Rape is not only a horrible atrocity in which an individual is assaulted sexually, but it is also one in which the victim’s very humanity is assailed. Although rape does occur among the general population, statistically, it is much more likely to occur in a time of societal conflict, particularly during war. The extent to which this crime occurs is startling. In the last century alone, more than a million people were raped by a soldier during a war. In order to prevent war rape from happening in the future, it is imperative to identify and understand its root cause. Nonetheless, history and scientific research reveal that not all soldiers who rape do so for the same exact reason, but that rather, a complex and multifaceted driving force is in play. Although many theories abound, the most compelling evidence indicates that soldiers who rape do so: because their environment has caused a radical shift in their ethical standards; as a physical demonstration of their power and position; because they believe there will be no punishment for their actions; to terrorize and exterminate their enemy; or in order to satisfy a strong desire for sexual gratification.
In order to begin to understand what drives a soldier to rape, one must first understand the military way of life. The world of a soldier is vastly different from that of an ordinary civilian and generally begins with some sort of training. In most professional militaries, as contrasted with militias and guerrilla armies, a new recruit will typically undergo an extensive period of grueling training that can last for several months. This instruction is designed, in part, to desensitize a person mentally and emotionally so that he or she can withstand the brutalities of warfare and function as part of the group. Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman, former Professor of Psychology at West Point Military Academy, describes the process:
From the moment you step off the bus you are physically and verbally abused: countless pushups, endless hours at attention or running with heavy loads, while carefully trained professionals take turns screaming at you. Your head is shaved, you are herded together naked and dressed alike, losing all individuality. This brutalization is designed to break down your existing mores and norms and to accept a new set of values that embrace destruction, violence, and death as a way of life. In the end, you are desensitized to violence and accept it as a normal and essential survival skill in your brutal new world. (Grossman 5)This type of resocialization training further seeks to eradicate any trace of a soldier’s feminine side and to heighten his or her desire to be part of the (super masculine) group. A United States Marine recounts his observations from boot camp noting that
good things are manly and collective; the despicable are feminine and individual. Virtually every sentence, every description, every lesson embodies this sexual duality, and the female anatomy provides a rich field of metaphor for every degradation. When you want to create a solidary (sic) group of male killers, that is what you do, you kill the women in them. That is the lesson of the Marines. And it works. (Bourke 367)
During the Vietnam War, the instruction of new recruits sometimes promoted, very explicitly, sexual violence against the enemy:
"Numerous servicemen admitted being told by their instructors that ‘we could rape the women’ and taught how to strip women prisoners, ‘spread them open’ and ‘drive pointed sticks or bayonets into their vaginas’ afterwards” (Bourke 367).
An adjustment in ethical and moral standards doesn’t disappear upon departure from training camp; in fact, it becomes ingrained into the soldier’s character and gets carried with him or her into the barracks and onto the battlefield. Not surprisingly, the way soldiers behave once they are away from their homelands, families and the moral codes they represent, can be evocative of wild animals on the prowl. On a military base, the prey of these soldiers is quite often a fellow soldier. A 2003 report, issued by the United States Air Force, revealed that almost 70 percent of female cadets reported being the victims of sexual harassment and nearly 20 percent reported being sexually assaulted by another soldier (Bourke 364).
The very sexually charged atmosphere of military life can be taxing on a soldier. Kayla Williams, a member of the United States Army, gives her assessment after a recent stint in Iraq: “So get real. The Army is not a monastery. More like a fraternity. Or a massive frat party. With weapons. With girls there for the taking — at least some of the time.” (Williams)
In the fraternity like atmosphere of the military, women are not the only victims. Men are also subject to abuses, which may take the form of sexual hazing. Instances of this type of sexual assault are described as widespread. Research reveals heinous instances in which “a naked recruit would be wrapped in a blanket and sexually assaulted” or “heavy machinery oil would be rubbed over the body of a recruit and a flexible tube inserted in his anus” (Bourke 364).
Because a culture of sexual abuse and aggression is commonplace within the military community, one could only expect to see these practices acted out on the surrounding civilian population and the enemy. A perfect example of this can be seen in the way American soldiers treated prisoners at the Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq. There, both male and female soldiers photographed themselves, raping and sexually humiliating the prisoners under their charge.
In the military very little is done alone; eating, sleeping, showering, exercising, and even killing are typically all done as a group. When it comes to sexual violence, soldiers will often stick to the old routine and rape as a group, a phenomenon commonly referred to as gang rape. This form of attack benefits the assailants in several ways. Firstly, there is safety in numbers; a soldier can more securely rape a person if there are other soldiers present to restrain the victim or ward off others who might try to intercede. Furthermore, a victim will have a harder time identifying a group than an individual. Secondly, and more bizarrely, gang rape acts as a shared bonding event, in which “the perpetrators are effectively competing with one another to show superior strength and virility.” In such a display, manliness is negotiated through acts of sexual performance (Bourke 376). Because of its competitive nature, during such events:
Mutual goading forces individuals to behave more extremely than they otherwise would do…the leader tends to become the repository and epitome of the qualities highly valued in the group. In order to demonstrate their membership of the group, all members must behave in such a way as to positively affirm these highly valued qualities, but the leader must do so even more positively than the other members of the group. (Bourke 377)
During these energetic sessions of sexual ferocity, assailants essentially revel in their own strength and experience an emotional high. An unnamed American soldier in Vietnam describes the experience as
a sense of power. A sense of destruction. See now, in the United States a person is babied. He’s told what to do … But in the Nam you realised that you had the power to take a life. You had the power to rape a woman and nobody could say nothing to you. That godlike feeling you had was in the field … It was like I was a god. I could take a life, I could screw a woman. (Bourke 378)
If a member of the group refuses to participate in a rape or tries to intervene, he or she may be subjected to intense ridicule or retaliation. This could manifest itself as ostracism, physical or sexual assault, or even murder. One American soldier, who served in Vietnam, recounts that attempting to stop a rape would have “been encouraging your own sudden death. These are the guys who get in the fire fights with you. It would have been too easy to get blown away” (Bourke 369).
A significant factor in explaining the prevalence of wartime rape is the fact that soldiers believe that they can get away with it; and to a great extent, they can because
In military situations, the chances of being caught and punished for rape diminish to near zero. In the chaos of battle, all the necessary requirements disappear for identification by a witness in civilian life. There is no chance for a victim to identify the culprit (if she lives) and no legal mechanism to file a complaint. (Dutton 12)
Getting a rapist punished can prove an especially harrowing task for a victim. First of all, a rapist must be identified. This, in and of itself, is a major obstacle for most. If a victim is in a position to try to identify a rapist (a rarity), he or she will have to overcome various factors that complicate the task. These include the fact that soldiers tend to look alike; many wear matching uniforms, and often share common racial features with their comrades. If a victim is of a different race, this may pose added difficulty because of what psychologists refer to as the cross-race identification bias, which is a tendency for people of one race to have difficulty identifying members of a race other than their own. If by some miracle, a victim can identify the person who raped him or her, the next problem is that of prosecution. The civil war, currently being waged in the Darfur region of Sudan, illustrates the difficulty:
Survivors of sexual violence in Darfur have no meaningful access to redress. They fear the consequences of reporting their cases to the authorities and lack the resources needed to prosecute their attackers. Police are physically present only in principal towns and government outposts, and they lack the basic tools and political will for responding to sexual violence crimes and conducting investigations. Police frequently fail to register complaints or conduct proper investigations. While some police seem genuinely committed to service, many exhibit an antagonistic and dismissive attitude toward women and girls. These difficulties are exacerbated by the reluctance-and limited ability-of police to investigate crimes committed by soldiers or militia, who often gain effective immunity under laws that protect them from civilian prosecution. (Confronting 2)
Another factor that enables soldiers to get away with rape is the fact that many military authorities accept rape as an inevitable consequence of war, and accordingly, react to it with only a tolerant shrug. If public outcry becomes strong enough however, commanders may ask their soldiers to tone it down. The description of American Marine, Ed Treratola, who served in the Vietnam War:
His unit would slip into a village, kidnap a woman and gang-rape her. Depending on their mood, they either freed her afterwards or killed her. This might occur every night, Treratola admitted, and ‘the villagers complained’. When that occurred, ‘the brass would say, “Well, look, cool it for a little while”, you know, “at least let it happen with little more time in between.”’ ‘But we were never discouraged,’ he added. (Bourke 366)
Sometimes, in order to maintain a good public image, the military’s complicity goes one step further and actually seeks to obstruct justice. Such was the case during the Second World War in Italy, where two women identified the two British soldiers who had raped them and stolen their bicycles. Despite clear evidence that they were guilty, they were shielded from prosecution. A military policeman involved with the case describes that the presiding colonel
told me to tell the women that they were mistaken. He said the two soldiers were going on leave in the morning and that he had signed their passes, and as far as he was concerned they would be going on leave. I told them there was nothing they could do, and of course the Colonel knew it was them. They were very upset. I advised them to take their bikes and go home. They went away in tears. (Bourke 367)
Blatant disregard for the wellbeing of an enemy’s civilian population is not uncommon where rape is prevalent. In some instances, members of the military may even use rape specifically as a way to terrorize and annihilate their enemy. Strategically speaking, women are an ideal target because they are less likely to put up an armed resistance and because they play a vital role in keeping the community together. If the women are attacked, the population as a whole will suffer. Researchers describe that mass rape affects a culture’s
capacity to remain coherent and to reproduce itself. By raping women, soldiers split the familial atoms of which every society is composed. Raped women may become pregnant by the enemy, they may suffer grievous physical and psychological injuries, they may die, they may be abandoned or disavowed by shamed families and husbands, all of which degrade the ability of a culture to replenish itself through sexual reproduction. For these reasons, advocates of strategic rape theory often refer to it as “genocidal rape”—rape designed, whether with full consciousness or not, to annihilate a people and a culture. (Gottschall 5)
Mass rape was a significant weapon employed during the Bosnian War in the early 1990’s. There, women were rounded up and placed into rape camps. An apparent goal of these camps was the forced insemination of the predominantly Muslim women. “Women were raped until they were pregnant and then held until they were close to term. In 1993, it was estimated that between 1,000 and 2,000 women became pregnant as a result of rape in the former Yugoslavia” (Crossette 51).
In contrast to the view that rape is committed solely to terrorize its victims, the simple reality that for a perpetrator, sex (even coerced) is pleasurable, sometimes gets dismissed by theorists. However, this piece of information is one with which, undoubtedly, most soldiers are well acquainted. In addition, the majority of people involved in armed combat and rape are young men whose sex drives may be at their biological peak. In describing the significant role gender differences may play, one researcher explains: “The fact is that men, relative to women, are more aggressive, sexually assertive and eager to copulate, and less discriminating about mates -traits that contribute to the existence of rape” (Crossette 26).
Furthermore, the physically and emotionally demanding requirements placed on a soldier may exacerbate the situation. Under such conditions the human body typically responds by producing higher quantities of the principal male sex hormone, testosterone, which correlates with greater instances of aggressive behavior, including sexual assault.
Nonetheless, it is essential to remember that no amount of sexual drive can excuse the act of rape. Those who commit this heinous crime are ultimately accountable for their own actions, and cannot blame it on others or on the circumstances of war. Hopefully, in due course, a greater understanding of the factors that make rape more likely to occur will lead to lasting changes that will make wartime rape a thing for the history books.
Works Cited
Bourke, Joanna. Rape: Sex, Violence, History. Emeryville: Shoemaker, 2007. 360-86. Print.
“Confronting Rape and Other Forms of Violence Against Women in Conflict Zones.” Human Rights Watch. N.p. 12 May 2009. Web. 5 April 2010 http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/05/13/written-submission-us-senate-committee-foreign-relations
Crossette, Barbara. “Rape Is Frequently Used as a Weapon of War.” Sexual Violence: Opposing Viewpoints. Ed. Helen Cothran. Farmington Hills: Szumski. 2003. 49-53. Print.
Dutton, Donald G. The Psychology of Genocide, Massacres and Extreme Violence: Why “Normal” People Come to Commit Atrocities. Wesport: Praeger, 2007. Ch10. Print
Gottschall, Jonathan. “Explaining wartime rape”. The Journal of Sex Research. The Free Library N.p. 1 May 2004 Web. 29 March 2010 http://thefreelibrary.com/_/print/PrintArticle.aspx?id=119269006
Grossman, Dave. “Trained To Kill.” Professoren Forum 3.2 (2001). Web. 29 March 2010. http://www.cfc-online.org/professorenforum/content/artikeldatenbank/Artikel/2001/v02n02a1.pdf
Williams, Kayla. “Excerpt: 'Love My Rifle More Than You'.” NPR.org. National Public Radio. 15 Oct 2007. Web. 29 March 2010. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15307306
