Rape in the Ranks: The Enemy Within (2009)

• 80%
• 2009
• Documentary
• Pascale Bourgaux

This hard-hitting film is the first to cover the shocking story of sexual harassment and rape of American women soldiers. The Pentagon has acknowledged receiving 3,000 reports of sexual mistreatment in one year alone. These female soldiers were not attacked by the Afghan or Iraqi "enemy," but by colleagues in their own platoons and sometimes by their own superior officers. Each year the number of reported sexual assaults has skyrocketed but not the number of convictions: only 2% of accused rapists are ever court-martialed. The double traumas of sexual persecution and combat may be why a 2008 RAND study found that female veterans are suffering twice as much depression and post-traumatic stress disorder as their male counterparts.Very few women have been willing to speak out, but four women, all in their twenties, and their families decided to talk openly about their ordeals.