falconfamily
5-Year Member
- Joined
- Jan 28, 2011
- Messages
- 670
I accept your rebuke and the federal government's definition of sexual assault. I have been enforcing the Texas Penal Code for the last 33 years and it is much more specific about what constitutes sexual assault.
Not a rebuke at all, it is just that the way this is enforced is very broad and in the military the idea of coercion is a great concern. i.e. when I was a jumpmaster and was inspecting a female jumper (they were riggers who were jumping their own chutes), I needed to make sure I had explicit permission to touch them before I started my inspection. i.e. was the jumper in fear of my authority? or in fear for their safety if they did not submit to having a stranger put his hands on their person? It might seem absurd, but just let a lawyer argue this one.
In general, while I think the integration of women into the military has progressed rapidly, it has not always progressed well, and there are definitely issues with the number of reported rapes and assaults of females who serve. However, while many of us want to acknowledge this concern, I was arguing for some perspective by noting that the problem is of great concern to all parents with daughters going to college and the reported rate of these assaults is very high at civilian institutions (who are believed by some researchers to under-report them). So while ideally it should not happen at all in Service Academies, these are people from the same demographic as those who attend the most selective schools in the country and they have the same issues. According to one study, 3/4 of the Ivy League schools report a rate of forcible sexual assaults that are higher than the national average (i.e. Princeton, MIT, Stanford, Yale, Harvard...)
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-rele...ools-issued-by-insite-security-103042454.html
And a delicate point to make is that not all reported sexual assaults have a basis for being made, yet can proceed in some administrative fashion, factor into statistics, and while unfounded - it can destroy lives, just ask the Duke Lacrosse team or former Yale QB and prospective Rhodes Scholar Patrick Witt about that:
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/...anonymous-accuser-sexual-assault-rhodes-trust
Such instances as can make leaders and policy makers very cautious about how to proceed, but once the issue is given notice in public, the pressure to find a solution can become the overriding concern and that is problematic.
On a closing note, the title of the original post was "The inevitable issue....", I would argue that this issue is not inevitable at all, for the vast majority of female cadets, their male counterparts are like big brothers and have their six.
Last edited: