Film Sheds Light on Sexual Assault in Military

The U.S. military was on full display at the Academy Awards, with movies like "Argo" and "Zero Dark Thirty." But it was an Oscar-nominated "documentary" that's lifting the curtain on sexual assaults in the military. The film "The Invisible War" depicts servicemen and women who have been sexually assaulted, and what they face when they speak up.

Sometimes the worst enemy is within — that’s what Jennifer Norris found out when she enlisted in the air force. The 24-year-old from rural Maine may have thought she would be defending America by fighting an enemy from afar. But it turned out her biggest battle was with the military force she had pledged to serve.

"It took me by complete surprise," Norris said. "I grew up in Bethel, Maine, idyllic childhood, raised as an equal. Grew up, you know, living the American dream, basically. And when I joined the military, I walked into a snake pit."

It began with Norris being sexually assaulted at an air base in Maine soon after she enlisted.

  "I experienced a not only rape due to a recruiter chemically restraining me, through the use of drugs, at what he called a 'new recruit party,' quote-unquote, but after that occurred, I had three other predators coming after me and escalating over the course of two years."

For this young recruit, it was a traumatizing introduction to the dark side of military culture.

"I didn't even know what rape, sexual assault, sexual harassment, any of that kind of stuff was," Norris said. "I had no idea what was going on, aside from, 'This is wrong, I should not have to come to work every day and deal with this. This is wrong.' And I tried to reason with these perps. I tried to fight back with them, all of it, own my own, but it didn't work. It only escalated."

Seeking justice was even worse. First, who does she tell about who attacked her?

"Not only, a lot of times, is it someone you know that's in your unit or is in your chain of command, and sometimes even commanders, but you're supposed to report these crimes to these same people, who are all acting like drinking buddies, and like a good-old-boy mentality," she said. "So if you're the girl, or you're the guy who comes forward and says, 'This is what this guy just did to me,' they're looking at you like, 'Well this guy's been in 18 years, you've been in -- what -- maybe six months to a year? Who are we going to believe?

But one officer noticed there was a dramatic change in Norris' attitude toward the military. He wanted to know why, so she opened up to him, and began the tedious process of bringing charges against the two of the four men who attacked her. But the deck was stacked against her, even when they pled guilty to what were termed sexual harassment charges, and received their official punishment.

"'OK, perpetrator No. 1, you're going to get busted from a master sergeant to a tech sergeant, you're getting a letter of reprimand, you're no longer able to work at your job here at the Maine Air National Guard. We're going to transfer you to headquarters so you can finish out your 20 years,'" Norris said. "'Perp 2, you're getting a letter of reprimand, and you are now hereby kicked out of the Maine Air National Guard.' Although what happened is he was kicked out -- and he was kicked out honorably -- so he just turned around and joined the New Hampshire Air National Guard. And last I knew, he was working at the Pentagon. So my efforts were futile."

Although discouraged, Norris just wanted to move on. But her problems were only just beginning.

"I went back to my squadron, because both of my perpetrators were gone now, so I felt safe," she said. "And instead I walked into a snake pit of retaliation, and abuse -- you name it. I mean, people would hug the wall when I walked down the hall as if I was just going to randomly say they assaulted me and ruin their careers. So instead of it being, 'Wow, you just saved a lot of people from more harm from these people, it turned into, 'You just made those two lose their careers. We're going to take you down.'

And down she went.

"I got physically beat by one of the perpetrator's friends, for reporting," she said. "I tried to press charges against them. Unfortunately, the DA, for some reason deemed it a barroom brawl and threw out the charges."

Norris went on to complete her six years in the Air Force vowing not to be driven out by the abuse she suffered, unaware that others were suffering too.

Featured in "The Invisible War" is U.S. Rep. Niki Tsongas, who now co-chairs the bipartisan caucus on military sexual assault. She told me she came face to face with the issue when talking with a group of wounded warriors.

"One of the women, a nurse who'd been deployed several times to Afghanistan and Iraq, said to me, 'Ma'am, I'm more afraid of my own soldiers than I am of the enemy,'" Tsongas said. "And as she would travel around the base, she was always prepared to defend herself. She had never herself been assaulted, but she felt the presence of a threat at all times. So that was very eye opening for me."

Tsongas was moved to make military sexual assault issue one of her priorities.

"We began to reach out to the organizations that are working with servicemen and women, and as a result, learned a lot about what wasn't happening, and the important changes that needed to be made in the military, the various services," Tsongas said. That led to my involvement with 'The Invisible War.' They were making the film and they learned of our efforts."

You may have noticed Tsongas said men as well as women. It turns out that although most of the publicity about sexual assault in the military has been about women, more than half of victims are men -- like Michael Matthews.

"When I was 19, I was stationed at Whiteman Air Force Base, and one night I was walking through a dark area, I was knocked unconscious, and three men held me down and raped me -- sodomized me," Matthew said. "I didn't know the perpetrators, and I couldn't see them, other than silhouettes in the dark, so I never reported it. And I never would have reported it, because, well, I'm from New York, and realizing, that wouldn't have went well for me anyway."

And Mike kept what happened to him secret for many years.

Mike appears in the film "Invisible War," and a new film he and his wife are making about men sexually assaulted in the military called "Justice Denied."

Two days before "Invisible War" had its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta held a news conference.

"The number of sexual assaults in the military is unacceptable," Panetta said. "Last year, 3,191 reports of sexual assault came in. But I have to tell you that because we assume that this is a very underreported crime, the estimate is that the actual number is closer to 19,000."

And of the 3,191 complaints brought only 8 percent were prosecuted. Despite the depressing statistics, Tsongas says some progress is being made.

"Typically, a victim or survivor would report to their commander that an assault had taken place," she said. "Often the commander was overseeing both the assailant and the survivor, with an inherently compromised position. Secretary Panetta announced the decision to move it up the chain of command, so it wasn't the immediate commander, but would take it to at least a colonel leveler a captain level in the Navy and Marine Corps. So an important step forward, but it remains to be seen if it will lead to more prosecutions, but I think it's a recognition that something had to be done."

But Norris says Panetta’s actions don’t go far enough, as she said in her testimony before the House Armed Services Committee. 

"The only credible solution is an independent, special victims unit, completely outside the chain of command, under professional, civilian oversight," she said.

Tsongas admits much more has to be done.

"What we need to see is a change of culture within the military," Tsongas said. "The prevalence of these crimes just is not tolerable."

And Norris says she and other military sexual assault survivors are ready for the fight.

"We are not going to stop," she said. "I mean, they trained us to be warriors, and we may not be able to be warriors for the military any more, but we can be for this cause for the military, because we want what's best for the military as well. And quite frankly, they lost a real good troop in me when they decided that I had to go because I was assaulted."

There is some progress being made. President Barack Obama has signed a law that forms special victims units to investigate and prosecute sexual assault cases, and installs new policies to prevent professional retaliation against assault survivors.

"Our men and women in uniform put their lives on the line every day, to try to keep America safe," Panetta said. "We have a moral duty to keep them safe."