REPORT: 38 MEN ARE SEXUALLY ASSAULTED EACH DAY IN THE US MILITARY

According to the Pentagon, more than half of all sexual assault victims in the U.S. military are men. More than 38 men are sexually assaulted every single day, and you would be wrong to assume that most of the perpetrators are gay, according to James Asbrand, a psychologist with the Salt Lake City VA’s PTSD clinical team.

“One of the myths is that the perpetrators identify as gay, which is by and large not the case,” Asbrand told GQ. “It’s not about the sex. It’s about power and control.”

“In a hypermasculine culture, what’s the worst thing you can do to another man? Force him into what the culture perceives as a feminine role.”

In 2012, a shocking 14,000 military men were sexually assaulted according to GQ.

Dana Chipman, who served as a judge advocate general for the US Army from 2009 to 2013, told GQ: “The way we socialize people probably has some effect on the incidents. We cut your hair, and we give you the same clothes, and we tell you that you have no more privacy, you have no more individual rights—we’re gonna take you down to your bare essence and then rebuild you in our image.”

Steve Stovey, who served in the Navy as a signalman on the USS Gary, says he was violently raped by three men when he was 25-years-old. In late September 1999, Stovey was eagerly awaiting his father’s visit to Hawaii, where he’d be joined by him on a Tiger Cruise, a beloved Navy tradition in which family members accompany sailors on the final leg of a deployment.

On the morning of September 20, two weeks before the warship was due in port, three men ambushed Stovey in a remote storage area of the ship, where he’d been sent to get supplies. They threw a black hood over his head, strangled and sodomized him, then left him for dead on a stack of boxes. Stovey told no one. He was certain that his attackers, whose faces he hadn’t glimpsed, would kill him if he did. He hid in a bathroom until he could contain his panic and tolerate the pain. Then he quietly returned to his post.

Stovey says he might have killed himself were it not for his father’s imminent arrival. The timing of the visit was “almost a miracle,” he says. “When I saw him, it was the most safe feeling I’d ever felt in my whole life.” 

Father and son spent the next five days on board ship, almost certainly being watched by the three attackers. “I just kept it inside,” Stovey says in a low voice. “I couldn’t tell him.”

GQ interviewed twenty-three men who are survivors of sexual assault in the military, here a few:

MICHAEL F. MATTHEWS

AIR FORCE, 1973–85

Afterward they started kicking the shit out of me and said, “If you ever tell anybody, we’ll come back and get you.” But it was like the angels were singing, because I realized I wasn’t going to die. Later I wished I had.

TERRY NEAL

NAVY, 1975–77

The part that I remember before I passed out was somebody saying they were going to teach me a lesson. 

RICHARD WELCH

AIR FORCE AND ARMY, 1973–82

I was coming in and out of consciousness. He kept saying, “You’re going to like this.” 

MATTHEW OWEN*

ARMY, 1976–80

I heard one of them say, “Get that broom over there by the lockers.” 

GARY JONES*

ARMY, 1984–86

At first I thought he was playing around. He managed to wrestle me onto my back, and I started freaking out. He pinned my arm above my head and my knee in the crook of his arm and covered my mouth with his right hand and looked at me and said, “You will not make a noise.” 

JONES

I still don’t believe I didn’t bring this on. I keep telling myself, If only I hadn’t had a few beers that night. If only I hadn’t invited him back to my room. I tried to resist. He was just so fucking strong. 

KOLE WELSH

ARMY, 2002–07

I had actually let the assault go, because I didn’t want it to interfere with my career. I wanted to be an officer, and I just said, “Bad experience, won’t let that happen again.” But there was some residual damage. A month and a half later, I was brought into a room with about nine officers and told, “You’ve tested positive [for HIV].” I was removed from the military and signed out within a day. It was a complete shock. 

NEAL

One of the doctors said to me afterward, “Son, men don’t get raped.”