MilitaryDue to many misconceptions and preconceived notions by groups and mass media, it may be hard to believe that based on some statistics, men are sexuality assaulted at a higher rate and with more frequency than woman. Male sexual assaults and rapes are vastly under reported and discussed. An eye opening article published at GQ.com gives us some insight and much needed attention on this topic via candid interviews from dozens of men. Below are a few snippets but you can read the full article here.


“Son, Men Don’t Get Raped”
Nathaniel Penn

Sexual assault is alarmingly common in the U.S. military, and more than half of the victims are men. According to the Pentagon, thirty-eight military men are sexually assaulted every single day. These are the stories you never hear—because the culprits almost always go free, the survivors rarely speak, and no one in the military or Congress has done enough to stop it

A warshipis like a city—sprawling, vital, crowded with purposeful men and women. But on a warship, as in a city, there are people who will see you not as their friend or their neighbor but rather as their prey.

After turning 25, Steve Stovey joined the Navy to see the world: Malaysia, Australia, Japan, Fiji, the Persian Gulf. His first year and a half as a signalman on the USS Gary was “the greatest time of my life,” he says.

In late September 1999, Stovey was sailing to Hawaii, where he’d be joined by his father on a Tiger Cruise, a beloved Navy tradition in which family members accompany sailors on the final leg of a deployment. Parents and kids get to see how sailors live and work; they watch the crew test air and sea weapons. The Disney Channel even made a movie about a Tiger Cruise, with Bill Pullman and Hayden Panettiere. The West Coast itinerary is usually Pearl Harbor to San Diego.

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.”


“I’m terrified of men. I’m gay and I’m terrified of men.”

Men develop PTSD from sexual assault at nearly twice the rate they do from combat. Yet as multiple research papers have noted, the condition in men is egregiously understudied. This is because so few men tell anyone. Those who do often wait years; many male participants in therapy groups are veterans of Korea and Vietnam. At Bay Pines’ C. W. Bill Young VA Medical Center in Florida, the country’s first residential facility for men suffering from MST, the average patient is over 50 years old at admission.

Military sexual trauma causes a particularly toxic form of PTSD. The betrayal by a comrade-in-arms, a brother in whom you place unconditional trust, can be unbearable. Warrior culture values stoicism, which encourages a victim to keep his troubles to himself and stigmatizes him if he doesn’t. An implacable chain of command sometimes compels a victim to work or sleep alongside an attacker, which can make him feel captive to his suffering and deserving of it.

Jones
I’m terrified of men. I’m gay and I’m terrified of men. I can’t even get an erection, especially since I got sober. I isolate. I don’t go to movies, I can’t handle concerts. I have horrid nightmares. Last Christmas, I went to dinner with some friends, and at one point I started panicking so bad I had to get out of the restaurant. I was shaking. I never even told anybody about this until last July. Do you know what it’s like to live with this for thirty years?

Neal
My first sexual experience ever was being raped by these guys. It screwed me up: That’s what sex is supposed to be—anonymous, painful. The nightmares never went away. I started getting really bad with alcohol and an addiction to anonymous sex. Having a relationship with somebody has been extremely difficult.

Owen
The hardest thing for me was the fear to be looked at as being gay. I went through a lot of women. I went through several marriages. I wasn’t a loyal husband. In college a couple guys brought up to me that they had an opportunity to make some serious money. I became an escort, and I did it for a good eleven years. It erased my thoughts.

Alexander
I’m afraid to go outside. I hate dealing with people. I hate being in crowds. I go grocery shopping at three in the morning, because there’s nobody out. I drive a hundred miles to Walmart to pick up my meds, because one of my friends works there and I can get in and out comfortably.

Welch
No supervisor was ever going to have me alone in his office again. If a supervisor was to call me into his office, I was done. I can’t tell you how many jobs I went through over the years because of that.

Phillips
I just couldn’t handle working around men. I’ve done masonry work, but I’d last only a couple weeks. I would have outbursts. Sometimes sexual jokes would trigger me. I’d be like, “Listen, you perverted scumbag…” When things upset me, I yell [my attackers’] names out to people. The guys would just look at you like, This guy is crazy.

Lewis
Your certificate of discharge, form DD-214, says very clearly your reason for discharge. But if you [tell a prospective employer] the psychiatrist misdiagnosed you, the perception is, “Oh, he’s lying. He’s a troublemaker, and we don’t want to hire him.” So you either have to own up to it or you basically don’t get a job. You essentially have to tell a prospective employer you were sexually assaulted.

Robinson
It wasn’t until I got my records that I learned about the codes on the DD-214. Employers who offer benefits are not going to hire anyone with a pre-existing condition such as schizophrenia. I’ve spent many years just spinning my wheels trying to get jobs that I’m not gonna be allowed to get.

Owen
To this day, I still cut—arms, legs, stomach—with a hunting knife or a razor blade. It gives me a sense of control, endorphins, relief. The nightmares just play over and over. They’re so real I can feel the broomstick going up inside me.

Welch
I drank myself crazy and did street drugs—methamphetamine, codeine, morphine. At night I still have four or five drinks of vodka. It helps me relax.