I recently received an unsolicited, broad-distribution e-mail from U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette attacking Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia. In the e-mail, DeGette claimed that, “Chambliss blamed the hormonal level created by nature for rapes in the military and said that all pregnant servicewomen should be investigated.”
This is more than a misrepresentation; it’s a brazen lie, willfully distorting Chambliss’ actual remarks during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on June 4.
In the context of a six-minute statement, Chambliss noted that hormone-rich young folks of opposite sexes are entering the service and are placed in close-quarters situations where sexual contact can be expected and sexual assault is possible.
Who could possibly deny this? In no way did he excuse it. In fact, he went on to scold the service chiefs called before the committee for their failure to adequately control this. Chambliss told them they were “not doing their job” and that “we simply can’t tolerate” this kind of behavior. He criticized superiors who tacitly encouraged sexual abuse or who turned a blind eye to it, and insisted that commanders make it clear to recruits from the outset that any sexual assault will be dealt with severely.
DeGette’s distortion of Chambliss’ call for pregnant servicewomen to be investigated is even more outrageous. Referring to the rash of pregnancies that occurred when a mixed-gender crew was deployed on an aircraft carrier, he said that commanders should not automatically presume that pregnancies were the result of a willing relationship but should investigate to determine if there had been sexual assault.
The Denver congresswoman channeled the content of her e-mail from the talking points of Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the caustic and shamelessly hyperbolic chair of the Democratic National Committee, who will go to any length to promote her absurd narrative that Republicans hate women.
One sensationalized claim is that there were 26,000 sexual assaults in the military last year, which many people equate with rapes. It’s not remotely true. Capt. Lindsay L. Rodman, a Marine Corps judge advocate, exposed this fiction in a recent article in The Wall Street Journal. She explained that the actual number of reported sexual assaults was far smaller, 3,374, and included reports by civilians against servicemembers. That figure may be understated by the number of sexual assaults that go unreported. But offsetting that is the number of false reports of sexual assault, just as in the civilian sector.
The 26,000 statistic comes from an extrapolated estimate based on a survey, the Workplace and Gender Relations Survey of Active Duty Military (WGRA). Of the more than 1.4 million active duty military, surveys were sent to 108,478 and, of those, only 22,792 were completed and returned. That represents less than 2 percent of the force. Capt. Rodman also explained that, “The term ‘sexual assault’ was not used in the WGRA survey. Instead, the survey refers to ‘unwanted sexual contact,’ which includes touching the buttocks and attempted touching. All of that behavior is wrongful [but] it doesn’t comport with the conventional definition of sexual assault or with the legal definition of sexual assault in the Uniform Code of Military Justice, as enacted by Congress.”
And it certainly isn’t equivalent to rape. The expansive definition of “unwanted sexual conduct” in the WGRA survey would capture most of the players in the NFL who acknowledge a good play by a teammate with a supportive slap on the butt.
An overwrought letter to the editor in The Denver Post recently declared that rape in the military should be prosecuted as “an act of treason.” Never mind the definition in Article III, section 3 of the Constitution: “Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.” Sexual abuse in the military is a serous enough problem without blowing it out of proportion.
Freelance columnist Mike Rosen’s radio show airs weekdays from 9 a.m. to noon on 850-KOA.
