Preparation: Context on Military Sexual Assault
Hello everybody! My name is Srimayi Lakkireddy, and I am a senior here at BASIS Phoenix. I would like to introduce my senior project, currently titled “A Broader Lens on Military Sexual Assault and its Relation to Eastern and Western Culture.”
I have been interested in this topic for a long time as I have always been passionate about learning true crime cases and certain trends of them in current time, so when articles discussing cases of sexual assault within the military frequented the news, I became curious about the subject. The two cases that particularly struck me were the ones of Vanessa Guillén and Ye-ram Lee, two military sexual assault cases that both ended tragically. Continuing this process, I navigated this subject and began to realize the true severity of this problem.
Despite the issue’s increasing rates of occurrence, external mentions apart from the news were not as prominent. Sexual assault was discussed often amongst people but not in a military context, and such cases were not given as much of a voice in society and were looked over.
After observing these aspects of the situation, I developed an even stronger interest in these types of cases which led me to research more about these incidents and learn about several specific ones in detail. Eventually, I came across such cases from various parts of the world, making me realize the true magnitude of this problem. In each of these cases, either proper action was not taken to protect the victim or the victim was unable to report their assault due to public pressure and intimidation, leaving these incidents unavenged.
To raise awareness for this issue, it is crucial to examine what societal factors play a role in this problem and the differences between each country in regards to this issue since societal expectations differ from place to place. Some examples of where variations may lie are with pay, compulsory service, gender, and the number of military personnel. With these factors in place, my research questions are: How does the difference in the reports of sexual assault and trauma faced in the military and the mental health effects compare between eastern and western cultures? And, how does this portray their view on mental health?
For more information about this subject other details about my research, please follow future blog posts to see the journey of my research process.
Thank you!
-Srimayi
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