• About
  • Disclaimer
  • Helpful Info on Writing Theses/Research
  • Resources

a1000shadesofhurt

a1000shadesofhurt

Tag Archives: Military

Soldiers more likely to be convicted of violent offences, report reveals

15 Friday Mar 2013

Posted by a1000shadesofhurt in Military

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

alcohol abuse, anger, anxiety, armed forces, combat, Depression, mental health issues, Military, military personnel, PTSD, support, trauma, treatment, troops, veterans, violence, violent behaviour, violent offence, vulnerability

Soldiers more likely to be convicted of violent offences, report reveals

Young British men who have served in the armed forces are three times more likely to have been convicted of violent offences than their civilian peers, according to a study published on Friday.

The report in the Lancet, the first to marry the experiences of almost 14,000 military personnel with details on the Police National Computer, also shows how troops who have been in combat are more likely to be involved in violent offending back in the UK.

The study’s authors believe this raises questions about how the military and the NHS supports serving and former troops, some of whom end up abusing alcohol or developing severe mental health illnesses following tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Drawing on a random sample of 13,856 serving and ex-personnel mostly from the army, researchers from King’s College London looked at criminal offending rates and the possible links between them and post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression and other mood disorders.

The study found that of 2,700 men serving in the armed forces under the age of 30, 20.6% had been convicted of a violent offence, compared with 6.7% in the general population. Men who had seen combat in Iraq and Afghanistan were 53% more likely to commit a violent offence than those in non-frontline roles. And personnel who had multiple experiences of combat had a 70% to 80% greater risk of being convicted of acts of violence.

Violent offences covered a broad range of acts, from verbal harassment to homicide. They did not include incidents of domestic violence.

“More frequent exposure to traumatic events during deployment increased the risk of violent offending,” the report says. “We noted a strong link between PTSD and violent offending. Combat veterans with PTSD and other mental health concerns frequently present with problems of anger and aggression.” However, it also notes that troops who volunteer and are trained for fighting are not chosen randomly.

“In the UK, infantry units have traditionally promoted aggression as a desirable trait and such units frequently recruit individuals who are socially disadvantaged and are likely to have low educational attainment.”

Dr Deirdre MacManus, who led the study, said: “Our study found that violent offending was most common among young men from the lower ranks of the army and was strongly associated with a history of violent offending before joining the military. Serving in a combat role and traumatic experiences on deployment also increased the risk of violent behaviour.”

Prof Sir Simon Wessely, who co-authored the study, added: “We are suggesting there is a problem that needs to be looked at, but just as with post traumatic stress disorder this is not a common outcome in military populations.”

Screening within the armed forces to identify at-risk individuals would not work, he argued. For every correct prediction there were likely to be five that were wrong.

Dr Walter Busuttil, director of medical services at Combat Stress, said: “These findings will help us to identify which veterans are most vulnerable and in need of appropriate care and treatment after leaving the armed forces. We are planning courses for anger management and domestic violence. We are about to establish programmes that deal with alcohol abuse linked to PTSD.

“It would be grossly unfair and inaccurate to characterise all veterans living with PTSD as potential criminals. As noted in the report the vast majority [83%] of serving and ex-serving UK military personnel do not have any sort of criminal record, and the likelihood of violent behaviour is lower among older veterans [aged over 45] than in the general population. What we require now is continued public education to reduce any negative connotations with seeking help for mental health issues, as well as sustained funding for services for veterans.”

The Ministry of Defence has introduced a series of initiatives to encourage serving personnel to come forward if they fear they might be suffering from trauma or the early stages of anxiety or depressive illness, and has committed £7m to improve support services.

Military staff fear redundancy if they complain about bullying, says report

26 Tuesday Feb 2013

Posted by a1000shadesofhurt in Bullying

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

abuse, armed forces, Bullying, complaints, harassment, Military, redundancy

Military staff fear redundancy if they complain about bullying, says report

Military personnel have been deterred from making complaints about bullying and victimisation within the armed forces because of fears they will be put in the frontline for redundancy, a report warns today.

The problem is another reason why the system for investigating harassment and other abuses should be overhauled and scrutinised by a new Armed Forces Ombudsman working outside the military chain of command, say MPs on the defence select committee.

Their report said the current procedures led to backlogs and concern that many soldiers, sailors and pilots have been too nervous to raise complaints against senior officers because of what it might do to their careers.

MPs were told the heads of the army, air force and navy did not understand the role of an ombudsman, but “were sure they didn’t want one” – a position that showed discussions about the proposal “had not been as productive as they should have been.”

At the moment, complaints are overseen by a Services Complaints Commissioner, but the office does not have enough resources, and there are backlogs of cases, particularly in the army and the RAF.

Though the number of anonymous ‘contacts’ the commissioner has received about bullying and harassment has increased for the last three years, the number of actual cases investigated remains low.

The processes remain unnecessarily complex and drawn out, the report says.

Many claims have not been pursued because the alleged victim “did not have confidence to pursue this matter through the chain of command”, the report suggests.

MPs say the Ministry of Defence must urgently commission research into why people are being deterred. It must also instigate a study into the level of sexual offences within the armed forces.

“Without accurate figures, the MoD is unaware of how severe a problem it is dealing with in relation to sexual offences within the armed forces.”

The report adds: “We are concerned that the commissioner and others are reporting that fears of redundancy among service personnel appear to be deterring them from making service complaints. It is unacceptable that personnel who believe they have a genuine grievance in relation to redundancy or any other matter are reluctant to seek redress or resolution because they fear the consequences of making a complaint.

“As a matter of urgency the MoD and the commissioner should investigate this matter.”

James Arbuthnot, Tory chair of the committee, said he remained disappointed the MoD remained opposed to the appointment of an ombudsman with beefed up powers and oversight.

“There are too many reports of service personnel being reluctant to raise genuine complaints and grievances. We are also concerned that complaints are not being raised when they implicate individuals above the complainant within the chain of command.

“The government should change the role of the commissioner to one of an Armed Forces Ombudsman. Our servicemen and servicewomen deserve a complaints system that is as good as it can be. Not to provide this would be a failure of the nation’s duty to them.”

Lieutenant Colonel Douglas Young, chairman of the British Armed Forces Federation, said: “We have said for more than four years that an Armed Forces Ombudsman should be appointed in order to provide a complaints system that service personnel can trust and we are pleased that the House of Commons defence committee now agrees with us.

“It is clear to us that the current system fails to adequately protect the interests of those who make complaints as well as those who are complained about, and we will continue to campaign to change it.”

US military struggling to stop suicide epidemic among war veterans

01 Friday Feb 2013

Posted by a1000shadesofhurt in Suicide

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

'moral injury', guilt, Military, PTSD, self-harm, shame, suicide

US military struggling to stop suicide epidemic among war veterans

Libby Busbee is pretty sure that her son William never sat through or read Shakespeare’s Macbeth, even though he behaved as though he had. Soon after he got back from his final tour of Afghanistan, he began rubbing his hands over and over and constantly rinsing them under the tap.

“Mom, it won’t wash off,” he said.

“What are you talking about?” she replied.

“The blood. It won’t come off.”

On 20 March last year, the soldier’s striving for self-cleanliness came to a sudden end. That night he locked himself in his car and, with his mother and two sisters screaming just a few feet away and with Swat officers encircling the vehicle, he shot himself in the head.

At the age of 23, William Busbee had joined a gruesome statistic. In 2012, for the first time in at least a generation, the number of active-duty soldiers who killed themselves, 177, exceeded the 176 who were killed while in the war zone. To put that another way, more of America’s serving soldiers died at their own hands than in pursuit of the enemy.

Soldier suicidesCredit: Guardian graphics

Across all branches of the US military and the reserves, a similar disturbing trend was recorded. In all, 349 service members took their own lives in 2012, while a lesser number, 295, died in combat.

Shocking though those figures are, they are as nothing compared with the statistic to which Busbee technically belongs. He had retired himself from the army just two months before he died, and so is officially recorded at death as a veteran – one of an astonishing 6,500 former military personnel who killed themselves in 2012, roughly equivalent to one every 80 minutes.

‘He wanted to be somebody, and he loved the army’

Busbee’s story, as told to the Guardian by his mother, illuminates crucial aspects of an epidemic that appears to be taking hold in the US military, spreading alarm as it grows. He personifies the despair that is being felt by increasing numbers of active and retired service members, as well as the inability of the military hierarchy to deal with their anguish.

That’s not, though, how William Busbee’s story began. He was in many ways the archetype of the American soldier. From the age of six he had only one ambition: to sign up for the military, which he did when he was 17.

“He wasn’t the normal teenager who went out and partied,” Libby Busbee said. “He wanted to be somebody. He had his mind set on what he wanted to do, and he loved the army. I couldn’t be more proud of him.”

Once enlisted, he was sent on three separate year-long tours to Afghanistan. It was the fulfillment of his dreams, but it came at a high price. He came under attack several times, and in one particularly serious incident incurred a blow to the head that caused traumatic brain injury. His body was so peppered with shrapnel that whenever he walked through an airport security screen he would set off the alarm.

The mental costs were high too. Each time he came back from Afghanistan. between tours or on R&R, he struck his mother as a little more on edge, a little more withdrawn. He would rarely go out of the house and seemed ill at ease among civilians. “I reckon he felt he no longer belonged here,” she said.

Once, Busbee was driving Libby in his car when a nearby train sounded its horn. He was so startled by the noise that he leapt out of the vehicle, leaving it to crash into the curb. After that, he never drove farther than a couple of blocks.

Nights were the worst. He had bad dreams and confessed to being scared of the dark, making Libby swear not to tell anybody. Then he took to sleeping in a closet, using a military sleeping bag tucked inside the tiny space to recreate the conditions of deployment. “I think it made him feel more comfortable,” his mother said.

After one especially fraught night, Libby awoke to find that he had slashed his face with a knife. Occasionally, he would allude to the distressing events that led to such extreme behaviour: there was the time that another soldier, aged 18, had been killed right beside him; and the times that he himself had killed.

William told his mother: “You would hate me if you knew what I’ve done out there.”

“I will never hate you. You are the same person you always were,” she said.

“No, Mom,” he countered. “The son you loved died over there.”

Soldiers’ psychological damage

For William Nash, a retired Navy psychiatrist who directed the marine corps’ combat stress control programme, William Busbee’s expressions of torment are all too familiar. He has worked with hundreds of service members who have been grappling with suicidal thoughts, not least when he was posted to Fallujah in Iraq during the height of the fighting in 2004.

He and colleagues in military psychiatry have developed the concept of “moral injury” to help understand the current wave of self-harm. He defines that as “damage to your deeply held beliefs about right and wrong. It might be caused by something that you do or fail to do, or by something that is done to you – but either way it breaks that sense of moral certainty.”

Contrary to widely held assumptions, it is not the fear and the terror that service members endure in the battlefield that inflicts most psychological damage, Nash has concluded, but feelings of shame and guilt related to the moral injuries they suffer. Top of the list of such injuries, by a long shot, is when one of their own people is killed.

“I have heard it over and over again from marines – the most common source of anguish for them was failing to protect their ‘brothers’. The significance of that is unfathomable, it’s comparable to the feelings I’ve heard from parents who have lost a child.”

Incidents of “friendly fire” when US personnel are killed by mistake by their own side is another cause of terrible hurt, as is the guilt that follows the knowledge that a military action has led to the deaths of civilians, particularly women and children. Another important factor, Nash stressed, was the impact of being discharged from the military that can also instil a devastating sense of loss in those who have led a hermetically sealed life within the armed forces and suddenly find themselves excluded from it.

That was certainly the case with William Busbee. In 2011, following his return to Fort Carson in Colorado after his third and last tour of Afghanistan, he made an unsuccessful attempt to kill himself. He was taken off normal duties and prescribed large quantities of psychotropic drugs which his mother believes only made his condition worse.

Eventually he was presented with an ultimatum by the army: retire yourself out or we will discharge you on medical grounds. He felt he had no choice but to quit, as to be medically discharged would have severely dented his future job prospects.

When he came home on 18 January 2012, a civilian once again, he was inconsolable. He told his mother: “I’m nothing now. I’ve been thrown away by the army.”

The suffering William Busbee went through, both inside the military and immediately after he left it, illustrates the most alarming single factor in the current suicide crisis: the growing link between multiple deployments and self-harm. Until 2012, the majority of individuals who killed themselves had seen no deployment at all. Their problems tended to relate to marital or relationship breakdown or financial or legal worries back at base.

The most recent department of defense suicide report, or DODSER, covers 2011 . It shows that less than half, 47%, of all suicides involved service members who had ever been in Iraq or Afghanistan. Just one in 10 of those who died did so while posted in the war zone. Only 15% had ever experienced direct combat.

The DODSER for 2012 has yet to be released, but when it is it is expected to record a sea change. For the first time, the majority of the those who killed themselves had been deployed. That’s a watershed that is causing deep concern within the services.

“We are starting to see the creeping up of suicides among those who have had multiple deployments,” said Phillip Carter, a military expert at the defence thinktank Center for a New American Security that in 2011 published one of the most authoritative studies into the crisis . He added that though the causes of the increase were still barely understood, one important cause might be the cumulative impact of deployments – the idea that the harmful consequences of stress might build up from one tour of Afghanistan to the next.

Over the past four years the Pentagon, and the US Department of Veterans Affairs, have invested considerable resources at tackling the problem. The US Department of Defense has launched a suicide prevention programme that tries to help service members to overcome the stigma towards seeking help. It has also launched an education campaign encouraging personnel to be on the look out for signs of distress among their peers under the rubric “never let our buddy fight alone”.

Despite such efforts, there is no apparent let up in the scale of the tragedy. Though President Obama has announced a draw-down of US troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014, experts warn that the crisis could last for at least a decade beyond the end of war as a result of the delayed impact of psychological damage.

It’s all come in any case too late for Libby Busbee. She feels that her son was let down by the army he loved so much. In her view he was pumped full of drugs but deprived of the attention and care he needed.

William himself was so disillusioned that shortly before he died he told her that he didn’t want a military funeral; he would prefer to be cremated and his ashes scattered at sea. “I don’t want to be buried in my uniform – why would I want that when they threw me away when I was alive,” he said.

In the end, two infantrymen did stand to attention over his coffin, the flag was folded over it, and there was a gun salute as it was lowered into the ground. William Busbee was finally at rest, though for Libby Busbee the torture goes on.

“I was there for his first breath, and his last,” she said. “Now my daughters and me, we have to deal with what he was going through.”

Australia apologises to victims of sexual abuse in the military

26 Monday Nov 2012

Posted by a1000shadesofhurt in Sexual Harassment, Rape and Sexual Violence

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

mental abuse, Military, physical abuse, sexual abuse

Australia apologises to victims of sexual abuse in the military

Australia’s defence minister apologised to military personnel past and present who were sexually abused or otherwise mistreated during their service.

He also started an inquiry into hundreds of allegations of abuse over six decades.

Defence Minister Stephen Smith made the apology in Parliament on behalf of the government in the latest step in a two-year effort to reform the culture of the Australian military and it make more accepting of women.

“Young men and women have suffered treatment which no member of our defence force or our community generally should experience,” Smith said.

“Young men and women have endured sexual, physical or mental abuse from their colleagues which are not acceptable and do not reflect the values of a modern, diverse, tolerant, Australian society,” he added.

He noted claims that officers had abused their positions of trust through their own behaviour or by turning a blind eye to the actions of others.

Smith also announced that retired judge Len Roberts-Smith had been appointed to examine allegations of abuse by more than 1,000 alleged victims across every decade since 1950s.

The earliest case relates to the alleged abuse of a 13-year-old navy trainee in 1951, while the most recent relates to events in 2011.

A preliminary review of these allegations by a law firm found that 750 were “plausible,” Smith said.

The three-month inquiry could result in compensation of up to 50,000 Australian dollars ($52,000) for each victim and the alleged perpetrators being referred to criminal authorities for prosecution.

Smith said some of the perpetrators could still be serving in the military.

The government started inquiries last year in response to a young woman’s allegation that a fellow cadet had secretly filmed a sexual encounter between the pair and broadcast it to their colleagues at the Australian military officer training academy. The incident and the attention the government focused on it provoked a wave of complaints of sexual misconduct over the decades.

Rape in the military: exposing the shocking truth

30 Tuesday Oct 2012

Posted by a1000shadesofhurt in Military, Sexual Harassment, Rape and Sexual Violence

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

abuse, armed forces, blame, crime, documentary, film, Military, rape, sexual assault

Rape in the military: exposing the shocking truth

He hit me across the left side of my face … and my face hurt so bad. He screamed at me and he grabbed my arm and he raped me.” Kori Cioca’s heartbreaking account of her rape by a commanding officer while serving in the US Coast Guard is not the most shocking part of her testimony. Following the attack, Cioca was told by her superiors that if she went forward with her case she would be court-martialed for lying; her assailant, who admitted the attack but denied rape, then received just 30 days of base restriction and loss of pay and the US Department of Defense continues to refuse to pay for the surgery she needs for the nerve damage to her face.

Cioca is just one of the women interviewed in The Invisible War, a feature-length documentary that lifts the lid on the abuse of women in the US military and which got its first UK screening in the Frontline Club in London last week.

The film has raised similar concerns this side of the Atlantic that rape is a hidden scourge in the military. According to figures released to Labour MP Madeleine Moon, a rape or sexual assault is reported by a member of the armed forces every week. Over the past two and a half years, there have been 53 reported rapes and 86 reported sexual assaults in the army, the navy and the air force, but Moon believes the figure is an underestimation and could be as many as an attack a day.

Between 2001-2011, Ministry of Defence figures show 56 members of the armed forces were court-martialed for sexual offences – of these, just 16 resulted in a conviction.

UK screenings of The Invisible War are in the pipeline, as is its release on iTunes in the UK, while its makers are urging UK viewers to host their own screenings.

Lifting the lid on the extent of the abuse is vital to tackling the problem of rape in the military, says Amy Ziering, producer of the film, which was directed and written by Kirby Dick. “There is a perfect storm of conditions to keep this secret,” she says, speaking from Los Angeles. “There is no incentive to report rape, it is not treated as a priority in the military and the nature of the crime means that it is so implosively devastating that many women get the blame, or blame themselves.”

The statistics revealed in The Invisible War, which won the audience award at this year’s Sundance film festival, make shocking reading: a female soldier in combat zones is more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire, over 20% of female veterans have been sexually assaulted while serving in the US army, of 3,192 sexual-assault reports in 2011 only 191 members of the military were convicted at courts martial.

Rape within the military has been exposed before – the Tailhook Association meetings in 1991, the Aberdeen Proving Ground in 1996 and the Air Force Academy in 2003 – but it has rarely been done with such a devastating combination of first-person testimony, watertight research and high-level interviews.

Through the testimony of victims and their families the extent of that devastation is laid bare, as well as the failings of a system that sees a rape victim’s commander decide whether to take action after a rape report.

Ariana Klay, who graduated with honours from the US Naval Academy and served in Iraq, describes her violent rape by a senior officer and her civilian boss. “He said that if I told anybody, that he was gonna have his friend Marv, from Indiana, kill me and throw me in a ditch, ’cause that’s how they took care of things in Indiana,” she tells the camera. When she reported the rape she was told to do “what a Marine officer should do, and that’s to ignore it and move on,” and she alleges the Marine Corps said she must have welcomed the assaults because she wore makeup and skirts – part of her regulation uniform.

“The thing that makes me the most angry,” says Klay, “is not even the rape itself; it’s the commanders that were complicit in covering up everything that happened.”

The film shows Andrea Werner, who reported her rape to her army superiors, only to be charged with adultery, even though it was her assailant who was married; Lieutenant Elle Helmer, whose case against her commanding officer at the Marine barracks in Washington DC, was closed owing to “lack of evidence” before a new case was opened charging Helmer with conduct unbecoming of an officer and public intoxication.

Ziering was instrumental in getting the women to open up about their horrific experiences. She readily agrees that her gender invariably played a role: “I became very emotionally involved in the victims’ stories, it was what drove me, and I wanted the film to have that heart and passion,” she says.

Ziering finds the documentary world “more welcoming and equitable” for women than Hollywood. “There is absolutely no balance in the movie world. It is so bleak there are so few women directors, it’s still very much an all boys club. It’s just horrible,” she says, though she notes the “big star” directors in documentaries still tend to be men. Dick and Ziering’s film has already had a far-reaching impact: offers of financial donations and support for victims have been made after almost every screening and when US secretary of defense Leon Panetta watched the film earlier this year he ordered military commanders to hand over all sexual-assault investigations to a higher-ranking colonel, and announce the creation of a special victims unit in each branch of the armed forces.

Ziering reveals that some commanders are using the film as a training tool, showing it to new recruits. “My real hope is that in 10 years’ time there is not another film made about this. We’re going to keep the pressure on – this can’t just be allowed to blow over.”

Recent Posts

  • Gargoyles, tarantulas, bloodied children: Research begins into mystery syndrome where people see visions of horror
  • Prosopagnosia
  • How mental distress can cause physical pain

Top Posts & Pages

  • Gargoyles, tarantulas, bloodied children: Research begins into mystery syndrome where people see visions of horror
  • Prosopagnosia
  • How mental distress can cause physical pain

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Archives

  • February 2022
  • August 2020
  • May 2017
  • February 2017
  • August 2016
  • April 2016
  • November 2015
  • August 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011

Categories

  • Adoption
  • Autism
  • Body Image
  • Brain Injury
  • Bullying
  • Cancer
  • Carers
  • Depression
  • Eating Disorders
  • Gender Identity
  • Hoarding
  • Indigenous Communities/Nomads
  • Military
  • Miscarriage
  • Neuroscience/Neuropsychology/Neurology
  • Older Adults
  • Postnatal Depression
  • prosopagnosia
  • Psychiatry
  • PTSD
  • Refugees and Asylum Seekers
  • Relationships
  • Self-Harm
  • Sexual Harassment, Rape and Sexual Violence
  • Suicide
  • Trafficking
  • Uncategorized
  • Visual Impairment
  • War Crimes
  • Young People

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Blogroll

  • Freedom From Torture Each day, staff and volunteers work with survivors of torture in centres in Birmingham, Glasgow, London, Manchester and Newcastle – and soon a presence in Yorkshire and Humberside – to help them begin to rebuild their lives. Sharing this expertise wit
  • GET Self Help Cognitive Behaviour Therapy Self-Help Resources
  • Glasgow STEPS The STEPS team offer a range of services to people with common mental health problems such as anxiety and depression. We are part of South East Glasgow Community Health and Care Partnership, an NHS service. We offer help to anyone over the age of 16 who n
  • Mind We campaign vigorously to create a society that promotes and protects good mental health for all – a society where people with experience of mental distress are treated fairly, positively and with respect.
  • Research Blogging Do you write about peer-reviewed research in your blog? Use ResearchBlogging.org to make it easy for your readers — and others from around the world — to find your serious posts about academic research. If you don’t have a blog, you can still use our
  • Royal College of Psychiatrists Mental health information provided by the Royal College of Psychiatrists
  • Young Minds YoungMinds is the UK’s leading charity committed to improving the emotional well being and mental health of children and young people. Driven by their experiences we campaign, research and influence policy and practice.

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • a1000shadesofhurt
    • Join 100 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • a1000shadesofhurt
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar