Last week, a group of women and men sued Defense Secretary Robert Gates and his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld, for creating a culture that enabled and protected their rapists. The words in this video are taken directly from their complaint.
The full legal complaint is searing — and depressingly repetitive. This video seeks to distill their accounts of a culture that, these women and men say, not only allowed their assaults but bullied them when they tried to report and, in many cases, left their assailants free and even thriving. As demoralizing as it can be to contemplate such concentrated violence and misogyny, we’re hearing these stories because these survivors refused to go away quietly, and are bravely fighting back.
Video by Matt Toder, Jessica Coen, and Irin Carmon. Song: “O Mary Don’t You Weep, by Paul Reece.