rape | PROBABLE CAUSE

In 2011, the Pentagon’s Military Leadership Diversity Commission recommended eliminating combat exclusion policies for women.

At his confirmation hearing, Chuck Hagel, President Obama’s nominee for defense secretary, stated that he would work with the service chiefs to open combat positions to women, even though women are already fighting and dying in combat. But before the ban is officially lifted in 2016, the military has a far more important task, as illustrated by Director Kirby Dick in his horrific documentary on rape in the military entitled “The Invisible War.”

According to the Department of Defense, a female soldier is more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire. In 2010 there were an estimated 19,000 violent sex crimes in the military and only 244 of those resulted in convictions. Since 2006, the government estimates there have been 100,000 rapes. Of all active-duty female soldiers, 20 percent are sexually assaulted, with women between the ages of 18 and 21 making up more than half the victims. Twenty thousand men were also victims of sexual assault in 2009.

It is estimated that 80 percent of victims do not report the crimes against them, not surprising since fewer than 10 percent of assault cases are prosecuted. Even more telling is the fact that 25 percent of women in the military don’t report rape because the person to notify in their chain of command is the rapist.

In the film, six women describe their rapes and the gross indifference and victim blaming displayed by their superiors after they reported the crimes.

So what needs to be done? Director Kirby Dick believes that over 250,000 men and women have seen the film. That helps spread the word.

After watching it, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta directed commanders to hand over all sexual assault investigations to a higher-ranked colonel. Panetta also announced the establishment of a Special Victims Unit for all military branches. That’s a start, though there is a long way to go. Investigations and prosecutions should always take place outside the chain of command using independent prosecutors.

This film is a savage indictment of a broken military system. Instead of worrying so much about women in combat, the military needs to deal with a sick culture of “leadership” that blames the victims while covering up the crimes. Until that change occurs, women face far more dangers from their own comrades and superiors than from an enemy in combat.

The 1974 movie, Chinatown, is a classic noir film and, by most accounts, one of the best crime movies ever filmed. Written by Robert Towne and directed by Roman Polanski, the movie starred Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway and John Huston as a man who raped his daughter, played by Dunaway. In one of the film’s most memorable lines, Huston says, “Most people never have to face the fact that, at the right time and the right place, they’re capable of anything”.

Three years later in 1977, in an unconscionable act of life imitating art, 44 year-old Roman Polanski pled guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl. According to the charges, Polanski gave the girl champagne and a hypnotic-sedative tablet and then raped her. He was indicted on six felony charges that included rape, sodomy and providing a controlled substance to his victim. Polanski struck a deal, pleading guilty to one count of having sex with a minor in return for 42 days under psychiatric evaluation. But the judge rejected the plea deal at the last minute and Polanski fled to France, fearing that he would spend years in prison.

After his arrest last Saturday in Switzerland while attending the Zurich Film Festival, Polanski is fighting extradition to the U.S. where he still faces charges.

Supporters of Polanski argue that it’s been 32 years since the crime occurred and he is now 76 years old; his mother was killed in a Nazi concentration camp; his pregnant actress wife Sharon Tate was killed by followers of mass murderer Charles Manson in 1969, and the victim has forgiven him and wants the charges dropped. And the judge, they argue, reneged on the plea deal agreed to by the prosecution and defense.

Opponents argue that the statutory rape of a 13 year-old girl is a crime that should not go unpunished. If Polanski were not a celebrity, he would have been behind bars long ago. Besides, they say, he owes his debt to society and to the state of California, not strictly to the victim of the crime. Having a difficult childhood and having your wife brutally murdered would traumatize anyone. But they do not excuse the crime nor do they lead someone to commit statutory rape.

Polanski had opportunities to return to the U.S. and work out another plea deal with prosecutors long before his arrest last weekend in Switzerland, but he chose to remain in France.

In the movie, Chinatown, Noah Cross, played by Huston, never is charged or punished for the rape he committed. But it is time for Roman Polanski to pay for his crime and to face the fact that he, like Noah Cross, was “capable of anything.”