Rape in the Peace Corps

[Mycroft]

http://uk.jezebel.com/5800733/peace-corps-accused-of-blaming-rape-victims

Peace Corps Accused Of Blaming Rape Victims

Former volunteers are accusing the Peace Corps of blaming them for their own sexual assaults. Today, the issue goes before Congress.
In January, ABC reported that over 1,000 female Peace Corps volunteers had been assaulted in the past 10 years. One said the Peace Corps had ignored warnings that she was in danger, eventually resulting in her gang rape. Others told stories of being blamed for their assaults because they had had a drink or gone walking in the evening, and some said that after they were assaulted, the Peace Corps made it difficult or impossible to seek adequate counseling. Volunteer Karestan Koenen (pictured), who will testify before Congress today, says she was raped in Niger in 1991. When she tried to report it to a Peace Corps official in Washington, this was the response:

I walk into her office and the first thing she says to me is, 'I am so sick of you girls going out with men, drinking and dancing and then when something happens, you call it rape.' I felt like someone had just kicked me in the stomach.

Wow. Teaching situational awareness and difference in culture is appropriate, but when rape does happen why wouldn't they stand behind their volunteers?

 

[tyr_13]

Sick.

 

[geni]

Wow. Teaching situational awareness and difference in culture is appropriate, but when rape does happen why wouldn't they stand behind their volunteers?

Given the organisation's size and age statisticaly you are going to get this happening from time to time when some low level management person turns out to be an idiot.

 

[Mycroft]

Evidence suggests it's more a systemic problem then that.

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/peace...teer-jess-smochek-us/story?id=12599341&page=2

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/peace...gress-sexual-assault/story?id=13574590&page=1

http://firstresponseaction.blogspot.com/

 

[Puppycow]

Evidence suggests it's more a systemic problem then that.

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/peace...teer-jess-smochek-us/story?id=12599341&page=2

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/peace...gress-sexual-assault/story?id=13574590&page=1

http://firstresponseaction.blogspot.com/

The evidence being . . .?

There's some criticism of a training video:

The Peace Corps says it is not its policy to blame volunteers. The agency's current training video for volunteers, however, which has been shown to incoming volunteers within the past month, seems to do just that. In the video, three victims appear on camera to describe what they had supposedly done wrong to bring on their attackers. "I wish I had made different choices," says one of the women.

But without seeing the video, it's hard for me to say whether this is "blaming the victim" or just trying to teach women strategies to avoid becoming a rape victim. I'm sure it's intended as the latter. I also wonder if the women volunteered to tell their stories or were pressured to. Obviously the latter would be problematic.

If it's the former though, then criticizing them for the way they tell their own stories seems like another kind of "blaming the victim."

 

[Mycroft]

The evidence being . . .?

That you have a number of people telling similar stories over a long period of time who served in many different geographical regions. That would rule out geni's suggestion of an idiot low level manager being responsible. Unless, I suppose, that manager worked there for a very long time and chose and/or trained her successors.

There's some criticism of a training video:

But without seeing the video, it's hard for me to say whether this is "blaming the victim" or just trying to teach women strategies to avoid becoming a rape victim. I'm sure it's intended as the latter. I also wonder if the women volunteered to tell their stories or were pressured to. Obviously the latter would be problematic.

If it's the former though, then criticizing them for the way they tell their own stories seems like another kind of "blaming the victim."

I tend to disagree. If it's a training video for new recruits then the Peace Corps is responsible for the message it delivers and how it's delivered. The volunteer has her story to tell, but there are still producers and editors who are responsible for presentation.

You are correct in that it's hard to judge without seeing the video, but I think it's hard to imagine a context where having a victim describe her own mistakes wouldn't be odd.

 

[Pixie Stix]

That you have a number of people telling similar stories over a long period of time who served in many different geographical regions. That would rule out geni's suggestion of an idiot low level manager being responsible. Unless, I suppose, that manager worked there for a very long time and chose and/or trained her successors.



I tend to disagree. If it's a training video for new recruits then the Peace Corps is responsible for the message it delivers and how it's delivered. The volunteer has her story to tell, but there are still producers and editors who are responsible for presentation.

You are correct in that it's hard to judge without seeing the video, but I think it's hard to imagine a context where having a victim describe her own mistakes wouldn't be odd.

I read a few articles regarding this, and there were several different women who told an identical story, including one who had been viciously gang raped:

They had been subject to increasingly aggressive sexual harassment by men in the area they were living in. They felt unsafe and felt they were at risk of being raped. They reported this repeatedly to the Peace Corps. They repeatedly asked to be transferred to a different location specifically because they felt they were at high risk for being sexually assaulted.


After they had in fact been raped and went to the Peace Corps to report it, they were required to write a statement in which they were told to list what they had done wrong that could have brought the rape upon themselves, regardless of the context of their rape, even women who had been raped by an intruder, or who were just snatched off a city street. And it wasn't presented as "do you think there were steps you could have taken that could have lessened your risk?" They stated they were just told, flat out "you have to write this report and tell us what you did wrong that caused your rape."


The fact that multiple women in completely separate countries were required to do the exact same thing (write a report stating what they had done that caused their own rape) makes it seem like this is not some isolated issue that some low level manager came up with, but is actually a Peace Corps policy or at least a pretty standard operating procedure.

 

[Mycroft]

Were those the same women? I had the impression they were different events.

 

[Pixie Stix]

Were those the same women? I had the impression they were different events.

Do you mean if they were the same women as the ones mentioned in the stories in this thread? I'm not sure if they were. There was some TV news story back in January about this issue, and I then read several different articles around that time as well as blogs that talked about stories from a lot of different women. My guess is that probably some of the women were the same as the ones in the articles from this thread and some were different. I read all this too long ago to remember any names/countries specifically.

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

What's there to live for?

Who needs the Peace Corp?

 

[Mycroft]

No, I was thinking that the woman who asked to be reassigned before something happened was a different woman than those that had been asked after the fact to write down the things they could have done differently, but in review, I see that both of those happened to at least one woman, Jess Smochek.

 

[Pixie Stix]

Mycroft I just read the link from ABC and these were different women than the ones I had read about previously, because the ones in the link you put up had been raped back in the 80s, and the women I had read about had been raped in recent years.

Tellingly though, one of the woman raped in the 80s said the same thing the women from recent years said, that she was forced to write a report stating what she did wrong that could have prevented her rape.

So the fact that this report writing is happening not only in different countries, but over long periods of time, to me again suggests that this is a systemic widespread issue with the Peace Corps, not an issue of isolated idiotic managers.

Though that doesn't mean it happens in every case or that this a mandatory policy. When I was reading the blogs about this whole thing, the bloggers were careful to point out the stories of other women who had been raped who received support and were not made to feel responsible for the incidents. But again, the fact that this has happened to numerous women, in different countries, in different time periods, still shows systemic failure on Peace Corps' part.

Also, as far as evidence Puppycow, the Peace Corps has confirmed in the congressional hearing that this really happened. They do not deny it.


Edit: ah just saw your post above, and the name "Jess Smochek" is familiar to me, I'm sure she's one of the ones I read about, but there were other women who said the same thing as her: they asked to be transferred, told Peace Corps they were in danger, and then were made to write the reports when they were in fact raped.

 

[Pixie Stix]

here's an especially disturbing quote from Jess Smochek:

“Shortly after I left, the country director — who never attempted to contact me after I was raped — called a meeting of several women in my former volunteer group and told them, without my permission, what had happened to me,” she said. “Then, he told them that rape was a woman’s fault and that I had caused what happened to me by being out alone after 5:00 PM. As for the other women in the group, who had been very vocal about being constantly stalked and afraid, he threatened them with administrative separation.”

 

[Skeptic]

The problem isn't that people say women's behavior effects their chances of being raped, which is true for rape just like it is for any other crime. It's that they demand woman engage in totally unreasonable restrictions of their own behavior (e.g., never going out after dark alone) due to this, a standard that does not exist for victims of any other crime. You never hear anyone say, "well, if he didn't want to get mugged, why did he leave the house after dark alone?".

 

[gumboot]

Clearly the peace corps isn't very successful in their primary goal...

 

[gumboot]

The problem isn't that people say women's behavior effects their chances of being raped, which is true for rape just like it is for any other crime. It's that they demand woman engage in totally unreasonable restrictions of their own behavior (e.g., never going out after dark alone) due to this, a standard that does not exist for victims of any other crime. You never hear anyone say, "well, if he didn't want to get mugged, why did he leave the house after dark alone?".

I don't think you can apply normal social standards to this context. This are people getting assaulted in often incredibly unstable crime-ridden countries, aren't they?

I mean, if a soldier goes into Baghdad without a vest and gets maimed by a suicide bomber, it's pretty reasonable to blame him for being stupid and not wearing a vest.

I would say that a young western female not going out walking in the evening on their own in somewhere like Niger is a pretty reasonable restriction on their behaviour.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

here's an especially disturbing quote from Jess Smochek:

“Shortly after I left, the country director — who never attempted to contact me after I was raped — called a meeting of several women in my former volunteer group and told them, without my permission, what had happened to me,” she said. “Then, he told them that rape was a woman’s fault and that I had caused what happened to me by being out alone after 5:00 PM. As for the other women in the group, who had been very vocal about being constantly stalked and afraid, he threatened them with administrative separation.”

How does the speaker in your quote know this, if they weren't present?

If someone is raped it makes perfect sense to try to identify what steps could have been taken to prevent that rape, and to see that those steps are taken in future.

It sounds like there is cause for concern but we are only hearing one side of the story, and it seems like it's coming to us through the lens of the feminist dogma that identifying steps women can take to avoid sexual assault is indistinguishable from holding women morally culpable for being sexually assaulted.

 

[gumboot]

here's an especially disturbing quote from Jess Smochek:

“Shortly after I left, the country director — who never attempted to contact me after I was raped — called a meeting of several women in my former volunteer group and told them, without my permission, what had happened to me,” she said. “Then, he told them that rape was a woman’s fault and that I had caused what happened to me by being out alone after 5:00 PM. As for the other women in the group, who had been very vocal about being constantly stalked and afraid, he threatened them with administrative separation.”

I can think of some pretty logical and reasonable interpretations to the above account. The person in question quite clearly wasn't present at the meeting, and isn't trying to directly quote anyone.

What is "administrative separation"?

 

[rwguinn]

I can think of some pretty logical and reasonable interpretations to the above account. The person in question quite clearly wasn't present at the meeting, and isn't trying to directly quote anyone.

What is "administrative separation"?

"yOU'RE fIRED!"

 

[gumboot]

"yOU'RE fIRED!"

So in other words they've kicked them out of the Peace Corps and sent them home? To be honest that's probably a pretty sensible move for any volunteers you've found you aren't capable of protecting.

 

[Skeptic]

I just fired my secretary after hearing she got raped. The dirty slut! -- er, I mean, I found out I am "not able to protect her" so I did the "sensible thing".

 

[gumboot]

I just fired my secretary after hearing she got raped. The dirty slut! -- er, I mean, I found out I am "not able to protect her" so I did the "sensible thing".

Is your company operating in a lawless and violent country where you actually can't protect her? Or are you just missing the point entirely?

Also, how exactly do you fire a volunteer?

 

[Visual Purple]

If you can't protect a person in a given spot, you can move him or her. (I say him or her on purpose--I've heard hairy stories from male volunteers.)

Peace Corps "volunteers" are volunteers only in the sense that military members are volunteers. They are paid, if not much.

I think that the problem may go beyond sexual assault. Again, just what I heard, but I have the impression that volunteers were under pressure to not report malaria infections. I can't figure out what is going on with this.

 

[rwguinn]

So in other words they've kicked them out of the Peace Corps and sent them home? To be honest that's probably a pretty sensible move for any volunteers you've found you aren't capable of protecting.

If it's anything like most of the foreign employment stuff, they'd have to find their own way home...

 

[bigred]

I don't think you can apply normal social standards to this context. This are people getting assaulted in often incredibly unstable crime-ridden countries, aren't they?

I mean, if a soldier goes into Baghdad without a vest and gets maimed by a suicide bomber, it's pretty reasonable to blame him for being stupid and not wearing a vest.

I would say that a young western female not going out walking in the evening on their own in somewhere like Niger is a pretty reasonable restriction on their behaviour.

Yep. And pls note I am hardly saying "it's their fault," in fact there aren't words strong enough to describe the revulsion I have both for slime who rape and the other slime who fail to deal with or even acknowledge it, but it seems to me that at least in some cases there is some serious naive/irresponsible/foolish behavior on the part of the victims in terms of not fully appreciating they aren't in Kansas anymore.

That said, I'm all for castration of convicted rapists.

 

[epepke]

There are two issues here. One is that, when you're in another culture, it's necessary to have different behaviors than you are used to if you want to protect yourself. It's even more important in uncivilized places with poor infrastructure and lax law enforcement. This is probably the case, because otherwise why would the Peace Corps be there trying to "fix" things in the first place?

The other issue is how you treat people who have been victimized.

To my way of thinking, these are dramatically different. To most people, they aren't. As I've argued elsewhere, victim-blaming, far from being some rare thing that appalls people when it happens, is a basic part of human psychology.

I would expect conflation of the two concepts to be even worse in the Peace Corps. There hasn't been a draft for decades, so they don't get normal people who don't want to be involved in warfare when their number comes up. In my experience, the Peace Corps tends to attract the contemptuous do-gooder type, the kind with Magik-markered histories showing that only the US has ever been bad, and everyone else is innocent, who expiate their angst with something like the White Man's Burden, though they will never admit it. So they tend to idealize the cultures in which they find themselves.

 

[rwguinn]

Yep. And pls note I am hardly saying "it's their fault," in fact there aren't words strong enough to describe the revulsion I have both for slime who rape and the other slime who fail to deal with or even acknowledge it, but it seems to me that at least in some cases there is some serious naive/irresponsible/foolish behavior on the part of the victims in terms of not fully appreciating they aren't in Kansas anymore.

That said, I'm all for castration of convicted rapists.

^^ This

There are two issues here. One is that, when you're in another culture, it's necessary to have different behaviors than you are used to if you want to protect yourself. It's even more important in uncivilized places with poor infrastructure and lax law enforcement. This is probably the case, because otherwise why would the Peace Corps be there trying to "fix" things in the first place?

The other issue is how you treat people who have been victimized.

To my way of thinking, these are dramatically different. To most people, they aren't. As I've argued elsewhere, victim-blaming, far from being some rare thing that appalls people when it happens, is a basic part of human psychology.

I would expect conflation of the two concepts to be even worse in the Peace Corps. There hasn't been a draft for decades, so they don't get normal people who don't want to be involved in warfare when their number comes up. In my experience, the Peace Corps tends to attract the contemptuous do-gooder type, the kind with Magik-markered histories showing that only the US has ever been bad, and everyone else is innocent, who expiate their angst with something like the White Man's Burden, though they will never admit it. So they tend to idealize the cultures in which they find themselves.

^^and this...