15 Percent of Veterans Suffer Sexual Trauma

New research from the Veterans Administration finds that roughly 15 percent of Afghanistan and Iraq veterans seeking treatment from the U.S. Veterans Affairs Department have suffered sexual trauma ranging from harassment to rape.

These veterans were 1.5 times more likely than other veterans to need mental health services, the VA researchers wrote in their report.

"We are, in fact, detecting men and women who seem to have a significant need for mental health services," said Rachel Kimerling of the National Center for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder at the VA Palo Alto Health Care System, in an interview with Reuters.

Most affected veterans were women, with more than one in seven of those seeking health services also reporting sexual trauma. Slightly less than 1 percent of male veterans seeking medical care reported military sexual trauma.

The research was presented at a meeting of the American Public Health Association in San Diego.

The term "military sexual trauma" includes everything from outright rape to coerced sex or threatening and unwelcome sexual advances, Kimerling said, adding that for her purposes it was not necessary to determine what kind of sexual trauma occurred. The study did examine when such events occurred, and did not include active-duty military since VA services are only available to discharged veterans.

"If you think about military service where you are living and working so closely with the same people, that even if it is not sexual assault ... it is possible that severe sexual harassment is just as traumatic," she said.

A VA spokeswoman said about 40 percent of all discharged veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan have sought some form of medical care from the VA.

The agency has a universal screening program for military sexual trauma.

"There are dedicated health care services for military sexual trauma at every VA facility across the nation," she said, adding that many veterans may be unaware that they can be helped.

Kimerling said sexual trauma could sometimes lead to anxiety, depression, substance abuse and post-traumatic stress disorder.

"We know there are effective, evidence-based treatments for them that are used in VA," she said.

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Pastor Abuses 4-Year-Old Girl, She Acted Sexually Provocative Toward Him, He Claimed

A retired Canadian pastor likely on track to leave a McHenry County courtroom Friday with probation for sexually abusing a 4-year-old girl instead found himself behind bars after he told a judge that the girl acted sexually provocative toward him.

“I tried to avoid the encounters. On a couple of times, I thought I was being sexually harassed,” Kenneth R. Cooke, 73, told a judge. “I think there is psychological evidence today that children, even in their younger years, could become interested in sex.”

After listening to Cooke’s statements, Judge Joseph Condon sentenced him to three years in prison. Condon said the sentence was based partly on Cooke’s attitude.

“That just boggles my mind,” Condon said to Cooke. “You are willing to say whatever is convenient to you and what is most likely to release the pressure of these proceedings against you.”

Cooke pleaded guilty in November to aggravated criminal sexual abuse for abusing the girl in a Lake in the Hills home in 2003 while visiting from Canada.

“She will never be the same, naive, innocent child she was before the crime,” the girl’s mother said in court.

“She feels guilty and the sense of being a bad person because she has done things that she knows are wrong modeled after Mr. Cooke.”

Before Cooke ever appeared in a U.S. courtroom to answer to the charges, he fought his extradition from Canada for years, prosecutors said.

The victim’s mother said the prolonged legal proceedings had been mentally exhausting on her family.

“Every year that passed without any resolution was extremely frustrating and prevented us from moving on,” she said.

“It’s been 4 1/2 years and we are still dealing with the repercussions of this incident.”

Also during the hour-long sentencing hearing, Cooke expressed remorse and said he was misrepresented and misunderstood. When Condon asked Cooke what he meant, Cooke denied abusing the girl.

“I never touched that child in an inappropriate manner,” Cooke said.

Cooke said he pleaded guilty because he and his family didn’t believe that his ailing health could withstand a trial.

“My family felt I’d have a nervous breakdown or heart attack, so I had no other choice.”

Prosecutors asked Condon to sentence Cooke to the maximum seven years in prison.

“He is not accepting responsibility for his actions,” McHenry County Assistant State’s Attorney Sharyl Eisenstein said. “The defendant is blaming his criminal action on a 4-year-old as the aggressor.”

Cooke’s attorney, William Stanton, asked for Cooke to receive probation, a likely sentence considering Cooke’s lack of criminal history, age and health.

“He still remains a highly regarded member of his church and community,” Stanton said.

According to court documents, Cooke was a pastor in the Christian Missionary Alliance for 38 years.

With good behavior, Cooke would have to serve half of his sentence, or 18 months in prison.

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Former Deputy Senate Speaker Chalerm Promlert, Five Years Jail Term Upheld

The Supreme Court upheld a 36-year jail term given to former deputy Senate speaker Chalerm Promlert, five years after he was accused of having sex with underage girls.

The court found Chalerm, 71, guilty of sexually abusing four girls under the age of 15 between Nov 23, 2000 and Jan 3, 2001.

It upheld the Appeal Court's decision in January this year, which added 20 years to the 16-year sentence the lower court gave Chalerm.

The court said he should be punished more severely because he broke the law while he was a senator.

''The defendant was well aware that what he did was a serious crime,'' the court said.

The former deputy governor of Surat Thani, who had been free on bail of 2.5 million baht pending his final appeal to the Supreme Court, acknowledged the verdict with a pale face.

Police then escorted him to Pathum Thani jail.

Many of Chalerm's relatives, but not his wife, showed up to hear the verdict at the Thanyaburi provincial court.

The mother of one of the victims, whose names were withheld, said she was glad Chalerm did not walk free and thanked all the parties for their support.

Police had charged Chalerm with statutory rape in January 2001 after two girls separately identified him in a line-up as the man who paid them to have sex with him at a motel in Pathum Thani.

Chalerm spent two days in bed with the schoolgirls, one of them aged 16, at a motel in Pathum Thani's Lam Looka district. He paid each 4,000 baht for their services.

The students, aged 13 to 16, were taken to the motel by another girl, a 17-year-old school dropout.

Sex with a girl under 15 years of age brings a charge of statutory rape.

Chalerm resigned as senator in March 2001 amid mounting pressure from fellow senators and civic groups.

The Senate voted 87 to 54 to grant him immunity, splitting it into two camps and upsetting civic groups.

The court of first instance in October 2002 dismissed Chalerm's claim that he had a medical record of receiving treatment for a sexual dysfunction.

Chalerm also said that he had work commitments the days the offences occurred, but his Mercedes was spotted outside the Phaka Inn Hotel in Pathum Thani.

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Report Reveals Japan Army Sex Slavery Racket

Forcing women to become sex slaves was a crime organized by the Japanese military during Japan's invasion of China in the 1930s and 1940s, according to an investigative report published yesterday.

The first report by the Investigative Committee on Former Chinese "Comfort Women", co-founded by All China Lawyers' Association (ACLA) and China Legal Aid Foundation, traced 17 more survivors besides the ones who have already sued the Japanese government.

During its probe from September 2006 to March 2007, the committee found 14 of the 17 survivors were less than 18 when they were forced to become "comfort women", with the youngest being just 12.

Sixteen of the newly identified women were from North China's Shanxi Province and one from South China's Hainan Province, said the report posted on ACLA's website. The committee focused on five counties in Shanxi, two in Hainan and six in Yunnan.

Kang Jian, one of the lawyers behind the investigation, interviewed all the 17 survivors. "Now they are all in their 70s or 80s but they still suffer from serious mental and physical trauma," he said.

The Japanese army even tortured these "comfort women" by slashing them with knives or burning their faces with cigarettes.

"Many of them have no children and live in poverty. They told me their biggest wish was to get an apology and compensation from the Japanese government," Kang said.

But Tokyo has refused to pay direct compensation to any of the estimated 200,000 women, mostly Asian, saying all claims had been settled by subsequent peace treaties.

In April, Japan's top court rejected compensation claims of two Chinese women forced into the military brothels.

"Japanese courts have dismissed three Chinese 'comfort women's' lawsuits, while the fourth is going on," Kang said. "We carried out the investigations in a way that the documentation would help the court case."

The committee also released photographs of six Japanese officers' confessing about how they had "arrested" Chinese women and set up military brothels. Even a temple at Tengchong County in Yunnan Province was turned into a Japanese army brothel.

The "comfort women" practise lasted at least 16 years in China, the report said.

Su Zhiliang, director of the research center on "comfort women" in Shanghai Normal University, said more than 200,000 Chinese women were forced to become "comfort women" and over 75 percent of them were tortured to death.

"It's a shame that the Japanese government has rejected compensation pleas because the regulations and certificates show that the Japanese army and its government had forced women into prostitution," Su said. "In Hainan alone, there were 67 military brothels; there were more than 158 in Shanghai."

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Sexual Abuse And The Workplace In Philippines

In this age of emerging woman power, it is sad that many women are still trapped in old values making them prey to victimization.

A lady whom I shall call Delia consulted me, in tears, because she was unjustly forced to resign from her employment. At first she pinned the blame on her co-employees whom she claims destroyed her good name to the bosses.

When I asked why they would do that, all she could say was that she could not understand it herself. When I probed why she resigned for what seemed like petty office intrigues, she said her immediate superior believed the others more and suggested that she resign.

In all of the thirty minutes or so where she kept on ranting about the emotional pain she suffered I still could not make heads or tails out of her story. Nothing made sense.

She said she was an outstanding employee. Her personality projected a meek and docile young woman who is not exactly the normal fare of intrigues. I could not for the life of me imagine why she would be so hated by almost all her co-employees and be driven into resigning by her own immediate superior. I frankly told her that she did not seem to have a cause to file any legal suit against anyone unless she could present witnesses that she was maliciously defamed by her co-employees.

A break came into what seemed a non-case for me when her companion prodded her to tell me about the relationship she used to have with her boss. She tried to brush off the idea that what she was going through had anything to do with her former intimate relationship with her boss. With care and her permission, I asked her friend to tell me what she knew about Delia's intimacy with her boss. And this is the story.

Her boss had always shown special attention to Delia by giving her plum assignments that allowed her to earn more than the others. He also promised her that soon she would be promoted to a higher position with much more attractive perks. The catch? He often asked her to stay after office hours and would ask her to go to his office. At this, Delia broke down. I then encouraged her to narrate what her boss did to her in those after-office trysts. She said she was shocked the first time because immediately upon her entering his room, he embraced her, mashed her breasts and took her clothes off. She was stunned but while he was doing lewd things on her he kept on assuring her he loved her and he would be the wings to make her career fly. She gave in and promised not to say a word to anyone about this as he had requested. The trysts became more frequent and lurid. She said he even had a video tape rolling in one of their sexual encounters. By then, however, she was already madly in love with her boss and nothing mattered anymore to her, even the rolling tape.

I then asked her if there was an indication her officemates knew about her affair with the boss. Reluctantly she admitted that one of the things being thrown against her that led to her resignation was exactly this. What she could not take, she said, was why her boss-her lover-was among those who pressured her into resigning. I suggested to her that perhaps he was feeling the heat too much and became afraid that top management would get wind of it and fire him.

Perhaps, I said, he did not love you as much as he professed and valued his job more.

Delia could not accept this proposition. She kept insisting that he loved her but still had no explanation why he dropped her suddenly without a reason. Between sobs, she ranted that her boss even wrote a notice to the security guards of their building barring her entrance. When I suggested that she had been sexually abused and had a clear case against her boss she became more distraught. She said she could not file a case because she cannot let her parents know. The scandal would destroy her future especially because he had a video footage of one of their trysts. Her friend had one more valuable input to make. This was not the first time that this guy was linked to a female subordinate. In all the previous times, the female employees were forced to leave, much the same way she was driven out. Delia left my office without making a decision to take to task her boss and lover in a legal suit.

Delia had difficulty accepting she was victimized. She insisted it was mutual love. But she gave herself away when she said that although she had reservations about allowing him to carry out his lust, especially in their first few sexual encounters, she was afraid of losing her job and was looking forward to being promoted to a higher post.

Under the law known as the Anti-Sexual Harassment Act of 1995, there is sexual harassment when an employer, manager or supervisor requests or demands sexual favor from a person he has moral ascendancy over. The sexual favor is made as a condition for hiring, re-employment, continued employment or the granting of promotion or favorable compensation. Under this law, Delia's boss could be imprisoned and be made to pay for the moral damages that she suffered. Lucky for him, however, Delia belongs to the school of women who would rather suffer alone than be exposed to shame.

There are a number of laws giving special protection to women because they often find themselves victims of abuse. But unless women stand for their rights, these laws will mean nothing. Real emancipation cannot come from the outside but from within.

It is women's month. What is there to celebrate about if offenders of crimes against women continue to commit their crimes with impunity? More than celebrating, women should embark on educational campaigns to uplift their fellow women who are still trapped in the belief that they are better off in not fighting back.

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