Sexual Assault in the Military & Benedict's Sand Queen

From today's NY Daily News article "Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand ripped into top Pentagon lawyers during Senate subcommittee hearing, charging military has been too slow to stem tide of sex crimes in ranks:"

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand was not shy in chairing her first subcommittee hearing as she laced into Pentagon officials Wednesday for failing to curb a rash of sexual assaults in the armed services. New York’s junior senator, elected to her first full term in November, took the reins of the Senate Armed Services Committee's Personnel Subcommittee this year and has made it a priority to go after the problem of rampant rapes, sexual assaults and sexual harassment in the military. Almost 2,500 cases of sexual violence were reported in 2011, but the Defense Department estimated that if all victims had actually come forward, that number would have been close to 19,000. In emotional and sometimes harrowing testimony Wednesday, three victims who were raped while they were enlisted said the system is broken and that victims are discouraged from reporting a crime or ostracized if they do so. It was the first Senate hearing on the topic in nearly a decade.

For a novel that delves into sexual assault in the military, try Sand Queen by Helen Benedict:

Nineteen-year-old Kate Brady joined the army to bring honor to her family and democracy to the Middle East. Instead, she finds herself in a forgotten corner of the Iraq desert in 2003, guarding a makeshift American prison. There, Kate meets Naema Jassim, an Iraqi medical student whose father and little brother have been detained in the camp. Kate and Naema promise to help each other, but the war soon strains their intentions. Like any soldier, Kate must face the daily threats of combat duty, but as a woman, she is in equal danger from the predatory men in her unit.

UPDATE:  you can find a longer review of Benedict's book over at the Literary Treats blog.

Steubenville Rape Trial & Anderson's Speak

From today's NPR article "Steubenville Rape Trial Begins:"

The case has already been "tried" in the social media, as The New York Times writes. But Wednesday in Steubenville, Ohio, a real court will be the setting as two high school football players in a town that's obsessed with high school football go on trial for the alleged rape of a 16-year-old girl last summer. It's a case...that has caused turmoil in Steubenville — where "accusations, recriminations and threats" have been flying in recent months as critics of the town's football culture charged that players have been allowed to get out of control and supporters of the team have tried to blame the accuser.

Whether or not the accused are guilty, I think it's important to consider what a rape survivor goes through. To get one take, try Laurie Halse Anderson's young adult novel Speak:

Melinda Sordino busted an end-of-summer party by calling the cops. Now her old friends won't talk to her, and people she doesn't even know hate her from a distance. The safest place to be is alone, inside her own head. But even that's not safe. Because there's something she's trying not to think about, something about the night of the party that, if she let it in, would blow her carefully constructed disguise to smithereens. And then she would have to speak the truth. 

UPDATE:  there's a good review of Speak over at Katie's Book Blog.

Sex Trafficking & Addison's A Walk Across the Sun

From yesterday's New York Times article "Global Slavery, by the Numbers:"

Here are some chilling statistics: The lifetime profit on a brickmaking slave in Brazil is $8,700, and $2,000 in India. Sexual slavery brings the slave’s owner $18,000 over the slave’s working life in Thailand, and $49,000 in Los Angeles. These are some of the numbers recently published by a foundation financed by a New York company that analyzes data for business intelligence, which deployed the same techniques to look at the worldwide trade in human trafficking. While slavery is illegal across the globe, the SumAll Foundation noted, there are 27 million slaves worldwide, more than in 1860, when there were 25 million. Most are held in bonded servitude, particularly after taking loans they could not repay. Slaves cost slightly more now, with a median price of $140, compared with $134 per human then. Debt slaves cost on average $60; trafficked sex slaves cost $1,910...

For a novel on sex trafficking, try Corban Addison's A Walk Across the Sun:

When a tsunami rages through their coastal town in India, 17-year-old Ahalya Ghai and her 15-year-old sister Sita are left orphaned and homeless. With almost everyone they know suddenly erased from the face of the earth, the girls set out for the convent where they attend school. They are abducted almost immediately and sold to a Mumbai brothel owner, beginning a hellish descent into the bowels of the sex trade. Halfway across the world, Washington, D.C., attorney Thomas Clarke faces his own personal and professional crisis-and makes the fateful decision to pursue a pro bono sabbatical working in India for an NGO that prosecutes the subcontinent's human traffickers. There, his conscience awakens as he sees firsthand the horrors of the trade in human flesh, and the corrupt judicial system that fosters it. Learning of the fate of Ahalya and Sita, Clarke makes it his personal mission to rescue them, setting the stage for a riveting showdown with an international network of ruthless criminals.

UPDATE:  a well-written review of  Addison's novel is available at The Year in Books.