Midwest Service Members Are Tackling Sexual Assault Within The Ranks

Good old boys protect their own and the victims know it!

Thank you, my friend PO1 William "Chip" Nagel for making us aware that a Saint Louis, Missouri woman veteran and a Kansas City-area woman veteran are focused on tackling sexual assaults within the military service ranks.
"a Kansas City-area woman and a St. Louis-area woman are sharing their stories as part of a larger national movement to bring attention to the crisis and demand solutions.
“I do agree there is a culture of almost protecting people or sweeping it under the rug instead of actually looking into the issue and trying to fix it,” says Heather Sexton, a St. Louis County survivor who spoke to KCUR’s Up to Date.
Sexton was a captain who served 10 years in the Missouri Army National Guard. She reported that she was sexually assaulted in 2017 by a junior service member under her charge. An investigative team validated her claim of sexual contact but said it could not determine the perpetrator’s intent.
“Even my lawyer was pretty upset about it,” recalled Sexton, who has since left the National Guard. She wonders what good it does to validate service members’ complaints if no punishment occurs for misconduct. “It completely broke my trust,” she said, “not just in people that I thought were my friends in the military but also in humanity as a whole.”
Marine Corps veteran Kelsey Harbor, of Overland Park, says she endured a series of military sexual incidents “where I was either coerced, attacked, hazed or alienated.”
One of those incidents, she said, involved waking up to a male Marine from her platoon on top of her. She says she reported it but the perpetrator received an honorable discharge.
She told Up to Date that she served 16 months from September 2009 to 2011 before she got what she described as a “retaliatory discharge” from the military. She believes her discharge was retaliation because it came right after she tried to report an incident.
“Previously when I went to a senior female Marine, she told me this is a part of the culture and if I’m not able to get in line or fall in line then I signed up for the wrong branch,” Harbor said. “I felt robbed of the opportunity that I tried to make for my life. I wanted nothing more than to serve my country and protect people, but the people that were supposed to protect me violated me.”
Thank you, my friend SFC Jack Champion for mentioning me.