Military Rape Crisis Center

SAN ANTONIO — October is National Domestic Violence Awareness Month, and the Army is doing its part to help combat violent behavior in its ranks. The awareness campaign aims to highlight the prevention, intervention and services provided by a community more than willing to address and stop domestic violence. “All of you are dedicated to…

By Melissa Dribben, Inquirer Staff Writer The U.S. military is struggling to defend troops who are under siege day and night on ill-defined battlefields. Troops who are fighting wars in which it can be impossible to identify the enemy or to know whom to trust. And when they are betrayed, they dare not tell anyone.…

By Nan Levinson When Panayiota Bertzikis tried to tell her commanding officers that she had been raped in May 2006 by a shipmate four months into her tour at the Burlington, Vt., Coast Guard Station, they discouraged her from talking to an Equal Opportunity officer, barred her from seeing a civilian therapist, ignored a written…

KISSIMMEE, Fla. (AP) — The “show and tell” table at this gathering of doctors featured contraceptive sponges and female condoms. Life-size rubber pelvises and female breasts covered several other tables at the back of a windowless convention center ballroom. The lectures focused on topics like how to help a rape victim feel comfortable in an…

An estimated 3,500 New Mexican female veterans have Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), a psychological syndrome commonly tied to combat. The vast majority of them were traumatized not by war, however, but by sexual assaults by fellow servicemen, according to New Mexico Veterans Affairs (VA) Health Care System officials. “Eighty to 90 percent” of the state’s…

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (AP) — The secretary of the Navy has censured the former commander of a fighter squadron at Oceana Naval Air Station. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said Cmdr. Liam Bruen permitted a hostile work environment, allowed subordinates to sexually harass a junior officer and gave the officer a bad performance evaluation as reprisal…