with MST are men”

Both men and women suffer MST, and more men have experienced MST than women.¹ Too often, active duty male or female soldiers who are sexually assaulted have one of two choices:

Report

• Military investigators create false, misleading and/or incomplete crime reports thanks in part to the McDowell Checklist.

• Because of the Feres Doctrine (Feres v. United States, 340 US 135 [1950]) the survivor is then unable to sue these investigators. This doctrine essentially prohibits people from suing the military and/or petitioning any non-military legal authority for interdiction without the military’s prior and explicit agreement and consent.

• Because of this lack of redress, the military investigators and the assailants go unchecked.

• Victims then suffer retaliation for reporting, including harassment, demotion, further assault and/or murder because legally the crime never existed.

Stay silent

Or survivors stay silent, out of fear of reprisal, and the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) that almost always accompanies MST erodes their careers instead (an estimated 74% of military sexual assault goes unreported to superiors²).

Next: Things become even more difficult for these brave soldiers After the Military

¹Source: "Military Sexual Trauma." National Center for PTSD. <http://www.ncptsd.va.gov/ncmain/ncdocs/fact_shts/military_sexual_trauma_general.html?opm=1&rr=rr1758&srt=d&echorr=true>
² Source: "Factors Associated With Women's Risk of Rape in the Military Environment." American Journal of Industrial Medicine. 43