“ You can recover from [military sexual trauma]. It’s work, and it’s difficult, but there are people out there who will help you .” —Michael Stern, Navy veteran Island, a dock landing ship, Stern found gay pornography placed in his rack as a joke by other sailors. He sank even deeper into depression and anxiety, which wreaked havoc on his conduct. Over the course of the next few months, he had fought a noncommissioned officer and was reassigned to another department. But the final blow to his military career was an arrest for driving under the influence. In 2009, after four years of service, including deployments to the Middle East and the Horn of Africa, the Navy separated Stern—officially—for failing alcohol rehabilitation. Stern suspects, however, it was also retaliation for reporting his assault. Such retribution is not uncommon, according to retired Col. Don Christensen, former chief prosecutor in the Air Force’s Judge Advocate General’s Corps and current president of Protect Our Defenders, a nonprofit working to eradicate sexual assault in the military. “There’s a culture of disbelief and culture of shaming in the military surrounding sexual assault,” said Christensen. “And they’re just not changing it.” Christensen, who has experience prosecuting dozens of sexual assault cases in the Air Force, points to the Pentagon’s track record of providing justice. Despite a more than 20% increase in sexual assault reports since 2015, convictions have taken an almost 60% nosedive. According to the Defense Department’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office, between 2016 and 2019, 64% of women survivors reported some retaliation after reporting an assault. When retribution was reported, two-thirds of alleged retaliators were in the affected service members’ chain of command. Survivors of MST also tend to skew young. They are often lower in rank and feel powerless to battle against their chain of command, which is sacrosanct in the military. This leaves the most vulnerable exposed to some of the most significant flaws in the entire military justice system, according to some advocates. The Department of Veterans Affairs, on the other hand, gets a passing grade from Christensen in its ability to provide resources for survivors. “The services VA provides [for MST survivors] are getting better, but we definitely see, with male survivors especially, there’s a long way to go,” he added. There are signs that the VA is improving. The grant rate for men claiming post-traumatic stress disorder from MST was just 27% in 2011, advocates told lawmakers earlier this year. The figure has risen 16 DAV MAGAZINE | JULY/AUGUST 2020