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Raped and Silenced in the Barracks

Jill

A must-read piece about how women in the military are assaulted and then treated like dirt. The lead:

When military sexual assault survivors call Susan Avila-Smith, she advises them to keep their mouths shut while she works on getting them home.

“It breaks my heart to do that,” she says, “but I want to get them out alive and that’s my main goal.”

Since she left the Army in 1995, Avila-Smith estimates that she has helped about 1,200 rape survivors separate from the U.S. Armed Forces and claim their Veterans Affairs (VA) benefits. As founder of Women Organizing Women, an online support group for survivors of military sexual trauma (MST), Avila-Smith has heard it all. But lately, she’s been more sensitive than usual.

“Maria’s case has triggered something in me,” she says. “I imagine the VAs are filling up right now with women who never even stepped foot in there before.”

“Maria” is 20-year-old Marine Lance Cpl. Maria Lauterbach, who disappeared from Camp Lejeune, outside of Jacksonville, N.C., on Dec. 14, 2007, one month before she was expected to give birth. As the local police enlisted the press to help reach out to Lauterbach and solicit information from the local community, it was soon reported that she had recently accused a superior at Camp Lejeune of rape.

Naval Criminal Investigative Service agent Paul Ciccarelli attempted to quell suspicions that the two might be linked, assuring the Associated Press that the “sexual encounter” was “not criminal.” On Jan. 10, the Marine Corps Times, a weekly newspaper serving military personnel, bolstered this claim, speculating that she may have fled to avoid charges for “making false statements.”

That same day, Lauterbach’s accused assailant, Marine Cpl. Cesar Laurean, was scheduled to appear at the Onslow County Sheriff’s office for questioning. He never showed up. On Jan. 11, Laurean, who had reported for duty for a full month after Lauterbach’s disappearance, failed to do so. His wife told investigators that she believed he had left for Mexico and gave investigators a note written by Laurean that said Lauterbach had slit her own throat with a knife, and he then buried her. Detectives have rejected that claim, and an autopsy found that Lauterbach died of a blunt force trauma to the head.

Later that day, her charred body was uncovered in a shallow grave behind the Laurean home. The horrific discovery took place only weeks before she was to testify against Laurean.

Really, go read it all.

12 thoughts on Raped and Silenced in the Barracks

  1. I was a Marine Corps spouse. This article is really spot on. The Marine Corps’ way of dealing with abuse has always been to get rid of the victim–if the victim isn’t around to flap her gums about the incident, then the incident never existed, right? I saw this happen over and over again with abused spouses and victimized female Marines. The abuser/rapist (almost always a male Marine) is almost never “officially” punished … the worst that will happen to him is that he’ll be looked down upon for associating with a “big mouth” female. This may or may not affect his career growth, usually doesn’t. In the meantime, they will ostracize the female and make her feel like crap until she goes away. She broke ranks, she’s not a “good” Marine.

  2. Intimidation is such a successful tactic in these situations, because (according to everyone I know who has ever served in the armed foces) there is such a general feeling of camraderie in the armed forces. That is, until someone rocks the boat. The threat of losing your job, your reputation, your certifications, the sense of safety and family is a huge incentive to just keep your mouth shut.

    One of my co-workers is former Army (in the ’70’s so things may have changed now) but this was his comment about being in the service. “When you’re sharing an open latrine with 15 other guys, you have to trust them.”

  3. Before I read this article, I’d heard about an antiwar protest planned for March 19 in my city (Pittsburgh). The organizers planned to march through the city and end up at the military recruiting station, which they said they would occupy and hold the recruiters hostage. I’m against the war and wanted to participate in the march, but was hesitant about a physical altercation. Also, to me, the lies of Bush et al were a much more serious crime than that of the individual recruiters.
    But reading this article convinced me that recruiting women for the army is terribly dangerous- and not in the way the conservatives would have you believe (they’re weak, incapable, emotional, whatever). It’s dangerous because it’s practically setting them up to be raped with almost no hope of recourse against their attackers.
    So I will be participating in the protest to remind the recruiters that they’re actively working to send women into a toxic environment.

  4. Love the comments on the article.

    “As an officer in the Army I can categorically state that there has never been a rape in the Army. I have heard of female soldiers who have promiscuous sex and then say later they were raped, but there is never any evidence of actual rape.

    Most of the woman who join the Army are girls who cannot find boyfriends in the real world, so they join the military looking for a man to marry and look after them, and to get all the military benefits. After they join they get disgruntled by the fact that the men don’t give them the attention they expected so they make up stories about how all the men want them. The false charges about rape are usually wishful thinking on behalf of the women or they are from woman that have sex and when the men won’t marry them claim rape. I wouldn’t believe the woman’s stories; none of them are true.”

    “Female rape of men is not by force, but by accusation. Even a whore can shout rape when denied a stipend requested during the heat of the encounter.

    It is the best argument against females in line combat outfits outside the jurisdiction of decent society and morals. […] A war zone is not a place for any vulnerable female and military fighting is not a job for the toughest girls. Also it is not a place for vulnerable homos, or pip squeaks. It is bad enough to subject ‘enemy’ populations of females to the onslaught of sexual mayhem after the battles by horny soldiers enjoying their victory.

    Let us get back to honoring our sisters and mothers by taking the burden of battle off their bosoms.”

  5. A year or so ago, I was reading some appalling statistics about the rape/sexual assault of women stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan by their fellow soldiers. I brought this up to a female co-worker.
    Her response: “Well, what do those women expect?”
    Me: “I expect that the men in the service will not assault or rape their fellow soldiers, that’s what I fucking expect!”

    The idea that the military is still a man’s domain is prevalent, and, apparently, if a woman dares tread on “man’s domain”, she deserves whatever she gets or, at least, she should shut up about it.

    It is incomprehensible to me that we still let sexual assault/rape slide because there is never a situation where rape is warranted (unlike practically every other crime). It is only because majority of victims are women. If men were being raped/assaulted at the rate women are, it would be a fucking world crisis. Since its women, well…what do we expect? Respect? Equality? Justice? How dare we!

  6. bridgetka, i like those comments, too. apparently, the military is a magical bubble in the world where rape just *doesn’t occur*, as opposed to the rest of the world! maybe i should join the military so that i can avoid being raped!

    @@

    people who doubt the prevalence of rape are such assholes.

    [ps bridgetka, i know you didn’t make those comments, haha. just incase that wasn’t clear!]

  7. Its an interesting thing. During my 10 years in the military I worked in a field that was almost half female (I was a linguist/translator). We often worked with infantrymen and all other types of more regular (more regular than us) military folks. I never fully understood why the team ethic didnt apply all the way to never, ever attacking your teammates but the more regular part of the military had a totally different mindset than we did. Part of the problem when it came to rape cases was the way the UCMJ was written and the fact that it wasn’t revised for a long time. This has changed in the last few years but that change hasn’t spread through the entirety of the service yet. We had quite a few problems with sexual assault, a lot more male/male sexual assault than you might think, and most times it was “resolved” at the lowest possible level so it would not effect unit as a whole. Especially with male/male assault as if you couldnt prove that you actively resisted really hard, well you just admitted to a homosexual act. Kind of like how they nail rape victims who are under 21 with underage drinking if they come forward with their complaint. Since I didnt fully understand how one member of a squad platoon or unit could assault another, it made me look at it and wonder how exactly do you train a soldier to be hyper aggressive yet be able to rein that in at a moments notice?

    The military is a male-dominated entity and that will not change until all the policies restricting women are removed. My wife is a Chief in the Navy and you will not find a better operator or sailor but even as recently as 2002 she was kept from deploying to a ship because it was a male-only ship, she cannot go on subs and is limited in many other ways. Under the current regs, if you were going to send me a new person and all you could tell me was there sex, I would invariably choose the male as males are completely unrestricted. As long as those types of restrictions remain in place you will continue to see a marginalization of women in the military no matter how many more join.

    As far as that quote saying there are women who join the military to find a husband, well based on my experience I would have to say thats true. During my time in training, there were several women I knew who said that was their reason for joining the military. I was never really sure why they would do something like that but it does happen in the same way a few women in my shop got pregnant on purpose to avoid having to deploy and openly admitted it. Those women do not by any means represent even a large minority though.

  9. Love the comments on the article.

    FYI, those comments have been deleted, and I’ll be checking the article regularly to make sure that other stuff like that doesn’t stay up for too long.

  10. JamesPI brought up a couple things I was trying to find a way to say. Actually, he said it better than I ever could, since I’m an outsider to the military and can only go on what I have observed with my family and friends who are military of one branch or another. I’m a pacifist, so for the longest time I thought it was an offshoot of that, but after living in a military town for several years and seeing the effect a year in Iraq had on my younger brother, I’m starting to wonder how much is my pacifism and how much is a genuine distaste of the values and hypocrisy that is the current military mindset.

    I’m never surprised when I read about an assault/rape/altercation where one or both of the combantants/victims are military. And I’m never surprised – only saddened – when the entire thing is swept under the carpet, never to be spoken of, never to be used as a tool to make changes for the better.

  11. Stories like this upset me so much. It’s like, these awful things are happening in what’s supposedly a noble institution, and they happen to close people in faraway places, and there’s nothing a caring person can do about it.

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