In Photos: The Epidemic of Military Sexual Assault

Photojournalist Mary Calvert has documented gender-based violence and under-covered women's issues across the globe, from sex selection in India to rape in eastern Congo to obstetric fistulas in Ethiopia to female opium addicts in Afghanistan. She sometimes calls herself a "triage journalist," asking, "What's not getting covered?" and then diving into it. After a career of photographing some of the most vulnerable women on the planet, Calvert was surprised to find herself drawn to an issue in her own Washington, D.C., backyard: sexual assault in the U.S. military.

"There were an estimated 26,000 sexual assaults in the U.S. military in the past year," Calvert said. "I never dreamed that such a widespread problem was going on right under our nose. I had done stories on women in in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan and several places in Africa, and the project opened my eyes to the far reach of the problem of sexual assault. It's going on on our college campuses, it's going on in our military, it's going on in the Catholic Church and in football culture, with the Jerry Sandusky scandal. It begs a lot of questions for me; mostly: Why is this happening?"

To answer that question, Calvert met with survivors and went to congressional hearings on military sexual assault. The women she met connected her with more women, and she photographed them in their homes and communities. Through her work, she learned that just 1 in 7 victims of sexual assault in the military reported the attack; of those assaults that were reported, just 1 in 10 ever saw a trial.

The women's stories stick with her: the Air Force fighter jet mechanic from a military family who was so proud to serve, raped before a planned deployment to Afghanistan and blamed for her own assault, and eventually pushed out of the force; the woman who, months later, looked at the photos Calvert took of her and said she felt proud and strong of how far she had come in her healing process. Calvert, too, says the project changed her.

"These women who have suffered this terrible trauma actually welcomed me into their homes and shared their stories with me," she said. "They expect me to tell the world what is going on. I am so profoundly honored to be someone that they would open up to. And it makes me realize what an important job I have to tell this story and so the survivors have their dignity intact and I'm not exploiting them. With some of these survivors in the U.S., I'll photograph them looking so vulnerable, and when those photos are published, thousands of people see them. I worry about them feeling vulnerable in such a public way. But I know, and they know, that I cannot tell the story unless I show the hard stuff. That makes me respect them even more, and it makes me look back on the other people I've photographed and for the first time have a full realization of what that is like for one of my subjects."

It's also shifted the direction of her work. For now, Calvert, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for her stories on rape in the Congo and fistulas in Ethiopia, is staying in the U.S. and tackling an under-covered aspect of military sexual assault.

"I want to start researching and documenting the disproportionate numbers of rape survivors who are released from the military due to a personality disorder," Calvert said. "Personality disorder is a psychological condition that exists for years. When people enter the military, they're screened, and the military says you are fit for service, psychologically and physically. Yet when some women are raped and they report it and they go through the retaliation and the harassment and the intense investigations, sometimes the military's response is, 'You have a personality disorder and we're releasing you.' The survivors lose a lot of benefits, including GI bill benefits — can't go to college, can't get a lot of services from the VA administration. It's the most severe form of retaliation."

Calvert says she will also look into Military Sexual Trauma (MST) and how the armed forces treat a claim of MST differently from a claim for PTSD.

"When someone makes a claim for PTSD, all they have to do is outline their service — I was in for this many years in this job; in Afghanistan, there was an IED [improvised explosive device]," she said. "But with MST, they have to have all this proof that the assault actually happened. A lot of times, it just comes down to whether the person was believed."

Calvert is increasingly convinced that we should be focusing on getting men to stop assaulting, rather than telling women to protect themselves. And that, she says, requires big shifts in our culture and even in how we talk about issues of gender-based and sexual violence.

"I used to say I cover women's issues," she said. "Now I'm starting to see that maybe that in itself isolates the issue to just women, when maybe sexual assault should be called a men's issue. I photographed a woman in California whose son was 14 years old. She had been raped in the Air Force. Her son told me that when he was a little younger and he was on a track team, there was a common vernacular where, if you ran a race really well, the kids would say, 'You really raped that guy.' He said he never understood what that meant until he discovered that his mother had been raped. Now he finds that kind of comment very inflammatory, and he'll call people on it. Maybe that's where it starts — with 14-year-old boys looking at each other and saying, 'That's wrong.'"

Jan. 23, 2013 - Washington, D.C. - Sgt. Jennifer Norris was drugged and raped by her recruiter after joining the U.S. Air Force when she was 21 years old. Nancy Parrish, president of Protect Our Defenders, comforts her as she breaks down after testifying before the sparsely attended House Armed Services Committee hearing on Capitol Hill to discuss sexual misconduct by basic training instructors at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio.

Mary Calvert/ZUMAPress.com

May 29, 2013 - Marysville, Calif. - Virginia Messick was raped by her drill sergeant at Lackland Air Force Base during basic training. Her rapist was convicted of raping 10 women under his command and is serving a 20-year prison sentence. Messick and her husband watch a screening of The Invisible War at a theater in Marysville.

Mary Calvert/ZUMAPress.com

Jan. 3, 2014 - Spring Hill, Fla. - Connie Sue Foss was raped while in the U.S. Army. She hasn't been able to hold down a job to care for herself and her daughter.

Mary Calvert/ZUMAPress.com

Jan. 4, 2014 - Spring Hill, Fla. - Connie Sue Foss bears scars from punching a window during a PTSD episode and holds a molar she lost from grinding her teeth at night.

Mary Calvert/ZUMAPress.com

Jan. 6, 2014 - Clermont, Fla. - Suzie Champoux mourns the death of her daughter, Army Sgt. Sophie Champoux, who committed suicide under suspicious circumstances after being repeatedly raped while in the U.S. Army. She visits her daughter's grave.

Mary Calvert/ZUMAPress.com

March 21, 2014 - Fayetteville, N.C. - U.S. Army Pfc. (Private First Class) Natasha Schuette, 21, was sexually assaulted by her drill sergeant during basic training and subsequently suffered harassment by other drill sergeants after reporting the assault at Fort Jackson, S.C. While Staff Sgt. Louis Corral is serving just four years in prison for assaulting her and four other female trainees, Natasha suffers daily from PTSD because of the attack. She is now stationed at Fort Bragg, N.C.

Mary Calvert/ZUMAPress.com

March 20, 2014 - Fayetteville, N.C. - A loner since her assault, US Army Pfc. Natasha Schuette sets up a survival greenhouse in her backyard.

Mary Calvert/ZUMAPress.com

May 19, 2014 - Fayetteville, N.C. - U.S. Army Pfc. Natasha Schuette attends a civilian counseling session because it is too difficult to get regular counseling appointments in the U.S. Army.

Mary Calvert/ZUMAPress.com

Feb. 28, 2014 - Alliance, Ohio - Gary Noling stands in his daughter Carrie's bedroom on the anniversary of her suicide in Alliance, Ohio. Carrie Goodwin suffered severe retaliation after reporting her rape to her U.S. Marine commanders. Five days after she was sent home with a bad conduct discharge, she drank herself to death. "It destroyed my family. When Carrie died, I lost all three of my kids and my grandkids. I lost two-thirds of me. Two-thirds of me is in that box of ashes."

Mary Calvert/ZUMAPress.com

April 21, 2014 - San Diego, Calif. - Melissa Bania holds her banner before hanging it on the footbridge across from the entrance to Naval Station San Diego. U.S. Navy Military Sexual Trauma survivors got together at Brittany Fintel's San Diego home to make banners inscribed with their sexual assault experiences in the U.S. Navy. That evening, under the cover of darkness, they hung them on a footbridge in front of the entrance to Naval Station San Diego.

Mary Calvert/ZUMAPress.com

Photos by Mary Calvert / ZUMAPress.com

Originally published by .

Jill Filipovic

senior political writer

Jill Filipovic is a contributing writer for cosmopolitan.com. She is the author of OK Boomer, Let's Talk: How My Generation Got Left Behind and The H-Spot: The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness. A weekly CNN columnist and a contributing writer for the New York Times, she is also a lawyer.