JAMES P. writes:

Air Force Magazine relates the story of a female Sergeant who was raped in Afghanistan:

It was in 2006, after eight years in the US Air Force, that Sgt. Marti Ribeiro was raped by a fellow airman while on guard duty in Afghanistan. 

She didn’t report the assault immediately. Rather, she waited until the end of her shift, and in the meantime, did what she thought she should do. 

“I didn’t take a shower; I didn’t wash my hands,” Ribeiro remembers. “I’d watched ‘Law and Order’ and thought to myself, ‘I’m going to do exactly what [lead character] Detective Benson says, … so they can swab and do the rape kit.” 

That’s not what happened, however. 

After her guard shift, Ribeiro searched for the Air Force’s sexual assault response coordinator (SARC) at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan, where the assault took place just 10 feet from the guard station, and not much farther from Disney Drive—the main road running through the heart of the base. 

The SARC sat her down in the middle of a room with other people and asked her what happened. After Ribeiro finished sharing her story, “her first question was, ‘Where was your weapon?’ ”— implying, it seemed to Ribeiro, she should have been able to defend herself. She had left it in the guard post, along with her radio, when she went to have a cigarette break on a smoke deck a few feet away. 

“Because I’d left my weapon in the guard shack, she told me I would be charged with dereliction of duty,” Ribeiro recalls. “She told me to ‘think about it.’ ” Ribeiro did. She returned to her base housing, showered, and did not speak about the attack to another soul for six months. 

In my view, this officer was exactly right to ask her “where was your weapon?” — and yet later, the story notes that Charlene M. Bradley, the Air Force’s “assistant deputy for force management integration” (a meaningless-sounding title probably contrived to benefit a female political appointee) contends: 

You would never ask a victim,‘Where is your gun?’ It’s irrelevant. That person just got assaulted, and you’re not responding to what that victim needs. 

It was irrelevant to ask someone who was on guard duty where her weapon was??? Someone who does not have her weapon with her while on guard duty is clearly in dereliction of duty! She certainly would have been caught with her pants down if the Taliban had attacked. It is insane have women on guard duty, ostensibly defending valuable lives and property, if they are incapable of protecting themselves alone. 

Note also that the Air Force is prepared to tie itself in knots solving the problem of sexual assault. Not, as you would think, by shedding itself of vulnerable female personnel, but by recruiting new watchdogs! 

USAF needs to examine its training—and try to change attitudes and behaviors, Bradley said. This includes “training everyone to recognize behaviors that are inappropriate and how to act in those situations—how to do it smartly and appropriately.” 

The Air Force has full-time, trained sexual assault response coordinators at every installation. Most are GS-12-level hires, but more than 30 are military positions the Air Force is keeping filled for deployment capability, said Bradley. “A lot of those folks are in overseas areas.”

The Air Force can’t afford new fighter aircraft, but can afford to train everyone to “behave appropriately” and to put a “full-time, trained sexual assault response coordinators at every installation.” The mind boggles!

                                                                       — Comments —

Howard Sutherland writes: 

Much as I loved my years of flying U.S. Air Force F-4s and F-16s, every time I read an article like this I realize that, even though I might miss flying a fighter, I’m glad I do not have to endure the Air Force of today! Sgt. Marti Ribeiro was, as Laura says, where she never should have been: on guard duty at an air base in a hostile country. And plainly, by dropping her gear – weapon and radio included – to have a smoke break while on guard duty, Sgt. Ribeiro was derelict in that duty. That said, the airman who raped her should be tried by court-martial for his offense and appropriately punished. I seem to recall that among the permitted punishments in the Uniform Code of Military Justice upon conviction of rape was death. Whatever uncertainties may surround this sordid episode, in today’s armed forces we may be sure that’s one punishment Sgt. Ribeiro’s rapist will not face – unless Ribeiro takes her own revenge. But she does not seem the type to do that, unless there’s a precedent for it in a Law and Order episode, perhaps.

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