Rape victims in military doubly abused, lawsuit alleges

Officers punishing plaintiffs, group argues in lawsuit  02:54 AM By Kimberly Hefling ASSOCIATED PRESS

CLIFF OWEN | ASSOCIATED PRESS Veterans Kori Cioca, 25, of Wilmington, Ohio, left, and Panayiota Bertzikis, 29, of Somerville, Mass., both say they were assaulted and raped while serving in the Coast Guard.

WASHINGTON - A group of U.S. veterans who say they were raped and abused by their comrades want to force the Pentagon to change how it handles such cases.

More than a dozen women and two men who are current or former service members said servicemen get away with rape and other sexual abuse, and victims too often are ordered to continue to serve alongside those who they say attacked them.

In a federal class-action lawsuit filed yesterday that names Defense Secretary Robert Gates and his predecessor, Donald H. Rumsfeld, they say they want an objective third party to handle such complaints because individual commanders have too much say in how allegations are handled.
The accused include an Army criminal investigator and an Army National Guard commander. The abuse alleged ranges from obscene verbal abuse to gang rape.

In one incident, an Army reservist said two male colleagues raped her in Iraq and videotaped the attack. She complained to authorities after the men circulated the video to colleagues.
She said charges weren’t filed because the commander determined that she “did not act like a rape victim” and “did not struggle enough” and because authorities said they didn’t want to delay the return of the accused to the United States.

“The problem of rape in the military is not only service members getting raped, but it’s the entire way that the military as a whole is dealing with it,” said Panayiota Bertzikis, one of the plaintiffs, who said she was raped in 2006. “From survivors having to be involuntarily discharged from service, the constant verbal abuse, once a survivor does come forward, your entire unit is known to turn their back on you. The entire culture needs to be changed.”

Although the Associated Press usually does not identify sexual-assault victims, the suit’s plaintiffs have publicly discussed their cases.

Bertzikis, 29, of Somerville, Mass., now is executive director of the Military Rape Crisis Center. She said she was raped by a Coast Guard shipmate while hiking with him in Vermont. Bertzikis said she complained to her commanding officer, but authorities did not take steps to investigate the matter. Instead, she said, they made her live on the same floor as her attacker and let others call her a liar and whore.

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said in a statement that sexual assault is a wider societal problem and Gates has worked to ensure that the military is doing all it can to prevent and respond to it.

The military already was planning in April to roll out a hot line that victims can call, said Pentagon spokeswoman Cynthia Smith. It has another initiative that encourages service members to help those who are assaulted. In 2005, the military created an office with the aim of preventing sexual assault.

Sarah Albertson, a former Marine corporal and one of the plaintiffs, said one of the hurdles in getting improvements in the system is that commanders do not want marks on their record such as a rape in their unit.

In many of the cases, no charges were filed. In others, those accused faced lesser charges and were allowed to remain in the military, the lawsuit says.

Kori Cioca, 25, of Wilmington, Ohio, described being hit in the face by a superior in 2005 and being raped by the same man soon afterward while serving in the Coast Guard in Bay City, Mich.

Even though the man admitted having sex with her, Cioca said in the lawsuit, she was told that if she went ahead with reporting the sex as a rape, she would be court-martialed for lying.
She said the man pleaded guilty only to hitting her, and his punishment was a minor loss of pay and confinement to the base for 30 days.

She said she was discharged from the military for a “history of inappropriate relationships.”
 - The Columbus Dispatch.