{"id":276,"date":"2013-05-13T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-05-13T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/independentlens\/invisible-war\/"},"modified":"2026-07-07T10:36:46","modified_gmt":"2026-07-07T17:36:46","slug":"invisible-war","status":"publish","type":"films","link":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/independentlens\/documentaries\/invisible-war\/","title":{"rendered":"The Invisible War"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: 2rem;\">The Department of Defense estimates there were a staggering 22,800 violent sex crimes in the military in 2011. Among all active-duty female soldiers, 20 percent are sexually assaulted. Female soldiers age 18 to 21 accounted for more than half of the victims.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Focusing on the powerfully emotional stories of rape victims, <i>The Invisible War<\/i> exposes the systemic cover-up of military sex crimes, chronicling the women\u2019s struggles to rebuild their lives and fight for justice. It also features hard-hitting interviews with high-ranking military officials and members of Congress that reveal the perfect storm of conditions that exist for rape in the military, its long-hidden history, and what can be done to bring about much-needed change.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>At the core of the film are interviews with the rape survivors themselves \u2014 people like Kori Cioca, who was beaten and raped by her supervisor in the U.S. Coast Guard; Ariana Klay, a Marine who served in Iraq before being raped by a senior officer and his friend, then threatened with death; and Trina McDonald who was drugged and raped repeatedly by military policemen on her remote Naval station in Adak, Alaska. And it isn\u2019t just women; according to one study&#8217;s estimate, one percent of men in the military \u2014 nearly 20,000 \u2014 were sexually assaulted in 2009.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And while rape victims in the civilian world can turn to a police force and judicial system for help and justice, rape victims in the military must turn to their commanders \u2014 a move that is all too often met with foot-dragging at best, and reprisals at worst. To make matters worse, 33 percent of rape victims didn\u2019t report the assault because the person they\u2019d have to report it to was a friend of the rapist. And 25 percent didn\u2019t report it because the person they\u2019d have to report the rape to was the rapist himself.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Many rape victims find themselves forced to choose between speaking up and keeping their careers. Little wonder that only 8 percent of military sexual assault cases are prosecuted.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Is there hope that this broken system can be fixed? Many think so, and credit <i>The Invisible War<\/i> with inspiring some much-needed recent action. \u201cThis film has been instrumental in bringing the issue to light, and providing the impetus for positive change,\u201d says Lois Vossen, <i>Independent Lens<\/i> senior series producer.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Since <i>The Invisible War<\/i> premiered at Sundance, the film has been circulating through the highest levels of the Pentagon and the Obama administration. Two day after Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta watched <i>The Invisible War<\/i>, he directed military commanders to hand over all sexual assault investigations to a higher-ranking colonel. At the same time, Panetta announced that each branch of the armed forces would establish a Special Victims Unit. A congressional panel is set to hold hearings on sexual abuse in the military in early 2013.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The most shameful and best-kept secret in the U.S. Military? The epidemic of rape and sexual assault within the ranks. An American female soldier in a combat zone is more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":9894,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"season":[],"topic":[1225,1226,1227],"class_list":["post-276","films","type-films","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","topic-politics-and-government","topic-social-justice","topic-women-and-girls"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Invisible War | Rape and Sexual Assault in the Military | PBS<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Invisible War investigates the most shameful and best-kept secret in the U.S. Military: the epidemic of rape and sexual assault within the ranks.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, 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