Dorothy Samuels writes in the NY Times editorial page blog:
The Pentagon released a depressing report on Tuesday stating that the number of sexual assaults in the military grew from about 19,000 last year to 26,000 this year. Obviously something must be done to reverse that trend but, in the meantime, the federal government could do more to help the victims.
Gesturing in that direction, Republicans and Democrats on the House Veterans Affairs Committee approved a measure on Wednesday championed by Representative Chellie Pingree, a Maine Democrat, aimed at making it easier for veterans to receive benefits for disabilities linked to sexual assaults.
The bill is named after Ruth Moore, a Navy veteran who was raped twice by a supervisor after enlisting at age 19. She developed post-traumatic stress disorder, but her claims for compensation and treatment were repeatedly denied for over two decades. Her story isn?t uncommon: The Service Women?s Action Network, an advocacy organization, found that the Veterans Affairs Department approved only 32 percent of P.T.S.D. claims related to sexual assaults compared with 53 percent of all other P.T.S.D. claims.
Essentially, the legislation would put pressure on the department to lower the burden of proof for sexual-assault survivors. As things stand, victims are required to provide secondary evidence that the trauma occurred ? medical tests, say, or sudden onset of a drug problem ? not required for combat-related claims. But only a small fraction of military sexual assaults are reported ? just over 3,000 of the 26,000 or so last year ? so typically there is no corroborating documentation in the files. The bill calls for allowing a victim?s testimony to serve as proof that the assault occurred, and for approving claims based on a medical diagnosis of a mental health condition linked to the attack.
The bill stops short of making the reform mandatory, but it imposes rigorous reporting requirements. The full House is expected to vote on the measure soon, and the Senate Veterans Affairs committee will be holding a hearing on a companion bill next Wednesday.
Treating P.T.S.D. claims for sexual assaults more skeptically than combat-related claims hurts veterans suffering in the aftermath of such attacks, and contributes to the damaging sense that the assaults are not taken seriously by those in charge ? notwithstanding repeated pledges of zero tolerance.
Source: http://leisureguy.wordpress.com/2013/05/10/sexual-assault-in-the-military/
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