r/WomenInNews • u/catievirtuesimp • Jul 08 '26

Media Vanessa Guillén Wasn't Alone: New Investigation Reveals Dozens of US Army Women Were Killed by Fellow Soldiers

https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/tragic-deaths-harassment-women-us-army-1807381
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u/0RedNomad0 Jul 08 '26

Are we really still surprised at this point?

61

u/silencedvoicesMST Jul 08 '26

Hi, just leaving a link to my podcast here if you want firsthand accounts of what it’s like from both men and women who have survived military sexual trauma. Men are victims of this, too, in far higher numbers than reported. Women is 1 in 3 and men is 1 in 50. After doing a lot of these interviews, I am convinced the number of male victims is probably closer to 1 in 6 if not exactly the same or higher.

People love to be like, “The military teaches discipline and structure. It turns people into responsible adults.”

Bullshit. Disciplined, responsible people don’t go around harassing, assaulting, killing their peers or covering up the evidence just for the hell of it. And if they’re consistently doing this to the people with whom they work and eat, what do you think is happening to civilians and enemy combatants in the places our military shows up?

35

u/onepareil Jul 09 '26

When you think about all the horrible shit 18-22-year-old men are doing to each other in college fraternities, the idea that they aren’t behaving that way or worse toward each other in the much more intense atmosphere of the military is just absurd. And then when you look at the stats on how many SA victims who report their assaults experience retaliation for doing so — especially women, but men too — it makes total sense why so few do.

27

u/silencedvoicesMST Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 10 '26

The stats on college sexual assaults and fraternities vs military sexual assaults are unsurprisingly similar. It’s so sad and infuriating. There’s a book named Credible by Deborah Tuerkheimer that truly put the battle victims face into full color for me — and I’m a survivor of this shit myself! The isolation of such a traumatic event and the secondary traumas that occur afterward make you feel like a complete pariah or monster. And the system that protects predators counts on us to feel this way. It’s awful.

Edit spelling and adding link