From Colombia Reports‘ post on US military abuse of children in Colombia.
An 800-page independent report commissioned by the US-friendly Colombian government and the radical left rebel group FARC found that US military soldiers and contractors had sexually abused at least 54 children in Colombia between 2003 and 2007 and, in all cases, the rapists were never punished–either in Colombia or stateside–due to American military personnel being immune from prosecution under diplomatic immunity agreements between the two countries.
The report was part of a broader historical analysis meant to establish the “causes and violence aggravators” of the 50-year-long conflict between the government and rebels that’s presently being negotiated to an end. As Colombia Reports (3/23/15) would spell out:
In his report, the historian [Renan Vega] cited one 2004 case in the central Colombian town of Melgar where 53 underage girls were sexually abused by nearby stationed military contractors “who moreover filmed [the abuse] and sold the films as pornographic material.”
According to Colombia’s leading newspaper, El Tiempo, the victims of the sexual abuse practices were forced to flee the region after their families received death threats.
RT report on accusations of child rape in Colombia by US military personnel.
Other Americans stationed at the Tolemaida Air Base allegedly committed similar crimes, but possibly also never saw a day in court due to an immunity arrangement for American soldiers and military contractors agreed by Washington and Bogota.
One case that has called most attention in Colombian media was that of a 12-year-old who in 2007 was raped by a US Army sergeant and a former US military officer who was working in Melgar as a military contractor.
Colombian prosecutors established that the girl had been drugged and subsequently raped inside the military base by US sergeant Michael J. Coen and defense contractor Cesar Ruiz.
However, prosecution officials were not allowed to arrest the suspected child rapists who were subsequently flown out of the country.
Telesur‘s coverage of the Colombian report on US military sexual abuse.
Thus far, however, these explosive claims seem to have received zero coverage in the general US press, despite having been reported on Venezuela’s Telesur (3/23/15), the British tabloid Daily Mail (3/24/15) and Russian RT (3/25/15).
But why? These aren’t fringe claims, nor can the government of American ally Colombia be dismissed as a peddler of Bolivarian propaganda. Indeed, the Miami Herald (9/3/09) documented the case of US Sgt. Michael Coen and contractor César Ruiz in 2009:
The US government has made little effort to investigate a US Army sergeant and a Mexican civil contractor implicated in Colombia in the raping of a 12-year-old girl in August 2007, according to an El Nuevo Herald investigation.
The suspects, Sgt. Michael Coen and contractor César Ruiz, were taken out of Colombia under diplomatic immunity, and do not face criminal charges in the United States in the rape in a room at Colombia’s Germán Olano Air Force Base in Melgar, 62 miles west of Bogotá.
Photo of troops accompanying Daily Mail story on Colombian abuse report.
So why no coverage? Certainly one of Washington’s stanchest Latin American allies co-authoring a blistering report about systemic US military child rape of a civilian population should be of note–if for no other reason than, as the report lays out, it undermined American military efforts to stop drug trafficking and fight leftist rebels:
However, prosecution officials were not allowed to arrest the suspected child rapists who were subsequently flown out of the country.
The case has caused major indignation among Colombians for years….
The special envoy will possibly have to deal with the role of the US military and its members in the alleged victimization of Colombians.
Yet here we are, over 72 hours since the Colombian and foreign press first reported on the allegations, and there’s a virtual media blackout in America over the case. Nothing on CNN, nothing on MSNBC, nothing in the New York Times or Miami Herald. Nothing in Huffington Post. Nothing in Fusion or Vice. Why?
As UK authorities and NATO officials stress the importance of clamping down on “false Russian” narratives in the media, perhaps our own media could stop providing a shining example as to why such anti-Western narratives are so often the only outlet for certain ugly truths.
Adam Johnson, a freelance journalist, was a founder of the hardware startup Brightbox. You can follow him on Twitter at @adamjohnsonnyc.
If it were up to me this would be in the pages of the New York Times.
(And John Bolton would be in the dock at the Hague, rather than the NYT.)
~
Perhaps a natural place to make a concerted effort for increasing attention for this report is to have an organized email/letter campaign, pressuring the Miami Herald to investigate and write about this recent report. After all, the Miami Herald wrote about Michael Coen back in September, 2009. They should use this opportunity as a follow-up, though we media activists need to pressure them to do so.
Link to contact the Miami Herald:
http://www.miamiherald.com/customer-service/contact-us/
The rape and murder of women and children seem to accompany every imperial power as it sends its forces to conquer and subdue the victim societies. France, Spain, Britain, Imperial Rome, Germany and the US, among many others in history, have done the same thing. This is typical of the “civilization” that is visited on their unenlightened victims.
We ought not to be surprised when our own “boys” do it, but if you think that many in Washington are losing sleep over it, remember that we celebrated the end of Hamid Karzai as Afghan Prime Minister because he refused to sign another Status of Forces Agreement that would have continued the practice of letting US forces commit crimes, without being answerable to the law. His successor, Ashraf Ghani, signed it, just as he was told, on the day following his ascension to power. The Obama administration got just what it wanted.
The War on Drugs is just too important to be effected by these unfortunate, but minor setbacks.
Do we really thing that Caesar didn’t include the rape and murder of innocents, when he bragged that “Veni Vidi Vici?”
Blacked out lives don’t matter
Vega did *not* cite the case (of the 53 girls), and I could not find the source in his bibliography, notes, or links. This is the most intimate experience I’ve had of media failure and apathy. The biggest losers here are the girls, who no one bothered to investigate, but used as a cog in an argument (Vega) or sensational headline (FAIR, Reuters, et al). It just goes to further discredit the story– which is important, and deserves real attention.
It is also very misleading to call the document a “report”– especially Vega’s essay, where he devotes one line (of the 800 pg document) to this allegation. There was no supporting evidence, no personal communication, nothing in the way of data (even from local informants) that could characterize this as a “report.” Bad, lazy reporting on Colombia, with tragic implications given the amount of aid going toward military support.
I am the US News Editor-at-Large for Digital Journal, which is based in Canada, so I maybe it doesn’t really count, but I reported on the Colombian report yesterday (Wednesday), as well as on my own site, Moral Low Ground. I too, was rather surprised when I woke up today and there was nothing about this horrific story anywhere in the corporate MSM. It doesn’t help that the only ones reporting this besides us are the tabloid Daily Mail and the Russian state-controlled RT. Thanks to FAIR for being the most prestigious US organization to report on this story.
My guess is these claims deserve investigation, and with the exception of Colombia Reports no Eng language press actually read the document. They just ran with the headline. The 800 page document contains one line referring to “the notorious case” of mass sexual abuse, but the writer didn’t bother to refer to data, sources, even anonymous informants. It deserves real investigation. And no, it isn’t surprising, but the girls deserve an actual investigation. The real story here is the impunity deal.
@Victoria
I’m going to try and parse you’re rather muddled comment. It’s unclear if you’re actually denying these rapes took place or not.
You say:
“Vega did *not* cite the case (of the 53 girls), and I could not find the source in his bibliography, notes, or links. This is the most intimate experience I’ve had of media failure and apathy”
So, wait, are you saying the media is failing or that Vega is embellishing these claims? It’s really hard to tell. One has to be true, they cannot both be true.
” The biggest losers here are the girls, who no one bothered to investigate,”
But these claims were investigated. According to Colombia Reports:
“According to Colombia’s leading newspaper, El Tiempo, the victims of the sexual abuse practices were forced to flee the region after their families received death threats.”
The leading newspaper in Colombia reported these crimes so I’m not quite sure what you’re saying here.
I could go on but I’ll simply ask this: In the time I published my piece you managed to read the entire 800 page report and find only “one line” referring to the rapes. That’s impressive. Can you please link me to A) The report you read and B) The exact section where this “one line” occurs.
Thank you.
I just want to say you guys are awesome for bringing attention to this.
These were the scare writeups I could find mentioning this incident:
David Isenberg: It’s Déjà Vu for DynCorp All Over Again
Huffington Post 12/06/2010
Sean Penn: At war Sean Penn finds getting out of Iraq even tougher than getting in
San Fransisco Chronicle January 15, 2004
I’m not surprised. Many American service members, female & male, suffer sexual assault perpetrated by their comrades, and the perpetrators go unpunished. If you need proof see the bibliography in Honor Betrayed: Sexual Abuse In America’s Military.
Hi, I am the author of the article on Colombia Reports.
US media have probably not reported on my story because I only exposed the claim of one scholar. This is not evidence and may not be presented as a hard fact.
I published the article because I think it’s important the claim is verified. It’s in the historic report on a 50-year-long armed conflict, which is why I believe the claim is significant and should be exposed.
Authorities and other journalists can now verify and either confirm the claim with evidence or debunk it.
My article shouldn’t just have been copy- pasted like The Daily Mail, TeleSUR and RT did. That’s not media doing their job, but tabloid or politically motivated media outlets NOT doing their job.
If US media are taking more time to investigate the veracity of the claim that would be a good thing. This should take time if done seriously. Seventy-two hours could impossibly be enough.
Yeah, I know what you mean. When Honor Betrayed was published I’d get interviewed by a reporter but the interview wouldn’t be published or aired because the editor would say either, “It isn’t newsworthy,” or “It undermines the image of the military.”
Dear FAIR, while you are accusing the USA Media for not reporting this serious allegations, you are not doing what a true journalist should have done in the first place which is to link the “actual” report. I did not report it because a decent journalist can’t simply write, “According to a report that a Colombian Newspaper says that exists”… You know what? I actually found the original report and now I will report it on our webpage. Yes, you can give us credit ;) …Thanks!
@ Adam Johnson:
Vega’s piece is a 56 page essay in the document, which is a collection of articles by 14 different authors. The headline you are using comes from a one-line allegation on page 49.
To clarify my previous statement: he made an allegation, but did not back it up with data, observation, links, nor was there any reference to the case found in his bibliography or notes.
Never mind his sloppy scholarship. The document is even linked as a source where the story broke in English, which doesn’t take more than 5 minutes to find. The story broke on Tuesday.
The onus is on you for fact-checking, and at least familiarizing yourself with the document. The source is online! You only need to point and click to see is not an 800 page report detailing a crime, but a one-line allegation no one has bothered to investigate.
This isn’t pediatric brain surgery. Here’s the line:
En uno de los casos más sonados, en Melgar y en la vecina Girardot, 53 menores de edad fueron abusadas sexualmente por mercenarios, quienes además filmaron y vendieron las cintas como material pornográfico.
Western media would report every single rape in India a million times because
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/11472416/Why-to-blacken-India-on-rape-do-they-have-to-omit-the-facts.html
http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/indias-rape-epidemic-an-ugly-colonial-myth-reborn/16781#.VQiQutLLdqN
but mostly gloss over a million rapes by Westerners
http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/nisvs/
because their audiences would only love the “other” to be demonized. Not themselves, of course.
I’m the Latin America news editor for VICE News, based in Mexico City. We were aware of this report from the first moment, but as the Colombia Reports writer himself says in a comment, it was not substantial enough to justify a story. Also, as FAIR points out, the issue of abuse of US contractors of servicemen in Colombia has been well documented before. El Tiempo basically refreshed the story with a new interview with the mother of the victim in Melgar, a widely reported case. I usually nod my head in agreement with FAIR in most cases, but not in this one.
Your citing “VICE NEWS” as a credible source?
The U.S. won’t talk about civilian rapes by the US military at all! And those numbers are greater than the rapes in the US military! And US law enforcement allows them to get away with it!
http://theusmarinesrape.com/FaceBook.html
This is no surprise to me…research was done on the pedophile tourism overseas and lo and behold, the higher percentage of pedo tourist travelling overseas was a whopping 25% for Americans. Supposedly, research was done that showed 1 out of every 3 American men are textbook psychopaths. The fact that we are still, in the 21st century, still addressing violence, objectification and denigration against females regardless shows our so called evolution…I can imagine that alot of men join the military specifically to be able to perpetrate such crimes just as pedophiles and predators join the church to cloak there crimes under self entitled and pompous immunity…sounds like the military to me….
No surprise that the US military is doing this. Look at what’s been happening for years in Okinawa. This is also one of the main reasons many Puerto Ricans hated US soldiers when they had their base at Ceiba (Roosevelt Roads).
BTW I would think FAIR would provide a way to easily share this story on Facebook. I don’t want to “tweet” it, thanks very much.
It’s hard to sell wars when our “finest” are actually criminals.
What is the problem here, as I don’t see any. Now for most women this is a heinous crime against children. But to me and this is just my opinion, women and mothers who drown all of their kids, in a tub, girls who throw there kids off bridge because they have no man there to help with them, because they don’t know how to get a job, a mother who put her new born in a microwave oven. And mothers who sell there kid for money. Now these facts are true, but there not as bad when girls have Sex with Men, or a 12, 13, 14 has Sex and have babies, there is no law for under age girls having Sex but there is for Men and boys. So if this article, is that bad, then this is what you do, just start killing all of the Men in the world and castrate all babies boys at birth, and then women will not have this heinous crime ever happen again.
So sad a situation…Our military seems to be “Teflon-coated” and don’t forfet that we as Americans are…” Exceptional”…this is a nice example but I doubt it will play in Peoria
From the mesadeconversaciones website which hosts the document, linked to by Moral Low Ground, the statement in the review on the Melgar girls is on page 49. Its citation is in bold italic brackets Documento 16, or [DOC. 16], but there is no legend for this. It seems there should be 21 documents attached in an appendix. Can anyone find the reference?
We shouldn’t forget tis is the very essence of war. Raping children, bombing children, etc. it’s all included in the war package. This time we happened to get reporting on it but documented cases always exist in a sea of unreported misery. But as long as it’s outta sight (kept out of the media), it will remain outta mind for the American public.
For example, NYT waxes eloquently about rape by Indian army
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/20/world/asia/in-remote-corners-of-india-immunity-for-soldiers-who-kill-and-rape-civilians.html?_r=0
but has no space to report of rapes by US army. Why should anyone have any respect for these racist propagandists out to demonize people of color ?