Understanding and Treating Military Sexual Trauma

175 Pages·2018·2.135 MB·English

by  Kristen Zaleski

Focus on Sexuality Research
Series Editor: Heather Hoff mann
Kristen Zaleski
Understanding
and Treating
Military Sexual
Trauma
Second Edition
Focus on Sexuality Research
Series editor
Heather Hoffmann, Knox College, Galesburg, IL, USA
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/10132
Kristen Zaleski
Understanding and Treating
Military Sexual Trauma
Second Edition
With Contributions by Kate Majewski and Kim Finney
Kristen Zaleski
University of Southern California
Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work
Los Angeles, CA, USA
ISSN 2195-2264 ISSN 2195-2272 (electronic)
Focus on Sexuality Research
ISBN 978-3-319-73723-2 ISBN 978-3-319-73724-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73724-9
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018935939
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The day the soldiers stop bringing you their
problems is the day you stopped leading
them. They have either lost confidence that
you can help them, or concluded that you do
not care. Either case is a failure of
leadership.
—Colin Powell
Foreword
I am a military lawyer with nearly two decades of experience. For many years, I was
the Chief of Military Justice for the California National Guard, the organization’s
senior prosecutor. I have special expertise in sexual assault cases, prosecuting more
service members accused of sex crimes than any other JAG officer in Cal Guard’s
history. Prior to reading Understanding and Treating Sexual Trauma, I thought I had
a pretty good handle on the subject. It turned out my law-and-order frame of refer-
ence was woefully incomplete.
Like many, I am deeply concerned about the epidemic level of sexual violence
which occurs within the military—and by the DoD’s failure to remedy the situation.
Countless resources have been appropriated to “solve” the problem, resulting in
new departments, additional treatment officials, and sophisticated reporting pro-
cesses. Influential legislators such as Senator Kristen Gillibrand and Congresswoman
Jackie Speiers have striven to hold the military’s leadership accountable, conduct-
ing hearings and even facilitating changes to the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
Nevertheless, more service members are assaulted each year. Why can’t the epi-
demic be halted?
Dr. Zaleski provides the answer to this vexing question. The radical insight Dr.
Zaleski offers—and one I had never previously considered—is that the abnormally
high levels of intra-organizational sexual violence is a direct by-product of military
culture. She explains how military-specific cultural norms combine together to cre-
ate a rape-supportive environment, resulting in a dynamic where sexual violence is
not acknowledged, victims are blamed, and unit personnel side with accused perpe-
trators. Because the dynamic is rooted in cultural norms, surface-level changes such
as tweaks to reporting procedures have little chance of succeeding, not designed to
address the actual problem. Programmatic-level modifications in fact reflect a mis-
diagnosis, akin to a doctor performing eye surgery on a patient dying of heart
disease.
While I initially pushed back on Dr. Zaleski’s framing of the issue, it slowly sunk
in that she had gotten it exactly right. The sexual assault epidemic is not an admin-
istrative problem. It is a cultural problem. I have seen with my own eyes the “other-
ing” of women, the portrayal of female service members as “less than” and
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viii Foreword
second-rate, unworthy of dignity or respect. The subtle messages of illegitimacy are
woven into the military’s training and indoctrination process, from the misogynistic
cadences sung during boot camp (your girl is at home cheating on you) to the insti-
tutional ban on women serving in critical combat arms positions (women are physi-
cally and emotionally weak, unable to be trusted when the bullets are flying). These
messages are reinforced at the management level, where women are lectured not to
act like “sluts” while simultaneously being frozen out of the senior most positions,
“disqualified” (insidiously) by their lack of combat arms experience.
Dr. Zaleski’s depiction of military culture aligns with what I have seen and expe-
rienced over the course of my career. Aggressive masculinity, familial structure,
desensitization to kill, male sociodominance—these norms are the touchstones of
the American military establishment. It is not hard to see how these values “work to
create an environment in which perpetrators commit sexual assaults without fear of
punishment and victims are denied protection and justice” (p. 36). Indeed, an ele-
vated rate of intra-organizational sexual violence appears to be baked into the cul-
tural ethos. It for this reason the book is a mainstay in the Veterans Legal Practicum,
a course I co-teach at USC’s Gould School of Law with Laura Riley.
Dr. Zaleski’s theoretical model has helped me solve an enduring paradox, a situ-
ation which has cofounded me for years. Frequently, when a service member
(female or male) suffers a sexual assault at the hands of a fellow unit member, the
majority of the personnel in the unit turn their backs on the victim, siding with the
alleged perpetrator. The unit’s collective ostracization exasperates the victim’s emo-
tional pain and complicates the healing process, a kind of double betrayal. Seeing
this phenomenon play out time and time again has tied me in philosophical knots,
damaging my faith in humanity.
When considered through the lens of Dr. Zaleski’s model, however, the unit’s
rejection of the victim looks like an entirely rational—if no less damaging—
response. She explains that during basic training, the impressionable, mostly 18 to
20-year-old recruits transfer familial bonds to their fellow soldiers in arms. The
reverence they feel toward parents/coaches/priests is similarly transferred to drill
instructors and other senior military personnel, with the “unit” (squad or platoon)
taking the place of the family. “Although this training equates to strong, capable
warriors,” Dr. Zaleski writes, “the essence of this identity also seems to lead to an
ideology of boundless power, producing a negative byproduct that allows for sexual
victimization of its members and perpetuates rape culture” (p. 36).
An intra-unit rape is thus analogous to an intra-family rape. In the same way a
wife/mother or sibling often reflexively sides with the husband/father/perpetrator,
dismissing the claims of the victimized child, unit members often reflexively reject
their victimized colleague, siding with the assailant, often older and in a leadership
position. The literature on incest helps explain the counterintuitive reaction, reveal-
ing the psychological logic behind it. Seen through this lens, it is not surprising that
preservation of the unit is the first instinct for young Marines whose guiding mantra
is “For God, Corps, and Country.”
The foregoing illustrates the enduring value of Dr. Zaleski’s book. By placing
military sexual trauma within the wider scholarship on trauma, she allows the
Foreword ix
academic wisdom to be utilized in elucidating how and why service members react
the way they do. For those struggling to understand how and why service women
have become “acceptable” targets of sexual violence within military culture, the
book is an invaluable aid.
Veterans Legal Institute Dwight Stirling
Santa Ana, CA, USA
Preface
When the first edition of this book was published in 2015, I was hopeful that it could
reach an audience of clinicians who could learn a bit of history and consider some
of my clinical considerations and treatment recommendations into their therapeutic
tool box to heal the wounds of sexual violence in their therapy room. What has hap-
pened instead has been unexpected: ‘thank you’ emails from survivors who have
found a voice from the book, legal experts using my text as a way to advocate for
clients who were victimized during service time in the court room, and in particular,
recognition that the military rape sub-culture hypothesis in Chap. 2 defined an epi-
demic in a way that other experts had not considered. I am thankful for all of the
emails and conference conversations and invitations to train military affiliated clini-
cians that have come from my first edition. And I am proud to say, the second edi-
tion is even better.
Just as important, is the criticism that I have received for this book. In 2015 I
stood in front of a group of sexual assault advocates that included many military
service members at the National Sexual Assault conference in Los Angeles to pres-
ent my thesis from the text. During my presentation, I was told that I am exaggerat-
ing the issue, that false reporting is prominent in the military, that the researchers are
misleading in their numbers, and I was just one example of those in academia who
promote these false reports. The many military affiliated clinicians and advocates in
that room who denied the incidence and seriousness of the issue was a sign that we
had not done enough to validate the experience of survivors.
I also have received a few critical reviews in the academic book reviews. Most
reviews of the text have been supportive of my thoughts regarding traditional trauma
therapies, and my belief that we must work from not just a cognitive, top-down
therapy style but also a somatic, bottom-up psychotherapy treatment. Other review-
ers who use and believe in the cognitive modalities solely to treat PTSD have been
less impressed with my writing-one peer published a critique calling my criticism
of the evidence based treatments as “irresponsible”. I take that criticism to heart,
and it has caused me a lot of soul searching as I re-write the second part of this book.
I believe my argument for challenging the current evidence based treatments for
PTSD are more greatly outlined in this new text, and I have deepened the research
xi
xii Preface
informed discussion to showcase that it is actually “irresponsible” to treat survivors
of MST with cognitive only methods. See Part Two of this book for a full discussion
on this topic.
I write this text as our nation experiences a crisis of consciousness about what
‘evidence based’ therapies should guide psychotherapy, and some clinicians rely on
practice based evidence as their guide instead. But don’t take my word for it, since
this book was published in 2015, many more voices have started to speak about the
limitations of current PTSD treatments, and that ‘one size fits all’ therapies are not
the answer. In light of this conversation, the final chapter of this text discusses the
blended treatment recommendations that I believe to be beneficial for this kind of
interpersonal trauma. I can only hope the VA and other facilities take a look at
neuro-informed conceptualizations of trauma, and make the changes needed to the
way their practitioners treat sexual trauma.
As I write this at the end of 2017, victim blame and rape culture are rampant in
our daily news, and on Twitter. Our current President of the United States tweeted
about MST stating, “what did these geniuses expect when they put men and women
together?” (May 13, 2013). As I wrote this new edition I asked myself how we can
begin to change not just the military culture, but the greater culture of the United
States of America to end the cultural belief that rape is inevitable and unavoidable.
We must do better in a time where we feel progress is hard. I refuse to believe that
changing rape culture is futile. With that in mind, I write this book…
Los Angeles, CA, USA Kristen Zaleski