At the same time, Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri offered a competing bill that MST- victim advocates attacked because it seemed to reaffirm the status quo. Worse, it didn't address victims' fears of a Kafkaesque bureaucracy that, to put it mildly, deters reporting. “You know McCaskill's bill ain't gonna work,” says MST victim Michael Matthews, “because the Pentagon likes her bill.”

For commanders, it's a nuanced matter to decide whether or not to refer a rape case for trial. The decision requires judgment calls about consent. It demands empathy for a victim who has been made to feel profoundly unsoldierlike. It calls for unsparing scrutiny of one's own complicity, because the failure of “good order and discipline”—a canonical 239-year-old military concept—is the commander's own failure. MST-victim advocates argue that people with specialized training should be making these decisions, not commanders.

McCaskill's bill was passed unanimously and currently awaits action in a House subcommittee. Gillibrand has vowed to revive the MJIA later in 2014. Meanwhile, the number of reported sexual assaults rose for a third consecutive year. The Pentagon interprets this to mean that a greater proportion of victims are reporting. Veterans believe it just means there are more victims.

VII.

“I can't blame the whole military for what one person did.”

Ken Falke

Founder, Boulder Crest Retreat for Military and Veteran Wellness, Bluemont, Virginia

It's funny. Even people who have the most horrific experience, at some stage in their life—it may take them till they're 75 years old—the best memories of their lives will come back to [their service time]. I can't tell you exactly why. The brotherhood, the camaraderie, goes deeper than the worst trauma.

Alexander

I can't blame the whole military for what one person did. I liked the structure—having a sense of I knew what I was doing, what my job was going to be. I would go back in a heartbeat, even after everything that happened. I would love to.

Jones

I liked the routine. I liked the work. I liked the benefits. I liked the freedom of being young and not under my parents' rules anymore. I wanted to travel and to go up in rank and to store away money for an education when I got out. It only takes twenty years. I wanted to stay in the military.

Smith

I just wanted to stay in the Air Force. Being in the Air Force makes me happy. I didn't want him to take that last thing away from me. I feel like this is where I really belong. But obviously it's not an option.

VIII.

The Case of Matthew Owen

Army, 1976–80

I was from the Midwest, and they said they hated “Yankees.” At night they'd pull the covers over me and beat me with a bar of soap in a sock. They would push me out of my bunk onto the floor. They would mess up my locker during inspection.

One night I was getting ready to go into my room in the barracks when a blanket was put over my head. I heard five different male voices, which I recognized, because I had heard these voices when they harassed me every day. They beat me down onto the floor and forced my legs open. Then they took the end of a broomstick and forced it into me again and again. Each time it felt like my insides were coming out. The blood was a blessing, because it seemed to lubricate the broomstick.

In order to heal, I'm supposed to forgive; I've been told that many times. But how do you forgive somebody that's done that to you? You tell me that. Could you? I know the identity of the ringleader, and two of the others came back to me a year ago. I searched online, and there was no trace. There's millions of people that have those last names.

My thought of what I would do to them is, I would first tie 'em down to a table. Then I would take a blowtorch, and I would slowly roast them from their toes to the top of their fucking head. You know how long that's been on my mind?

Nathaniel Penn is a GQ correspondent.

This story originally appeared in the September 2014 issue with the title “Son, Men Don’t Get Raped.”

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