Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has ordered a high-level investigation into reports that several dozen female service members deployed in Kuwait and Iraq have been sexually assaulted and denied adequate medical care and counseling, the Pentagon said yesterday.
"Commanders at every level have a duty to take appropriate steps to prevent sexual assaults, protect victims, and hold those who commit offenses accountable," Rumsfeld said in a memorandum to David S.C. Chu, undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness.
In the memo, released by defense officials, Rumsfeld directed Chu to report back within 90 days on how the Defense Department handles reports of sexual assaults in the combat theater and whether adequate treatment and care are being provided.
Rumsfeld also directed Chu to determine whether private channels for reporting sexual assaults have been established by units in Kuwait and Iraq.
"We are responsible for ensuring that the victims of sexual assault are properly treated, their medical and psychological needs are properly met, our policies and programs are effective, and we are prompt in dealing with all issues involved," Rumsfeld said.
A total of 88 cases of sexual misconduct have been reported by the military services over the past year in the Central Command area of operations, which includes Kuwait and Iraq. The Army has reported 80, the Air Force seven and the Marines one.
One senior officer who recently returned from the theater said most of those cases involved fraternization between male and female service members, not sexual assaults.
Rumsfeld issued the memo on sexual assaults in response to a Jan. 25 article in the Denver Post that said that more than three dozen female service members, victimized by sexual assaults in Iraq, Kuwait and elsewhere, had sought rape counseling and other assistance upon returning to the United States, according to one defense official.
The newspaper said most of the victims contacted the Miles Foundation, a nonprofit organization based in Newtown, Conn., that focuses on instances of sexual assault, sexual harassment, child abuse and domestic violence in the U.S. military.
Kate Summers, the foundation's director of victim services, said yesterday in an interview that Miles had worked with 38 female service members who said they had been sexually assaulted in Kuwait and Iraq, including 12 who reported the assaults to military authorities.
"They have ranged from misdemeanors to felonies," Summers said of the 38 cases, noting that 75 to 80 percent of them involved alleged rapes or attempted rapes.
"What we have seen is that there has not been access available to [appropriate] medical care," Summers said. "In some of the cases, the victim's only access to any type of medical care would have been a medic or a corpsman."
Summers said that in a number of cases, women have been "re-victimized" through the filing of charges against them for adultery or fraternization.
One of the 38 cases involves a 23-year-old sergeant from the 3rd Brigade of the 2nd Infantry Division who alleges that she was knocked unconscious, bound and gagged, and then raped at Camp Udairi in Kuwait on Nov. 28 as her unit awaited deployment to Iraq. The soldier, traumatized and angered by the way she was treated by Army officials after the assault, later attempted to commit suicide by overdosing on antidepressants.
Rep. Joseph R. Pitts (R-Pa.) began investigating the case after the soldier's mother, a constituent, contacted his office in December and said that she had been unable to get in touch with her daughter after the assault. "We basically facilitated a conversation between mother and daughter," said Derek Karchner, Pitts's press secretary, and made sure that the Army was giving the soldier adequate care. The soldier was then sent back to the United States for further care, he said.
The soldier's mother called the memo "long overdue" and said last night in an interview that the Army has been "very unprepared" to either care for her daughter or apprehend her attacker.
"It's just ludicrous, the lack of empathy that military personnel display," the mother said. "Today, she's not doing well, and she's a strong girl. This did not have to happen. You have to have faith in your military, and for her to be violated by one of our own -- it's hard to explain [my] feelings about that."
In releasing Rumsfeld's memo, defense officials said commanders are expected to take action under the Uniform Code of Military Justice in cases of alleged sexual misconduct and sexual assaults. Military reporting procedures can be formal or informal, written or oral, and do not require the formal filing of a complaint, they said.
"It's a serious thing," one defense official said of the reported sexual assaults. "The secretary wants to get to the bottom of it, and he wants Undersecretary Chu to get to the bottom of these allegations."