Janet Napolitano is Arizona's governor.

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Napolitano wants investigation of military sex abuse

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There is a distinctly troubling issue that faces the more than 160,000 female soldiers who have deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002. It has been called the "double whammy": sexual abuse and trauma, combined with exposure to combat. Its effects are devastating.

As governors, my colleague Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas and I are also commanders in chief of our respective National Guards. We have a vested interest in the welfare of all our men and women in uniform. The information about sexual attacks on military women is so disturbing, and the need for action so acute, that last week Gov. Sebelius and I requested that Defense Secretary Robert Gates launch an immediate and comprehensive investigation into the treatment of our women in combat.

Further, we have called on Congress to provide its oversight of the process.

The information first came to light in an article that appeared in The New York Times Magazine on March 18 titled "The Women's War." In it, author Sara Corbett detailed her exhaustive work documenting the nightmarish effect of combat duty compounded by sexual assault.

Tragically, it is not a rare combination. Equally tragically, our military women receive this treatment not from our enemies; instead, it comes at the hands of some male officers and enlisted men of the very United States military in which these women bravely serve and fight.

A 2003 report, financed by the Department of Defense and cited in the article, found that nearly one-third of a nationwide sample of female veterans seeking Veterans Administration health care "said they experienced rape or attempted rape during their service." Of this sampling of female military veterans, "37 percent said they were raped multiple times, and 14 percent reported they were gang-raped."

Another study, quoted in the same article, suggests that rates of both sexual harassment and assault rise during wartime.

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a known aftereffect of combat and of rape. Women who have endured both suffer the full spectrum of consequences: flashbacks, emotional numbness, round-the-clock anxiety and an extraordinary experience of aloneness. Yet, even with this knowledge, the military has provided few resources for women who return from a tour of duty broken and desperate for help.

Anticipated further cuts in dollars for veterans' services can only make the situation worse. As the Times writer put it, ". . . it's conceivable that this war may well generate an unfortunate new group to study — women who have experienced sexual assault and combat, many of them before they turn 25."

These women have sacrificed greatly in defense of our country. Gov. Sebelius and I believe this matter deserves immediate attention, and we have ordered each of our state's adjutants general to conduct an investigation into the treatment and condition of those military women deployed from our respective states.

We will bring the findings of those investigations to the Guard leadership and work to deliver those findings to the appropriate officials at the Department of Defense. It is our fervent hope that Secretary Gates will quickly acknowledge our request for a full investigation that encompasses all branches of the military, that he will order proactive and overt steps to ferret out and end sexual abuse within our armed forces, and address the mental and rehabilitative health needs of our female veterans.