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What's the U.S. military's problem with sex offenses?
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Feb 21 03:46 UTC 2003 |
Glancing over today's New York Times (on-line), i noticed an article
about gender problems at the Air Force Academy (out in Colorado). In
a nutshell, it sounded like the Air Force Academy was a great place
for a young man who thought that raping a (female) fellow cadet was
no more than a "wrist slap" offense, but a horrible place to go for
a young woman who really minded getting raped or keeping quiet about
it. And it didn't sound like this state of affairs was disputed,
controversial, or even much hushed up.
I used to know a guy who'd gone to the Naval Academy (in Maryland)
and asked him once about the Tailhook scandal back when that was news.
His very casual attitude was that the women knew well in advance what
sort of stuff was done at Tailhook events, and wouldn't have gone to
one unless they wanted to be treated that way.
I heard once that the military did a background study on sex problems,
and found that they attracted a far higher percentage of "very high
risk of being or becoming a sex offender or victim" people (both men
and women) than the overall population.
Is there any real dispute over whether the military has a huge problem
here, especially in the service academies? What's going wrong? Should
Congress force the closure of the Sex Crime Academies? Maybe try to
run background checks and bar the high-risk cases from joining (or put
the guys in an all-male "cannonfodder corps")?
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