Forum 3, rape and sexual violence Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Forum 3, rape and sexual violence - Essay Example Inger Skjelsbaek (2006) in her research, narrates the story of a woman who was raped during the Bosnian war. Danira was raped during the war more than a hundred times over, she was raped by military personnel and by groups of them (Skjelsbaek, 2006). She states that they were never the same men and hated the Muslim women (Skjelsbaek, 2006). Danira asked them to kill her as she did not want to go back to her family after going through the ordeal (Skjelsbaek, 2006). The Military personnel who raped her and many others with her, were not held accountable for the war crimes and did not undergo any punishment whatsoever. Despite the fact that rape is held prohibited under the ‘Geneva convention’; committing rape during war is a crime punishable by death or under the ‘Article 120 of the American Uniform Code of Military Justice’ the perpetrator can be imprisoned (Stuhldreher, 1994). Rape cases during war go unpunished due to two main reasons; first for not being reported and secondly for rape being treated as a war weapon (Swiss & Giller, 1993; Keith, 1997). Recently female army personnel being raped by their colleagues or seniors has become an ‘occupational hazards’ with a drastic increase in the number of occurrences (Meleis, 2013). Statistics in the documentary ‘The Invisible War’, reveal that females serving in the military in the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan are less likely to be killed in battle and more likely to be raped by a military colleague (Meleis, 2013). Almost 20, 000 people in service are each year raped or sexually assaulted and the victimizers manage to get away with it (Kitfield, 2012). In 2011, 883 cases in the marines and Navy were reported for sexual assault and for the army the number was 1,695 (Wilkinson & Hirschkorn, 2013). Not only women but also men suffer at the hands of the sexual victimization. The number of men being treated for Military Sexual Trauma is above