Posted on Nov 21, 2013
Sex Crimes in the Military, What's the Solution?
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The Military is know for having steeper punishments for certain crimes than the civilian world, therefore I believe the punishment for rape should be the death penalty.<br><br>Furthermore, if you are found guilty of falsely accusing someone of rape, the punishment should be no less than life in prison and possibly the death penalty as well. My reasoning for this is that if you are willing to try and cost someone their life under false pretense you deserve the same punishment. <br><br>What does the group think? How do we solve this problem? Can we solve this problem?<br>
SHARP
UCMJ
Crime
Posted 12 y ago
Responses: 14
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The military has a really bad record when it comes to the issue of rape. The recent coming out of men who were raped by teammates is disturbing in the least, and a serious violation of the trust that is necessary for unit cohesion. That these incidence occur in units rife with toxic leadership models where hierarchy bestows privilege without responsibility indicates it is a problem of culture within the military, not one of crime and punishment.
Zero tolerance is not an option and never has been. Mistakes in judgement happen and perception can be misleading. SHARP has become rhetorical training to be endured rather than a vital learning process or a means of changing the culture. Slut shaming and demeaning victims has been a tried practice of reducing the incidence of reporting as well as minimizing the effect in order to get cases dismissed or sentences reduced.
Enacting policies such as punishing them for failing to provide adequate evidence of their claim, will reduce the likelihood of women (and men) coming forward with their stories, enabling the rape culture in the military to persist.
The answer, as with all things military, begins at the lowest level. Company Commanders need to fully support the survivors of rape. This includes full investigation into the claims as well as involvement of CID to determine if allegations against an alleged rapist exist beyond the current case. Most rapists are serial in the commission of their crimes, yet each case is usually handled on its individual merits rather than multiple allegations being considered.
If your argument here is for the sake of being able to punish an accuser for coming forth with the truth behind an abusive relationship, despite the damage done to unit cohesion when the depravity and depth of a magnetic leaders sociopathy and narcissism is exposed, look for a different audience. More often than not, the allegations are true, unfortunately he said/she said is inadequate for prosecution. However, it is more than adequate for warning and allow a Commander to be pro-active in future situations rather than re-active.
Zero tolerance is not an option and never has been. Mistakes in judgement happen and perception can be misleading. SHARP has become rhetorical training to be endured rather than a vital learning process or a means of changing the culture. Slut shaming and demeaning victims has been a tried practice of reducing the incidence of reporting as well as minimizing the effect in order to get cases dismissed or sentences reduced.
Enacting policies such as punishing them for failing to provide adequate evidence of their claim, will reduce the likelihood of women (and men) coming forward with their stories, enabling the rape culture in the military to persist.
The answer, as with all things military, begins at the lowest level. Company Commanders need to fully support the survivors of rape. This includes full investigation into the claims as well as involvement of CID to determine if allegations against an alleged rapist exist beyond the current case. Most rapists are serial in the commission of their crimes, yet each case is usually handled on its individual merits rather than multiple allegations being considered.
If your argument here is for the sake of being able to punish an accuser for coming forth with the truth behind an abusive relationship, despite the damage done to unit cohesion when the depravity and depth of a magnetic leaders sociopathy and narcissism is exposed, look for a different audience. More often than not, the allegations are true, unfortunately he said/she said is inadequate for prosecution. However, it is more than adequate for warning and allow a Commander to be pro-active in future situations rather than re-active.
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CPT (Join to see)
Chief,
I will admit that I have a sensitivity to this subject as someone with a close friend who was falsely accused. So I know for a fact that false accusations do happen, and they ruin lives and careers. Maybe people try to brush that off because it doesn't fit the narrative they want to talk about.
But I'm not going soft on either side of wrong doing. If you rape someone you should die. Believe me, if some jackass raped one of my kids, I would do everything in my power to kill them,bottom Line.
On the other side, if you make a willful false accusation that could deprive someone of their life you go to jail. Seems fair to me.
Victim blaming or marginalizing is obviously not my intent, and I don't know how you read that into my remarks.
I get that for many these are sensitive issues but people have got to come up with actual 'rubber meets the road' solutions.
Everyone says SHARP is irrelevant, that victims are blamed, and that Commanders are too reactionary.
Those are the problems, what are the solutions?
I will admit that I have a sensitivity to this subject as someone with a close friend who was falsely accused. So I know for a fact that false accusations do happen, and they ruin lives and careers. Maybe people try to brush that off because it doesn't fit the narrative they want to talk about.
But I'm not going soft on either side of wrong doing. If you rape someone you should die. Believe me, if some jackass raped one of my kids, I would do everything in my power to kill them,bottom Line.
On the other side, if you make a willful false accusation that could deprive someone of their life you go to jail. Seems fair to me.
Victim blaming or marginalizing is obviously not my intent, and I don't know how you read that into my remarks.
I get that for many these are sensitive issues but people have got to come up with actual 'rubber meets the road' solutions.
Everyone says SHARP is irrelevant, that victims are blamed, and that Commanders are too reactionary.
Those are the problems, what are the solutions?
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CW2 Joseph Evans
My argument relates to the issue of toxic leaders. Those leaders who marginalize victims, reward the sociopaths in their command, dictate zero tolerance policies that are selectively enforced, punish whistle blowers, demand effects at all costs, ends justify the means...
As long as those attitudes exist among military leadership, there will be no reform in the effects, mainly criminal behavior patterns because of a belief that what the offender provides the unit is worth more than what they takes away.
The refusal to accept responsibility for those in a command and CYA attitude that is prevalent in today's military divorces command teams from the victims of their command style, whether it is direct, secondary or tertiary effect.
More than anything, we need to foster responsibility among future commanders that take ownership of the bad in their unit as well as the good and learn from their mistakes as commanders rather than ending careers of those officers that have dealt with those situations and failed... the first time. Repeat failures are of course inexcusable.
Where SA and rape do occur, and is promptly and properly managed and dealt with, the command team will reduce the opportunity for false allegations. Furthermore, proper reporting will also send flags up on serial abusers of the SHARP program, indicating a pattern of misconduct that would justify the release from service of the "boy who cried wolf". While I would feel sorry for those Soldiers affected by an initial false claim, victims of your "serial liars" would have opportunity to be vindicated, albeit following separation.
There is no perfect solution because there is always a way to "game" the system. The best we can to is reduce the number of times it gets "played".
As for your position on how false claims destroy lives, unreported rapes destroy more. So, where do we weigh in on the "greater good"?
As long as those attitudes exist among military leadership, there will be no reform in the effects, mainly criminal behavior patterns because of a belief that what the offender provides the unit is worth more than what they takes away.
The refusal to accept responsibility for those in a command and CYA attitude that is prevalent in today's military divorces command teams from the victims of their command style, whether it is direct, secondary or tertiary effect.
More than anything, we need to foster responsibility among future commanders that take ownership of the bad in their unit as well as the good and learn from their mistakes as commanders rather than ending careers of those officers that have dealt with those situations and failed... the first time. Repeat failures are of course inexcusable.
Where SA and rape do occur, and is promptly and properly managed and dealt with, the command team will reduce the opportunity for false allegations. Furthermore, proper reporting will also send flags up on serial abusers of the SHARP program, indicating a pattern of misconduct that would justify the release from service of the "boy who cried wolf". While I would feel sorry for those Soldiers affected by an initial false claim, victims of your "serial liars" would have opportunity to be vindicated, albeit following separation.
There is no perfect solution because there is always a way to "game" the system. The best we can to is reduce the number of times it gets "played".
As for your position on how false claims destroy lives, unreported rapes destroy more. So, where do we weigh in on the "greater good"?
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I think this would reduce the number of reported crimes more than it would reduce the number of crimes committed. I think severe and immediate punishment is needed, but a mandatory sentence of death is extreme for some situations. For example, two soldiers are of age and are drinking and they end up having sex. In the morning, once they sober up, one decides it was a mistake and turns the other in for rape. According to our current system, the other person is a rapist because neither could give consent due to the consumption of alcohol and the person turning the other in says it was unwelcome. So which one should we kill?
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CPT (Join to see)
In my opinion for that specific situation, Neither. Both are adults, both chose to drink, thus neither could consent, so neither is really a rapist.<br><br>However, if one of them pursues allegations of rape against the other even though both were willing participants, that person could be charged with false allegations and face life in prison. <br>
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I firmly believe in justly punishing those that commit these sort of crimes HOWEVER I believe the death penalty to be a bit extreme. Regardless of the branch they serve in and more importantly the rank they wear.....ALL OFFENDERS should be prosecuted the same.<br><br>Someone said it in an earlier comment that the military separating these offenders is simply not enough of a punishment for them. Heavy UCMJ sanctions should be leveled against them and incarceration should be the minimum penalty with NLT a minimum of 40 years.<br>
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I believe in the Uniform Code of Military Justice the punishment for rape is death. There are many different classifications of rape, statutory,etc. so I don't know the penalties for those.
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