It does happen. During the Gulf War a fellow soldier and I were sexually harassed by our own troops. You know what reporting it got us? A label of “trouble-makers,” a lecture from the Army Chaplain (a female) on how to look less feminine, and soldiers in our own unit not speaking to us for about a month. The harasser was in another unit. So we learned very quickly that even soldiers in another unit take precedence over females within the same unit. It finally stopped when my fellow soldier’s father called a congressman. And that was just sexual harassment. I don’t even want to think about what would have been heaped on us if it had been sexual assault. Are there false charges? Of course there are. But my first instinct will always be to take the woman seriously because female soldiers know the crap you have to go through once you’ve reported. Which makes false reporting in the military more rare than you would think.
It does happen. During the Gulf War a fellow soldier and I were sexually harassed by our own troops. You know what reporting it got us? A label of “trouble-makers,” a lecture from the Army Chaplain (a female) on how to look less feminine, and soldiers in our own unit not speaking to us for about a month. The harasser was in another unit. So we learned very quickly that even soldiers in another unit take precedence over females within the same unit. It finally stopped when my fellow soldier’s father called a congressman. And that was just sexual harassment. I don’t even want to think about what would have been heaped on us if it had been sexual assault. Are there false charges? Of course there are. But my first instinct will always be to take the woman seriously because female soldiers know the crap you have to go through once you’ve reported. Which makes false reporting in the military more rare than you would think.