The alleged attackers in the lawsuit include an Army criminal investigator and an Army National Guard commander. The abuse alleged ranges from obscene verbal abuse to gang rape.
In one case, an Army Reservist says two male colleagues raped her in Iraq and videotaped the attack. She complained to authorities after the men circulated the video to colleagues. Despite being bruised from her shoulders to elbows from being held down, she says, charges weren’t filed because the commander determined she “did not act like a rape victim’’ and “did not struggle enough’’ and authorities said they didn’t want to delay the scheduled return of the alleged attackers to the United States.
“The problem of rape in the military is not only service members getting raped, but it’s the entire way that the military as a whole is dealing with it,’’ said Panayiota Bertzikis, a plaintiff in the lawsuit who says she was raped in 2006. “The entire culture needs to be changed.’’
Although the Associated Press normally does not identify the victims of sexual assault, the plaintiffs in the lawsuit have publicly discussed the cases.
Bertzikis, 29, of Somerville, Mass., says she was raped by a Coast Guard shipmate while out on a social hike with him in Burlington, Vt. Bertzikis complained to her commanding officer, but she said authorities did not take substantial steps to investigate the matter. Instead, she said, they forced her to live on the same floor as the man she had accused and tolerated others calling her a liar and whore.
In response to her treatment, Bertzikis founded the Cambridge-based Military Rape Crisis Center in 2006. The center offers counseling to victims of military sexual assault.
Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said in a statement that sexual assault is a wider societal problem and that Gates has been working to ensure the military is doing all it can to prevent and respond to it.
