It’s not “victim blaming” if you don’t blame the victim

Thanks to progressives, I now need to defend Donald Trump. I do not want to defend Trump. I do not like Trump. I think he is supremely narcissistic, purely self-interested, and likely one of the best manipulators in the world. He plays people, using their interests and biases to entertain himself. I doubt he wants to be the president of the United States. I doubt he intends to follow through should he win. This is all a game to him.

That said, despite Trump’s penchant for making stupid comments, his detractors also have the habit of taking his comments completely out of context. For example, Julia Sonenshein wrote about a three-year-old tweet Trump made about military rape:

26,000 unreported sexual assults in the military-only 238 convictions. What did these geniuses expect when they put men & women together?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 7, 2013

Sonenshein is correct that it is a terrible comment. It implies that men are incapable of controlling their actions. While there are certainly some men like this, to assume that men and women cannot work together without the men raping the women is absurd. However, that was not what Sonenshein took from Trump’s tweet. She read a different inference:

The hidden truth of male-on-male rape in the military

The Washington Times published an article about a new study concerning rape in the military:

Far more military men are being raped by other men and experience other sexual traumas than is reported by the Pentagon because of the stigma attached to such assaults, says a new study released Tuesday by the American Psychological Association.

“Rates of military sexual trauma among men who served in the military may be as much as 15 times higher than has been previously reported, largely because of barriers associated with stigma, beliefs in myths about male rape, and feelings of helplessness,” the APA said in releasing findings published in its periodical Psychological Services.

If the survey of male combat veterans is accurate, it could mean the U.S. armed forces are dealing with an epidemic of male-on-male sex crimes.

Of course, in order to get the clickbait the editors decided to run the title ‘Gay’ rape in military underreported by Pentagon. This has nothing to do with the sexuality of the rapists or their victims. Men make up the majority of the military members. As a result, they will make up the majority of the rape victims because they are the most available potential victims. The editors at the Washington Times should know better than to play that kind of game.

Setting that aside, the numbers presented by the study reveal a severe problem with sexual violence against men in the military:

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Boy ‘abused with a dog’ by Army recruits-inquiry — Senior recruits at an army apprentice school used a dog to abuse a boy who was training to join the Army Band, a national inquiry has heard. The abuse survivor, given the pseudonym CJU, told a royal commission hearing on Friday he had spent 38 years carrying the burden of his abuse. ‘Not only was I raped by my seniors and by staff at Balcombe (a Victoria-based school) who I thought I could trust, I was mentally abused with a dog, the lowest of the low, bestiality,’ he said.

Britain’s worst pedophiles convicted of historic abuse of young boy — Ex-Navy chief Douglas Slade, 74, and racing driver Christopher Skeaping, 71, were members of the notorious Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE). The pro-paedophile activist network openly campaigned for legal sex between adults and children in the 1970s and 80s, and wanted the age of consent to be axed or lowered. Twisted supporters of the group – which Jimmy Savile has been linked to – shared obscene material and advice with fellow deviants.

Ex-altar boy who spoke out about being sexually abused by priest found hanged in home — A Pennsylvania man who spoke out against clergy abuse after publicly identifying himself as a victim of a predator priest has killed himself, authorities said. Brian Gergely, 46, was found hanged in his home in Ebensburg on Friday, Cambria County Coroner Jeffrey Lees told The Associated Press on Tuesday. Gergely went public in 2003 while suing Monsignor Francis McCaa and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown, saying he was abused as a 10-year-old altar boy.

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Australian Defence Force male recruits share stories of forced sodomy to Royal Commission — Horror stories about sexual abuse of teen recruits to the Australian Defence Force (ADF) continue to surface two years after the sexual abuse on 207 male teens from 1960 to 1984 while aboard HMAS Leeuwin came out. On Tuesday, the mother of a female teen recruit described the horrific sex acts done on her daughter which led the 15-year-old to commit suicide.

Child-sex abuse victim whose abuser is in Australian prison says Brooklyn Jewish group ignored, covered up allegations — Manny Waks says he was sexually abused as a child in Melbourne, Australia, by a member of the Brooklyn-based Chabad-Lubavitch sect. And like many other victims around the globe, the activist says, he’s been unable to get justice from the organization because of New York’s statute of limitations. Under New York State law, survivors have to file lawsuits by their 23rd birthday.

Convicted paedophile awaits sentencing for abuse of boys — The 69-year-old man, who cannot be named to protect the identity of his victims, pleaded guilty at the Central Criminal Court to three charges of sexual abuse on dates between January 1991 and May 1991 while the boys were aged five and 14-years-old. The youngest victim, now 30-years-old, said the man lived in a camper van next to his parent’s home. He said he was a friend of his parent’s and said “they trusted him, so I trusted him”.

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Abused men suffering from lack of support services — More services are needed to support male victims of domestic abuse, a charity has warned. Abused Men in Scotland (AMIS) – the country’s only group working to support male victims of domestic abuse – said rising levels of this kind of abuse mean more support is needed. It comes as new figures on partner abuse contained in the Scottish Crime and Justice survey revealed that of the 576,000 adults in Scotland who experienced some kind of abuse since the age of 16, 178,000 these were men.

Celebrated Alaska storyteller charged with sex abuse of 14-year-old — A prominent Alaska storyteller and performer faces felony charges after police say he had sex with a 14-year-old boy he met on Craigslist. Jack J. Dalton, 43, appeared in court Wednesday in Anchorage. He is accused of visiting the teenager’s home for sex in March and later admitting in a text message that he knew the boy was underage. Police say Dalton told investigators he previously had sex with a different juvenile he met online five to six years earlier and has used software to anonymously view child pornography.

Cuomo Mum on Child Sex Abuse Bill as Deadline Nears — New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has dodged repeated entreaties from advocates against child sexual abuse to support legislation that would enable many victims of this crime to seek justice from their abusers. In a May 9 statement, Cuomo sidestepped pointed questions from the advocates, and from the press, about his willingness to push the state Senate to pass the Child Victims Act before the current legislative session ends June 16. The bill would eliminate New York’s statute of limitations for sexual abuse, which is one of the shortest in the nation.

Rape in the UK Military

Originally posted on December 4th, 2015

I wrote before about the problem of sexual violence in the United States military. It now appears the United Kingdom has a similar problem:

At least three rapes and 22 sexual assaults have been carried out against men in the UK military forces over the last two years, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) revealed under a Freedom of Information request.

Last February, a 20-year-old man was subject to “assault by penetration” by a group of seven men, The Times reported.

In May, another soldier, 28, was attacked by his seven fellow servicemen, while three other young men in the army – one of them 18 years old – were the victims of penetrative sexual assaults over the last year.

All in all, there have been 25 assaults between October 2012 and October 2014, the report revealed.

The numbers were disclosed by the MoD under Freedom of Information requests. They refer only to information gathered by military police, meaning that the real numbers could be much higher.

A former army officer offers his views:

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Boys prove ‘resilient’ after enduring years of violence — Two small boys have shown “remarkable resilience” after enduring years of serious violence at the hands of their caregiver, a court has been told. The caregiver, 60-year-old Shahidan Nisha, appeared upset throughout her Christchurch District Court sentencing on 27 charges by Judge Alistair Garland on Friday.

Campus speaker touting men’s rights has fire alarm pulled on her –Cathy Young, a prominent writer critical of exaggerated campus rape statistics and radical feminism, elicited protests during a recent two-stop speaking tour at college campuses in Canada, which included having a fire alarm pulled during one of her speeches.

Ex-Priest Who Raped Boy Will Be Freed After Decade in Prison — A former Roman Catholic priest who raped an altar boy and spent more than a decade in prison will be freed after prosecutors withdrew a civil petition Friday to have him committed as a sexually dangerous person.

Former teacher charged with rape, pleads not guilty — Brittney Breedlove, 29, of Everton, a former teacher at Valley Springs School, was arraigned Friday on rape and sexual assault of two juvenile males, records show. The rape charge alleges Breedlove engaged in sexual intercourse with a juvenile male under the age of 14.