Sexual Assault Victims Discharged After Filing Complaints By Mark Thompson

In Mark Thompson’s article, “Military Sexual Assault Victims Discharged After Filing Complaints,” he makes the point that victims in the military of sexual assault are getting discharged a couple of months after they file a complaint. Thompson gives an example of this in the beginning of the article when he talks about a woman named Emily Vorland. She was discharged from the Army after being sexually harassed after filing a complaint while she was deployed in Iraq. Vorland was discharged seven months after filing the complaint and she was denied six months “of free post-military health care” (Thompson, 1). Thompson mentions that when these victims get discharged from the military after speaking up for themselves they get “no or reduced …show more content…
In a study that Thompson mentioned in his article, he explains that, “Many service members reported being singled out for discipline for minor infractions following a sexual assault report in an effort, they believe, to create a record justifying a misconduct discharge” (2). A minor infraction should be looked over but the military was looking for anything they could just so they were able to boot the serviceman or woman out of the …show more content…
He enlisted in the Navy in 1988 when he was 17 years old. He told Thompson that he was sexually assaulted more than once by other sailors on the ship. Phillips exclaimed that he was so, “messed up,” so he tried to hang himself in a storage room. Thankfully, he didn’t know how to tie a slipknot to be able to hang himself. Reading this part of the article made me super upset with humanity in general and how people can treat someone like this to where they would want to make someone try to kill himself. Phillips said that he had a choice to spend six months in confinement on the ship or he could sign, “discharge papers that would get him off the ship and out of the Navy” (Thompson, 3). He still deals with PTSD to this day and he spent a little over ten years after he got out being drunk and doing drugs. This is upsetting because how can the military sit back and not worry about all the military members that were sexually assaulted and not wonder if they are doing alright in the civilian sector trying to deal with everything they have been through in the military. Thankfully, the military is trying to correct these mistakes. They’re allowing veterans to upgrade their discharge papers within the first 15 years after being discharged from the military. Also, there are support programs they can attend to help deal with their PTSD for these