This week, the Department of Veterans Affairs took an important step in expanding its support for those who were sexually abused while serving in the military. It also is working with a Maine survivor to ensure its services and benefits meet the needs of those who have endured sexual abuse and harassment in the military.
On Monday, the VA announced that it was expanding mental health services to National Guard members and reservists who were sexually assaulted while on inactive duty. Previously, such benefits were only given to Guard members and reservists when the abuse occurred during a deployment.
This is a welcome, if long overdue, policy change. It shouldn’t matter when and where abuse or harassment took place. Of course, it would be better if this abuse never happened in the first place, an area where the military continues to have much work to do. A Defense Department report on sexual assault prevention, presented to President Barack Obama last month, reported that the prevalence rate of unwanted sexual contact among active duty women had dropped to 4.3 percent in 2014 from 6.1 percent the previous year. Most at risk were women between the ages of 17 and 24.
In Monday’s announcement, VA Secretary Robert McDonald said that the agency would continue to work with Ruth Moore, a Maine activist for fairer treatment of military sexual assault victims. This includes ensuring that military health practitioners are trained in compassionately dealing with sexual trauma and helping victims through the compensation and benefits process.
Enlisting Moore, a tireless voice for fair compensation and treatment, in this work is an important signal that the VA intends to help victims rather than the past practice of too often forcing them to cross impossible hurdles. Given Moore’s doggedness in obtaining her own benefits, she will be a crucial ally and watchdog for fellow victims of abuse.
Moore is the Milbridge woman who lent her name to the federal legislation that would make it easier for victims like her to obtain VA benefits.
The Ruth Moore Act aims to reduce the standard of proof for victims of military sexual assault so that they can more easily obtain benefits, similar to how the Veterans Administration recently relaxed the burden of proof for combat veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder.
The act, sponsored by Rep. Chellie Pingree, passed the House last year.
“Almost every day we hear from another veteran who is fighting for their benefits and has been repeatedly turned down because they are being held to an unreasonably high standard of proof,” Pingree said after the unanimous vote.
The bill is pending in the Senate, where Sen. Susan Collins is a co-sponsor of the legislation.
In late May, Moore learned she would receive more than $400,000 in back benefits from the VA — after nearly two decades of fighting for them.
“The VA admitted that they made a clear and undeniable mistake. They overlooked my treatment record and my service record back to 1993,” Moore said after hearing from the veterans department. “It was the first one that was done with military sexual trauma. This gives veterans all over the country hope that they will make it right.”
Moore, who grew up in the Washington County town of Pembroke, enlisted in the U.S. Navy when she was a high school student. She was sexually assaulted twice by her immediate supervisor while stationed at a base on the Azores. After being assaulted, Moore grew despondent and tried to kill herself, which led to Navy officials putting her in the brig — military jail — for a few days.
After that, she was sent to a psychiatric ward in Bethesda, Maryland, where she was wrongly diagnosed with borderline personality disorder — which she later learned was standard operating procedure for people who said they had been sexually assaulted while in uniform. Military higher-ups denied that the rapes had happened, and her attacker was never brought to justice, she told the BDN last year.
Moore said this week she discussed with McDonald the idea of traveling across the country, visiting different VA units to make sure all are in compliance with the sexual assault standards.
Her first-hand experience brings a needed perspective to this work and raises the VA’s commitment to correcting long-standing injustice.
