Though we can now debate what the penalty for waterboarding should
be, America as a nation, maintaining an odd silence, still cannot seem
to discuss the sex crimes involved.
Why? It's not as if the sex crimes that US leaders either authorized
or tolerated are not staring Americans in the face: the images of male
prisoners with their heads hooded with women's underwear; the
documented reports of female US soldiers deployed to smear menstrual
blood on the faces of male prisoners, and of military interrogators or
contractors forcing prisoners to simulate sex with each other, to
penetrate themselves with objects, or to submit to being penetrated by
objects. Indeed, the Military Commissions Act of 2006 was written
deliberately with loopholes that gave immunity to perpetrators of many
kinds of sexual humiliation and abuse.
There is also the testimony by female soldiers such as Lynndie
England about compelling male prisoners to masturbate, as well as an
FBI memo objecting to a policy of "highly aggressive interrogation
techniques." The memo cites a female interrogator rubbing lotion on a
shackled detainee and whispering in his ear -- during Ramadan when
sexual contact with a strange woman would be most offensive -- then
suddenly bending back his thumbs until he grimaced in pain, and
violently grabbing his genitals. Sexual abuse in US-operated prisons
got worse and worse over time, ultimately including, according to
doctors who examined detainees, anal sodomy.
All this may sound bizarre if you are a normal person, but it is
standard operating procedure for sex offenders. Those who work in the
field know that once sex abusers control a powerless victim, they will
invariably push the boundaries with ever more extreme behavior. Abusers
start by undressing their victims, but once that line has been
breached, you are likely to hear from the victim about oral and anal
penetration, greater and greater pain and fear being inflicted, and
more and more carelessness about exposing the crimes as the
perpetrator's inhibitions fall away.
The perpetrator is also likely to engage in ever-escalating
rationalizations, often arguing that the offenses serve a greater good.
Finally, the victim is blamed for the abuse: in the case of the
detainees, if they would only "behave," and confess, they wouldn't
bring all this on themselves.
Silence, and even collusion, is also typical of sex crimes within a
family. Americans are behaving like a dysfunctional family by shielding
sex criminals in their midst through silence.
Just as sex criminals -- and the leaders who directed the use of
rape and sexual abuse as a military strategy -- were tried and
sentenced after the wars in Bosnia and Sierra Leone, so Americans must
hold accountable those who committed, or authorized, sex crimes in
US-operated prisons. Throughout the world, this perverse and graphic
criminality has added fuel to anxiety about US cultural and military
power. These acts need to be called by their true names -- war crimes
and sex crimes -- and people in America need to demand justice for the
perpetrators and their victims. As in a family, only when people start
to speak out and tell the truth about rape and sexual assault can the
healing begin.