Where is our outrage?

Maybe my problem is that I tend to think too much about all of the things that could be better, instead of just accepting our collective lot as is.
Maybe that is why I often find myself the bearer of uncomfortable realities — the sort of stuff one seldom hears on television or radio. Yet these are the same sort of stories that should shock and sicken us.
Such is the nature of what I am about to share with you.
Did you know — and I bet the majority of you did not — that our American servicewomen, particularly those fighting in Iraq, are more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than they are to be killed or harmed by enemy fire?
OK, are you sickened yet?
I learned of that starling revelation after reading a brilliant piece of reporting by Los Angeles Times reporter Jane Harman.
Recently, Harman visited a Veterans Administration Health Care Center in that city, where she met some of the victims and their doctors. After reading her account of their stories, I could tell that some of their stories hit her right in the gut. She did something about it.
I share some of her findings with you, because we all should be angered by this. Not only those of us with daughters, but all of us.
Harman’s reporting found what she called “a sickening pattern” in Department of Defense statistics on the number of military sexual assaults and rapes. In 2006, she found there were 2,947 incidents of sexual assault reported — 73 percent more than just two years earlier. Department of Defense statistics show a similar rise in 2007.
But wait, it gets worse — if that seems possible. Harman found that of the more than 2,200 suspects that were investigated for sexual assault allegations — including 1,200-plus rapes — only 181 were actually court-martialed. The majority of the others accused received only non-punitive administrative action or nonjudicial punishment, actions Harman called “a slap on the wrist.”
After reading her story, I concluded that this sort of injustice would probably lead to two basic results — there would be fewer reports of such abuse by the victims and there would be little to actually deter would-be offenders.
In the civilian world, probably at least half of such reports of sexual abuse and rape are investigated and the attackers prosecuted to the full extent of the law. What makes my blood boil is that these brave young military women are just as much in harm’s way as their male counterparts. But these sad facts make it appear that they are even more so.
Where, I ask, is the outrage from Secretary of Defense Robert Gates? Where is the urgency from Congress to fix failed policy in this regard? We can have Senate hearings on steroid use in professional baseball, but not one word about the growing incidents of rape of our daughters — sadly by our own sons.
The majority of our troops, both men and women, are valiant warriors doing far more than just their patriotic duties. Most exemplify what it means to be an American.
Yet at the same time, those within their ranks who perform such dastardly acts upon their own comrades shame all of us.
That shame will only be erased when all of us back home open our eyes and our mouths and demand more accountability from those in charge — and equal justice for all, gender notwithstanding.
-- John M. Fisher of Danville is a businessman, documentary filmmaker and freelance writer, and is the former bureau chief for KDFW, a CBS affiliate in Fort Worth, Texas. You may contact him at {encode="johnfisher@john-fisheronline.com" title="johnfisher@john-fisheronline.com"}.