Ft. Hood Sergeant in charge of sexual assault prevention is accused of sexual assault

"I am outraged and disgusted by the reports out of Fort Hood today," said House Armed Services Committee Chairman Howard P. "Buck" McKeon, calling them the "latest chapter in a long, sordid history of sexual abuse" in the military.

-- CNN News, May 15, 2013

It is worth noting that Chairman McKeon is a Republican Congressperson from California.  He is admitting that sexual abuse in the military is not a momentary aberation, but a chronic disease.  Read the rest of this story here.

  

Moms in the military

Thanks to Iraq Veterans Against the War member, Nicole Goodwin, for writing this piece that was published on a parenting blog in the New York Times on May 5, 2013:

Talking With My Daughter About My Service in Iraq


By NICOLE GOODWIN

“Mom, what did you see over there? What was it like? Did you have a gun? Did you kill anyone?”

The first time my daughter Shylah asked me about being a soldier in Iraq, she was 6 years old. Her class had been studying the war.

But I had no idea how to answer her questions. I had not figured out for myself why I had been in Iraq. I didn’t know what sense to make of the horrors I had witnessed. Nor had I dealt with my guilt that I had chosen to stay in the military and leave behind my child when I had no certainty that I would return.

Did I want to tell my daughter about all the children I had seen in orphanages or begging at the side of the road? Would I ever be ready to tell her that, while looking for insurgents, I’d had to intimidate people? Or that when I was guarding prisoners, I’d had to shut off all feeling and act like a stone?

How could I ever tell my child that real-life bogeymen exist and that, for the Iraqi people, I was one of them?

It was only a month after Shylah was born that I kissed her goodbye and flew off to Iraq. When I returned, 10 months later, I was riddled with anger, self-hatred and loneliness.

My daughter was my one bright spot. I saw her eyes light up when it dawned on her that I was her mom. That gave me great hope that I could make things right. At first, I did. But over the years, my post-traumatic stress disorder and depression grew worse. I had nightmares so bad that I would wet the bed.

Then, three years ago, around the same time Shylah began asking me about my experiences at war, I slapped her. She told her therapist and the therapist called Child Protective Services, and they took my daughter from me.

Again, I was determined to make things right. During the six months Shylah was in foster care, I saw her almost daily, and I spent time in therapy facing the bogeymen inside me that I had been running from for so long.

Still, I never told Shylah that my problems had anything to do with Iraq. I just told her that mommy was sick and sad.

When she came home, we had to deal with all the anger, fear and guilt she had felt when she was separated from me. It was then that I realized I would need to find a way to share my experiences of war with her. I couldn’t lock away everything I’d experienced without locking away parts of me that Shylah needed.

But what could I share? I didn’t want to traumatize my daughter. So I approached the subject slowly, and from a distance. I started with cartoons.

When I was a little girl, growing up poor in Brooklyn in the crack era, “Tom and Jerry,” “Ghostbusters,” “Beetlejuice” and “Batman” made me feel strong enough to laugh despite all the violence and craziness around me. They made me feel like it was O.K. to be silly and angry and to make mistakes.

With Shylah, I watched “Adventure Time.” Marceline is a little girl orphaned by war, and the Ice King is a compassionate person who would sacrifice himself to ease a child’s suffering. He takes the crown of power in order to stop the war and save Marceline. But taking power also takes away his memories, and his sanity. He winds up a strange and lonesome man who lives with a bunch of penguins and doesn’t have any human friends.

One time, Shylah and I watched an episode where the Ice King was fighting the process of losing his memory. He was writing down anything he could remember on the back of newspapers and scraps of paper. Marceline went to visit him. There was rubble all around and the Ice King turned to her and sang: “Marceline, is it just you and me left in the wreckage of the world? That must be so scary for a little girl.”

The scene reminded me of the children standing in the rubble by the road in Baghdad begging for money, for gas, for food. They reminded me of feeling like my hands were tied — I was powerless to ease their suffering, or even to be there for my own daughter. For a moment, I cried.

As I cried, silence filled the room, but it wasn’t the eeriness that used to come between Shylah and me when I tried to shut off my feelings. It was a connected silence, a quiet understanding. For once I wasn’t afraid to be sad, and for my daughter, that seemed to come as a relief.

Then the cartoon returned to being funny, and we were able to laugh again, together.

When my daughter is older, I think I’ll start showing her some of what I’ve written about her and about my time at war. I think it will help that I write. I’ll be brave enough to say, “Here, I wrote this,” when what I’ll really want is just to run out of the room. I’ll be able to share instead of hiding, stay connected instead of breaking us apart.

It’s important for me to keep finding ways to let my daughter know my story, because my story is a big part of her story as a person. For us, our story includes the war.

Nicole Goodwin is a single mother, veteran and graduate of the City College of New York. She writes for Rise, a magazine by and for parents affected by the child welfare system.

Sexual assault rates within the military increase despite growing awareness

The high rates of sexual assault within the military are becoming more well-known, but rates keep increasing, according to a new Pentagon report.  Why?  Tolerance - even promotion - of gender discrimination, alcohol abuse and protecting higher-ups in the chain of command -- all these play a role.  Sunday's arrest of Lt. Col. Jeffrey Krusinski for sexual battery -- the Air Force officer who was actually placed in charge of the sexual prevention programs within the Air Force -- is a major case in point:

NBC News:  The Air Force official in charge of its sexual-assault prevention program was arrested for groping, authorities said Monday.
Lt. Col. Jeff Krusinski, 41, was removed from his position as head of the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office pending an investigation, the Air Force said.
The incident happened just after midnight Sunday when a drunken Krusinski allegedly approached the woman in a parking lot in Arlington, Va., and grabbed her breasts and buttocks, according to a police report.
Police said the woman fought off her assailant and scratches can be seen on Krusinski’s face in his mug shot. He was charged with sexual battery.
The charges are "deeply troubling," Air Force Chief of Staff General Mark Welsh said Tuesday. The Air Force has requested jurisdiction in the case, which is standard practice.  Krusinski didn't show up for work Monday and would not talk to colleagues about the incident, a senior defense official said.
"He has been removed," Lt. Col. Laurel Tingley said of Krusinski, who had been in charge of the sexual-assault unit for about two months.
His arrest comes as the U.S. military grapples with sexual assault in its ranks. The Air Force recently came under fire when a commander reversed a guilty verdict in a sexual assault case.
Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel expressed his "outrage and disgust" to Secretary of the Air Force Michael Donley Monday night after learning about the allegations against Krusinski. Hagel "emphasized that this matter will be dealt with swiftly and decisively," a Pentagon statement said.
"This is absolutely infuriating," said Greg Jacob, policy director at the Service Women's Action Network. "Clearly the business-as-usual manner in which the military handles sexual assault cases has led to a climate where the very officers in charge of preventing this criminal activity feel that sexual assault is acceptable behavior.
"The military has proven time and again that the current system of prosecuting these cases is broken," he said.
The Pentagon will release its annual report on sexual assaults in the military on Tuesday afternoon, which shows an increase in reported assaults in fiscal year 2012 — up from 3,192 a year before. Furthermore, the number of people who made an anonymous claim that they were sexually assaulted but never reported the attack skyrocketed from 19,000 in FY11 to 26,000 in FY12.
U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., a member of the Armed Services Committee, said the allegations were "extremely disturbing."
"It is clear that the status quo regarding sexual assaults in the military is simply unacceptable. Next week I am going to take this issue head on by introducing a set of common sense reforms," she said in a statement.
"We have to reform how the military handles sexual assault cases and take on the culture that perpetuates this kind of behavior.”

Sexual assaults of both women and men within the US armed forces must be seen partly as a consequence of the power structure within the military as well as training that uses belittlement and degradation as a method of control.

Dolores Huerta's birthday at McCallum HS

Tami and I made a spring semester visit to McCallum HS and really enjoyed talking with students, faculty, one of the police officers and school staff persons who stopped by the table.  Many told us that they were glad to see us because Navy recruiters had been tabling in the same spot yesterday.  As always, students were very imaginative with the art materials and helped prove our point:  peace is creative!

One of our stickers features Dolores Huerta holding a "Huelga!" sign and the words, "La Paz Requiere Coraje"  (Peace Takes Courage).  It was good to learn that today happens to be Dolores Huerta's 83rd birthday.  It's also a national day of action for immigration reform.  Si se puede! 


Tami at the SOY table

We were set up across the hall from a table where students were selling tickets for this coffeehouse event, which is a fundraiser for the student literary journal, Excalibur.  Nice!

It was good to learn about the Excalibur journal

The talented student who did this carried her art supplies -- brushes and water colors -- with her.

 

Student art in display case

Student art in display case

Student display about Dante's Inferno

Student display on Dante's Inferno

Student display on Dante's Inferno

Student display on Dante's Inferno

One of our posters was taped next to this Marines display in the library as allowed by AISD policy

Student fabric art in display case

Dreamers: Study these things carefully

I like this message from Los Angeles colleague, Joe Maizlish, written in response to the appeal, below, from Kiana C., a young woman writing on behalf of a group called Keeping Families Together: 

Kiana,


I join you in seeking full rights for you and those like you, and protection for your families.

As for your ambition of joining the U.S. Marines: I both appreciate your desire to serve the country, AND hope you will reconsider about joining the U.S. armed forces, and study matters carefully. Your goal is honorable service, however the dedication, skill and good will of the members of the Marines and the rest of the U.S. military are used to create and support oppressive conditions in many other countries -- and indirectly contribute to the poverty and dislocation which have led many to try to emigrate to the U.S.

Please don't add to the cycle of troubles.

Please study these things carefully. If you do, I believe you will find out about that tragic story, a story most media and political figures do not talk about and even in many cases do not know about.

Good wishes with your ambition for equal rights, an ambition I support and am working towards.

Please don't use your equal rights to join an institution which deprives others of equality in their lands!

Sincerely,

Joseph Maizlish

On 4/6/2013 10:01 AM, Kiana C. wrote:

Dear Joseph,

Nearly a month past their deadline, Senator Jeff Flake and the Gang of 8 have still failed to come through on their promise to introduce a comprehensive immigration reform bill.

As they continue to deliberate, families, DREAMers and those looking to serve this country like me are left in an agonizing waiting period. I am an Arizona resident and enrolled in ROTC. One day I plan on joining the Marines and serving my country proudly. However, many of my friends who have that same dream are not able to accomplish it because of their immigration status.

Senator Flake and my friends and family have something in common. Senator Flake you have spent your life working to serve this country and the people of Arizona. My friends and I have the same dream of serving our country in the most brave and honorable way possible.

We cannot afford to wait any longer for immigration reform. Click here to tell Senator Flake and the Gang of 8 that we need a bill that will keep families like ours together!

Senator Flake, you know the full promise that the young DREAMers of this country hold for its future if they are given a chance to give back and serve. Please, stand up and fight for families, Friends and DREAMers like mine.

Please ask Senator Flake and the Gang of 8 to introduce legislation that keeps all families together.

Thank you,

Kiana C., AZ

P.S. If you haven’t read my story yet, click here to read it on KeepingFamiliesTogether.net.

Spring visit to Lanier High School

Tami and I made a spring semester visit to Lanier HS yesterday and had a great time at the table with students who stopped by and hung out to do the stencil art, spin the peace wheel and mull over the literature.  We also restocked our literature in the library and in the career center and put up one of our fliers next to an Army recruiting flier, which the AISD policy allows us to do.
Thanks to the Vikings for checking out our materials and talking with us about their plans after high school.

New Cesar Chavez stencil

Students at SOY table

Mural at Lanier, done by a Lanier alum, I think

Lanier Viking with graduation attire in main office

SOY brochure next to Army brochure in career center

SOY brochure next to Army brochure in career center

part of SOY display

SOY poster in window

SOY flier next to Army flier on bulletin board, as permitted by AISD policy

student art

student art with student's personal symbol

student art

student art

student folder art

students at SOY table

Tami putting up posters

student folder art

Local Veteran writes about the realities of war

Appreciation to Iraq and Afghanistan War veteran, Zackary Dryer for finding the strength to write the following first-person account of what he experienced and witnessed as a soldier.  Appreciation to the Austin American-Statesman for printing the piece yesterday in the Insight section of the Sunday, March 24, 2013 edition.  Zackary's descriptions of what happens in combat coincide with many other accounts I have read by and heard from war veterans.  If wars are ever to end, they will end partly because more soldiers like Zackary are willing to describe the horrors of war and militarism that are so hard to tell.  Please listen.

Veteran describes demons he brought home from Iraq, Afghanistan wars

By Zackary Dryer

Special to the American-Statesman

I’ve tried to write this a hundred times in the year since I folded up my uniforms for the last time and placed them neatly next to my pictures and awards in a beat-up footlocker out in the garage. Every attempt ended the same way, in disgust and a pile of balled-up papers. I would feverishly scribble until my hand felt as if it would fall off and then I would rip the sheet from my notebook and angrily toss the ball of lies and grandstanding to the floor. I would grumble off to a troubled and restless sleep, watching the parts I edited out, the truth, play out across the backs of my eyelids like a horrific movie stuck on repeat.

When a friend forwarded me a link stating that the Statesman was looking for Iraqi war vets to tell their stories, I decided to take Hemingway’s advice and just tell the truth. He always said that all you needed was one true word to start and then just continue from there. So I put down all the crutches I have used to prop myself up over the last year and decided to figure out what my word was. After several days of trying to ignore the one word that kept creeping into my head, hoping a better word would come along, I gave in and wrote it down. It stared back at me and I had to look away. It sat there quietly in big black bold-face letters, ringing in my head like a piano falling down a staircase, until I tossed it a desk drawer, disgusted with myself.

The word found its way behind my sleep-heavy eyelids and tortured me until morning. When I woke I pulled it out and stared at it alone in my study and cried: “MONSTER.” I wiped my eyes and hurried my 9-year-old daughter off to the bus stop, then waved goodbye as my wife and son drove away. Then I took my place behind my cluttered desk and thought about the children of Iraq.

The smaller children got quickly trampled underfoot as the large groups of malnourished kids chased bags of colored candy, connected by string to the hands of soldiers, as our convoys clicked steadily down the road. The gunners would let the children get almost on top of the bag before pulling the string taught and swiping the candy away. It was just one of the many nasty-spirited little games we played when the desert sun was unbearably hot. We’d save up pork meals from our rations, toss them to begging children and watch them devour the forbidden meat. We’d pour the last quarter of our water bottles onto the desert ground and laugh as parched old men watched with a longing in their eyes and no pride on their faces. We’d smash out the windows of their cars and beat them with our rifles when they didn’t obey our orders to move, shouted in a language they didn’t understand. We’d rifle through their homes and bedrooms as they sat, zip-tied, with their frightened wives and crying children hanging around their necks. We laughed in their faces acting as if they were so backwards and we superior in every way. We were monsters, and now I have to live with it.

It was 2004 and I was in my early 20s. I was in an artillery unit that was hastily retrained for infantry/military police combat duty. I was in the middle of downtown Baghdad with the full might of the U.S. Army at my back and a rifle in my hand that I thought made me a God. We did assume some of God’s responsibilities. We decided who lived and who died, who got to go home and hug their children and who got to walk away with all their teeth. We were self-appointed Gods, and we were monsters.

I’d like to blame it on my leadership. “They failed; they should have controlled us instead of laughing or just ignoring it,” I would yell in righteous indignation, but that would be a lie. Because on my latter deployments to Afghanistan, when it came time for me to be the leader I should have been, I sat just as idle and laughed just as loud as a new wave of soldiers found just as malicious ways of taking out their aggression on the locals in a different but never changing war. I’d like to blame it on the desert heat, to say that the unforgiving Iraqi sun had fried our brains and caused some sort of mental lapse that absolves us of our behavior, but that too would be a lie.

The truth is that there were all too many reasons that we acted like pieces of human trash towards people we looked at as less than garbage, but none that absolve us.

We were angry and we took that anger out on the only people that the world had placed beneath us. We were angry that we were in the middle of a desert fighting a war while our friends were back home. They were drinking Coca-Cola and playing video games as we dodged bullets. Some of us were angry that our wives and girlfriends were across the ocean looking for comfort from strangers while we watched our trucks burn on the side of the road, ripped apart by buried explosives and filled with what was left of our freshly expired comrades. We did it because we were hot and tired, hungry and lonely. Some of us did it to fit in, to be cool. Some of us did it just to make each other laugh, to keep each other from swallowing our rifles. But we did it, and now we have to live with it. We did it because we were scared to death and laughing at someone for having it worse than us made us forget that for just a few seconds. I did it because if I could make their life worse than mine, mine might not seem so bad. But none of those reasons are excuses, and now I have to live with it.

Now that I am a grizzly war vet, after a career ending injury on a dusty Afghan road, I only think about it when I am walking through the gas station on the way to the cooler and pass the Skittles sitting accusingly on the shelf in their little rainbow-colored cardboard box.

Now that I am a grizzled war vet, after a career ending injury on a dusty Afghan road, I only think about it when I am walking through the gas station on the way to the cooler and pass that same brand of candy we used to toss to the Iraqi kids, sitting accusingly on the shelf in their little rainbow-colored cardboard box. I only think about it when I see children or old people, or the sky, or the ground. I only think about it when I am sitting awake when the sun comes up or when I am asleep. I only think about it when I bury my tear-streaked face into my hands and confess it all to my therapist over and over. I only think about it when I am writing this.

Now that I am beginning my 30s, with a medical retirement and a war-wasted body, I only think about it when my back hurts every morning or my knees pop when I walk. I only think about it when I get my check from the VA every month, payment for a job well done. Luckily the VA quit sending paper checks; an automatic deposits for atrocities committed are much easier to ignore.

I wish I hadn’t done it. I wish I was one of the few that stood up like a man and wasn’t bothered about carrying the burden of being labeled a weakling or a “Haji-Hugger,” or worst of all a traitor to my brothers in arms. I wish I wasn’t one of the truly weak ones who took our anger out on the people the media would have you believe we liberated.

I hope my children never see this – that they grow up with the illusion that their daddy was a hero, a liberator of the Iraqi people, and not something dangerously closer to an oppressor. I hope no one ever treats them the way we treated the children of Iraq. I hope they don’t have to go fight those same children we mistreated because we turned them against us. I hope those children know, that I know, that I was a monster and that I hate myself for it, regardless of how many therapists tell me that I was just a child doing a man’s work, or that “War is hell.”

I spend my days now hobbling around with a cane when I am sure no one I is around to see it and grinding my teeth flat against the pain when they are. It hurts when I sit too long, or when I stand, or when I lie down, or walk. It hurts when I stand at the bus stop and wait for my daughter to come home and I think about what her life would have be like if she had been unlucky enough to have been born there. What if she was standing too close to me when I watched a platoon sergeant’s arm get blown off or a friend’s head get ripped in half? Would I have taken my anger out on her? What if she had slept or gone to school in one of the buildings that we filled with bullets or demolished with bombs? That’s what I’m thinking about when people think I am just lost in my shell-shocked head, staring blankly out into the sky.

I spend my nights reading Hemingway, Vonnegut, and O’Brien trying to infer how they forgot and moved on after war, but that´s a lie too, because I don’t think that is completely possible. I try to ignore the war, try to forget, to push it so far down that it’s just a bitter taste in my mouth, but it won’t go. When I think I have it licked, when I’ve bent and folded it as neatly as possible and force it into that beat-up footlocker in the garage, it seeps out from the hinges and key hole. It slithers silently across the hardwood floor and climbs up into bed with me. It startles me awake, wide-eyed and panting, just reminding me that it is my lifelong companion. Then we sit there together in the dark, just me, the war, and my wife who looks up at me with pitying eyes and rolls over to go back to sleep, well aware that my night’s sleep is over and that I can’t, I won’t, tell her why.

The war is with me always. It can’t be drowned, Hemingway proved that. It can’t be medicated into submission. It can’t be covered up with tattoos or a cheerful disposition. It’s the reason the person I was before is dead and gone and it’s the reason he can never come back no matter how hard I wish he would.

Now it’s just me and my good old buddy the war, sitting silently alone in my study together writing this down with my aching back and popping knees. And so we sit, trying to figure out how we all coexist in the same brain, the man, the myth, the monster, and the war.

When people ask me what I think about the war, I fight back the feeling to tell them exactly where to go. I feed them whatever song and dance I think they are looking for, try to change the subject, and move along before they see through the illusion. I try to remember that it is not their fault they want to know; humans are a curious bunch. I try to remember they are just trying to figure out their feelings on the war and that they have to view it vicariously through me. I try to remember they have no idea how it feels to sit in a room with the memory of war, and enough self-loathing to fill up an ocean.

I hope someday I will look back on this little piece of writing and laugh at how fresh the wounds were, marvel at how I could ever have felt so lost, and put it back in its folder, but I don’t know. I don’t know how I feel about the war yet. We haven’t decided. Hopefully someday the war will be content to gather dust with the uniforms and pictures tucked away in the garage. Hopefully it will sit there and wait to be discovered by my grandkids, mementos of a past I can barely recall when they ask me to tell them stories sitting in my rocking chair. Hopefully someday I will be able to look people in the eyes and not have to be scared they will recoil in horror when they see the war sitting just behind my eyes. Hopefully then I’ll sleep through the night.

And that’s it, ugly as it sounds, that’s the truth. It happens every time, from the Trojan War to the Iraqi desert, that’s the story of war and that’s the truth. Anyone that tells you that a word of it isn’t true is lying, but not to you, to themselves. They aren´t ready to admit it’s true or they weren’t there. Every single soldier that has ever truly been at war has heard, seen, condoned, facilitated, ignored, or participated in the heinous acts I have confessed to you here, or worse. Even now, after getting as close as I ever have to telling the whole story to anyone who wasn’t there, I’ve held back many of the worst bits. Some horrors we will take to the grave with us and lie to the Devil about. But at least I tried and at least maybe tonight I can get some sleep.

Zackary Dryer was medically retired as an Army staff sergeant in 2012 because of injuries from an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan. He lives in Austin with his wife, Sarah, and two young children. He is attending the University of Texas, hoping to earn an advanced degree in English, then teach with a focus on post-World War II American literature and write about his experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan.