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Helen Benedict: Sexual Assault in The Military and Rape on College Campuses

Helen Benedict
Allan Wolper for WBGO

Helen Benedict is a professor in The Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, a writer, and a journalist, whose work has won the attention and admiration of both the Pentagon and the White House.

Her latest novel Wolf Season, the second book of her trilogy about the Iraq War, will be released next month.  The book is a sequel to Sand Queen.  It is being published by Bellevue Press.

Professor Benedict’s book, The Lonely Soldier: The Private Life of Women in the Military, paints a vivid, startling, picture of cover-ups and conflicts by military officers trying to bury or ignore serious sexual attacks of female officers.

In her November 14, 2014 interview on Conversations with Allan Wolper, she acknowledged some reforms were made. For example, victims no longer have to report assaults to their immediate officers, some of whom were the actual rapists themselves. The victims can now file their charges through senior officers.

But the only way to for victims to receive justice, according to Professor Benedict, is to transfer the assault cases to non-military tribunals. “Otherwise the idea of military justice would just be an oxymoron,” she said.

Click above to hear the entire interview Professor Benedict originally broadcast in November 2014.