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Politics : Canadian Political Free-for-All -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Greg or e who wrote (14209)	8/30/2010 2:58:55 AM
From: average joe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 37210

No dummmy - our brave soldiers are laying down their lives on a daily basis so the pedophiles of Afghanistan can continue molesting young boys. You're sooooo stupid. Former Canadian soldier speaks out against 'disgusting' child rape in Afghanistan Former Cpl. Travis Schouten claims he witnessed an Afghan boy being sexually assualted by Afghan security personnel at Canada's Forward Operating Base Wilson in Afghanistan in 2006. Witnessing two men, one armed with a knife, sodomize the child during an incident in late 2006 helped drive the 26-year-old to the brink of mental collapse. But the former corporal said the assault is just the tip of an iceberg and underneath lies the systemic sexual abuse of boys at the hands of Afghanistan’s police and army. It’s something he said the Canadian Forces has turned a blind eye to. “It’s disgusting,” said Schouten, now retired after eight years in the military. “We’re telling people that we’re trying to build a nation there and we let this happen?” “We allow rampant abuse of young boys at the hands of what is supposed to be their finest police officers and army officers, then what does that say?” Schouten’s allegations that Afghans were sexually abusing children at a Canadian base near Kandahar made headlines in 2008 but earlier this year, military investigators dismissed the claims as unfounded. He is, however, not alone in voicing his concerns. Defence Department records show military police were upset about such incidents but were told not to interfere. Army officers also met in 2007 to discuss the issue of Afghan security personnel “having anal sex with young boys” but their main concern was the media would somehow find out. Others in the military note they were told such practices were an age-old part of Afghan culture. One soldier who e-mailed Canwest News Service stated he served at the same base at another time and troops had orders to stop any rapes. But he also noted they were told the practise of “Man Love Thursdays,” as it was called, involved consenting Afghans and no one was raped by older men. The children involved were given small gifts or money in return for sex, soldiers said. Schouten, however, questions whether a five- or six-year old child, or even an 11-year-old, can consent. “The Canadian Forces wants people to think it’s a cultural thing, that everyone is doing it, because it takes the onus of responsibility off them to stop it,” he said. The United Nations has also questioned arguments that sex with children is a cultural issue. In July 2008, a UN special representative spoke out against the Afghan practise. “What I found was nobody talks about it; everyone says, ‘Well, you know, it’s been there for 1,000 years, so why do we want to raise this now?’ ” said Radhika Coomaraswamy. “But somebody has to raise it and it has to be dealt with.” And not all Afghans are so accepting of what some claim is tradition. Afghan villagers this summer complained to British troops in Helmand province that Afghan police were abducting children to be used for sex. Last year also saw an extremely rare event; three Afghan police officers who gang-raped a 12-year-old boy and his father were sent to prison. Although reports in a Toronto newspaper noted that Schouten saw the aftermath of the attack on a young boy, he said that is not accurate. He actually entered the headquarters and witnessed two Afghan security personnel sodomizing the child. “I walked in and they were raping a kid,” he recalled. “The kid was bleeding. They guy with the camo fatigues had a knife in his hand.” He left the headquarters shaken. The Canadian unit already had been dealing with other problems with the Afghans and his immediate options were limited. “I wasn’t going to start doing something at the scene,” he said. “I’m in the middle of the ANP headquarters. What do I do? Start shooting Afghan police? I’d get myself shot.” Afterward, he was approached by an Afghan interpreter who worked with troops. The man had with him a couple of five-year-old boys who had also been allowed on the Canadian base. “He brought up the fact he likes to rape little boys,” Schouten said. “He’s telling me how he likes to use a knife on them.” Schouten said after the incident, his life fell apart. He began drinking heavily. After returning from Afghanistan, he was involved in a car accident which injured one of his passengers. He went absent without leave when he was supposed to be at a psychiatrist’s appointment. The army’s reaction was to try to dishonourably discharge him but Schouten successfully fought that. In August, he was honourably discharged on medical grounds. Schouten wasn’t surprised the military investigation concluded his allegations were unfounded and his chain of command had not been informed of any such incidents. Back in Canada, he told a lieutenant colonel and Defence Department officials of the incident, who in turn, informed others in the army’s leadership. However, since none of those people was in Schouten’s direct chain of command, the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service could conclude nothing was reported, he explained. Other soldiers also were reluctant to come forward. “Guys have mortgages, they have kids," said Schouten. “If they go and get involved in this their careers will be stopped. Look what the army did to me.” Schouten isn’t expecting anything different from an army board of inquiry launched last year. Although soldiers know Afghan security forces are having sex with kids, the issue is too explosive to deal with, he added. Schouten said the rape and its aftermath shook his faith in the military. “In my mind, when I signed up, it was a brotherhood to me,” he explained. “I thought I was there for an established set of values and I loved that. I was wrong.” Schouten is now rebuilding his life and is going to university. “I’m putting myself back together,” he said. “But at the same time, I do feel people should be held accountable and people should know this is what is going on over there.” canada.com

To: Greg or e who wrote (14209)	8/30/2010 3:00:47 AM
From: average joe	Respond to of 37210

Rape Cases Shake Up The Army In Canada By ANTHONY DePALMA TORONTO, July 12— When Judith M. Taylor of Toronto marched into a recruiting station last month to enlist in the Canadian Army, she simply ignored a flurry of recent news reports that women in the army had been sexually harassed and even raped by fellow soldiers. ''I'm strong minded,'' Ms. Taylor, 22, said, ''and things like that don't bother me.'' But the reports about sexual assaults at gunpoint and a widespread acceptance of crude behavior toward women in the military have upset many Canadians, including the country's top soldier. ''I have been deeply embarrassed and disappointed by these cases,'' the armed forces Chief of Staff, Gen. Maurice Baril, wrote in an open letter to military officers. ''Canadians demand a higher standard of behavior from members in uniform, and so do I.'' The reports are just the latest of a number of scandals, including the death of a Somali teen-ager in 1994 at the hands of Canadian peacekeepers in Somalia, that have shaken the morale of the 60,000-member military and increased concerns about the cost of maintaining a peacetime force. The first reports of sexual assaults were in May in a national news magazine, Maclean's . The articles encouraged other women, including Ann Margaret Dickey, 25, of Gagetown, New Brunswick, to come forward with their accounts. Ms. Dickey said she was raped at gunpoint in 1996 by two officers in her first week of basic training. But Ms. Dickey, who served 18 months in the Army Reserve before enlisting in the regular force and entering basic training, said her superiors had confined her to barracks and ordered her not to report the attack to the military police, whose office is in another section of the base. Now that she has gone public with the accusations, she said, the army is trying to undermine her credibility. ''They're out to prove that I'm lying,'' Ms. Dickey said in a telephone interview from her home. ''The military has lost its honor. I'm embarrassed to say I was a member of the Canadian armed forces.'' Ms. Dickey said that after she talked to reporters last month in Ottawa about her assault, the army released her medical files, which she said included false information about her mental state. She is asking the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to investigate her case. A spokesman for the army, Capt. Alain Bissonnette, refused to comment on Ms. Dickey's statements, except to say the military was investigating them. Although many soldiers have called the articles about rape in the military unfair and inaccurate, other soldiers have said they were not surprised that such abuses occurred because of officers' pervasive indifference to such concerns. In his letter to the staff, General Baril recognized the existence of such attitudes and lashed out at those who see such harassment as an inevitable consequence of having women in the armed forces. ''I will not allow the Canadian Forces to become a refuge or a training ground for thugs and brutes,'' General Baril said. But the general himself now appears to have been caught up in the accusations. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has reported that the military police are looking into assertions that General Baril was told in 1996 about the sexual harassment of a woman at a military base in Kingston, Ontario, but did nothing about it. General Baril has refused to comment because the incident is being investigated. Investigators from the military police are pursuing 80 sexual assault complaints, Captain Bissonnette said. The head of the military police, Col. Patricia Samson, has said the articles about rapes in the military could lead to many more incidents' being reported. In May, Maclean's published several articles that vividly described how women had been raped while serving in the military. A retired air force major, Dee Brasseur, one of the first Canadian women to become a fighter pilot, told the magazine that she had been raped and coerced into having sex with an instructor to advance her career. For Major Brasseur, who retired in 1994 after 21 years in the service, the worst aspect of the harassment was the disillusionment that it caused. ''When something you love betrays you in that fashion,'' she told the magazine, ''it is the deepest psychological wounding you can have.'' The military police have reviewed the 26 episodes reported in Maclean's and have decided to investigate or reopen all but three. A recent poll suggests that most Canadians do not trust the military to pursue the allegations fully. Only 27 percent of those polled by The Globe and Mail and CTV television said the armed forces could adequately investigate themselves. nytimes.com