"It's like people who deal with incest," one audience member analogized sexual assault's damage to the Brotherhood (and, more recently, Sisterhood) of Arms in the American military at a panel hosted by the United States Navy Memorial this past July 31, 2013.The panel's generals and admirals from all five American services echoed the audience member's sentiments, with Major General Thomas Seamands from the United States Army using another familial analogy, "fratricide," to describe sexual assault. Left unaddressed by the panel, though, was whether recent policy changes on admitting homosexuals into the military and women into combat positions would only exacerbate the American military's sexual assault problem. The panel comes in the wake of the Pentagon's recently released report on sexual assault in the military for Fiscal Year (FY) 2012. The report estimated that 26,000 service members suffered some form of Unwanted Sexual Contact (USC) during this period. Men were 13,900 or 53% of...(Read Full Post)