Military Sexual Trauma

Welcome back to The Veteran Coach, I’m Laura Page and I’m going to be talking a little bit about a difficult topic today. I’m going to be talking about Military Sexual Trauma, and because of the recent events with Vanessa Guillen, it's been heavy on my heart to say something and talk about it.  It's not an easy topic but it hits close to home for me as a female veteran, or a veteran in general, we've all seen it or been a victim of it or heard about it especially now.  It's becoming front-page news, so the time is now to address the epidemic that is that culture in the military and it's across all branches and it needs to be addressed, it needs to be talked about.  So we're going to dive into that a little bit today.  

They say one in five women in the military will be a victim of sexual assault.

One in five.

That's not okay, and it's happening to men and women alike and a lot of people are afraid to talk about it.  They don't want to be victim-blamed--they don't want to have a stigma or be seen as somebody who who's going to throw somebody under the bus.  

But it's not okay.  

A 2013 pentagon study showed that over 26,000 assaults happened in the military just in that one year and only 3,300 of those were reported.  So tell me how they got that 26,000 number...  It's probably exponentially worse than that because a lot of people don't say anything so how would they ever know?

Cases are being brushed under the rug and it's being minimized into something much smaller than what it is.

There is actually VA disability compensation specifically for this kind of case.  It's called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) related to Military Sexual Trauma (MST).  Assaults, rapes, or harassment all falls into that same category.  Check out my video above as we take a deep dive into MST.