This statistic is sad, but it's not at all surprising. I would wager that number is low. But when you add childhood physical abuse and neglect, and those with narcissistic mothers or primary caretakers, we're edging up to 100%. Interestingly, 60% of the women with SMI were given a schizophrenia diagnosis.

This article is open access, and I have included the discussion and conclusion sections below.

40% of women with severe mental illness are victims of rape or attempted rape 

September 4, 2014

Women with severe mental illness are up to five times more likely than the general population to be victims of sexual assault and two to three times more likely to suffer domestic violence, reveals new research led by UCL and King's College London funded by the Medical Research Council and the Big Lottery.

The study, published in Psychological Medicine, found that 40% of women surveyed with severe mental illness had suffered rape or attempted rape in adulthood, of whom 53% had attempted suicide as a result. In the general population, 7% of women had been victims of rape or attempted rape, of whom 3% had attempted suicide. 12% of men with severe mental illness had been seriously sexually assaulted, compared with 0.5% of the general population.

The findings are based on a survey of 303 randomly-recruited psychiatric outpatients who had been in contact with community services for a year or more, 60% of whom had a diagnosis of schizophrenia. They were interviewed using the British Crime Survey questionnaire for domestic and sexual violence, and their responses were compared to those from 22,606 respondents to the 2011/12 national crime survey. The results were adjusted for a wide range of socio-economic factors including age, ethnicity and marital status.

"The number of rape victims among women with severe mental illness is staggering," says lead author Dr Hind Khalifeh of UCL's Division of Psychiatry. "At the time of the survey, 10% had experienced sexual assault in the past year, showing that the problems continue throughout adulthood. Considering the high rate of suicide attempts among rape victims in this group, clinicians assessing people after a suicide attempt should consider asking them if they have been sexually assaulted. Currently this is not done and so patients may miss opportunities to receive specialist support."

Men and women with mental illness were also found to be more likely to be victims of domestic violence than the general population. Domestic violence includes emotional, physical and sexual abuse.* 69% of women and 49% of men with severe mental illness reported adulthood domestic violence.

Domestic violence from family members (other than partners) made up 63% of total domestic violence cases against psychiatric patients compared with 35% of the general population. "Most domestic violence prevention policies for adults focus on partner violence, but this study shows that interventions for psychiatric patients also need to target family violence," says Dr Khalifeh.

The study shows a strong association between mental illness and sexual and domestic violence, but the direction of causality is not certain. In some cases, experiences of violence may have contributed to the onset of mental illness. However, violence experienced in the past year would have been after diagnosis of severe mental illness since all participating patients had been under the care of mental health services for at least a year.

The results were adjusted for drug and alcohol use in the past year, but this did not significantly affect the outcomes and causality is hard to determine. Drug and alcohol use may increase the risk of being a victim, but equally victims of violence may turn to drugs or alcohol as a way of coping.

Senior author Louise Howard, Professor in Women's Mental Health at King's College London, says: "This study highlights that patients with severe mental illness are at substantially increased risk of being a victim of domestic and sexual violence. Despite the public's concern about violence being perpetrated by patients with severe mental illness, the reality for patients is that they are at increased risk of being victims of some of the most damaging types of violence."

Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release.

Citation:
H. Khalifeh, P. Moran, R. Borschmann, K. Dean, C. Hart, J. Hogg, D. Osborn, S. Johnson, and L. M. Howard. (2014, Sept 4). Domestic and sexual violence against patients with severe mental illness. Psychological Medicine; Open access publication.

*Definitions of domestic and sexual violence are given below:

Domestic violence: Emotional, physical or sexual abuse (as defined below) perpetrated by partner (boyfriend or girlfriend; husband, wife or civil partner) or family member other than partner (parents, children, siblings or any other relatives) 

Emotional abuse: perpetrator did any of the following: (a) Prevented them from having fair share of money (b) Stopped them from seeing friends or relatives (c) Repeatedly belittled them so they felt worthless (d) Threatened to hurt them or someone close to them (e) Threatened them with a weapon or threatened to kill them 

Physical violence: perpetrator did any of the following (a) Pushed them, held them down or slapped them (b) Kicked, bit or hit them, or threw something at them (c) Choked or tried to strangle them (d) Used some other kind of force against them 

Sexual violence: perpetrator did any of the following in a way that caused fear, alarm or distress: (a) Indecently exposed themselves to them (b) Touched them sexually when they did not want it (e.g. groping, touching of breasts or bottom, unwanted kissing) ( (c) Forced them to have sexual intercourse, or to take part in some other sexual act, when they made it clear that they did not agree or when they were not capable of consent (Serious Sexual Assault). 

We divided sexual violence by perpetrator into sexual domestic violence (perpetrated by partner or family members) and sexual non-domestic violence (perpetrated by strangers or acquaintances). The control study sample was randomly divided into two groups with slightly different questions on the perpetrator of sexual violence - such that it was possible to estimate domestic sexual violence in the whole study sample, and non-domestic sexual violence in only half the sample. We were able to estimate these subtypes for the entire patient sample. 

Adverse impact of serious sexual assaults (SSA): SSA led to one or more of the following: 

(a) Physical injuries / illness: Minor bruising or black eye, scratches, severe bruising or bleeding from cuts, internal injuries or broken bones/ teeth, other physical injuries, contracting a disease, becoming pregnant 
(b) Psychological/social problems: Mental or emotional problems, such as difficulty sleeping/ nightmares; depression; low self-esteem; stopped trusting people / difficulty in other relationships; stopped going out 
(c) Suicide attempt

Source: UCL (University College London)

* * * * *

 Here is the discussion and conclusion from the article, which is certainly worth looking at.

Discussion

This study compared the prevalence of domestic and sexual violence against patients with SMI under the on-going care of mental health services with a general population control group, and found a high prevalence and markedly excess odds of these experiences among patients with SMI. Among domestic violence victims, family violence was experienced by a greater proportion of SMI than control victims. Women with SMI were more likely to attempt suicide as a result of SSA than female victims without SMI, and more likely to disclose sexual violence to health professionals and the police.

The prevalence estimates for domestic and sexual violence among women with SMI are in line with previous studies (Goodman et al. 1997; Teplin et al. 2005; Hughes et al. 2012). To our knowledge, no past studies have compared domestic violence in psychiatric patients with a general population control sample (Oram et al. 2013). We found that people with diagnosed SMI in contact with psychiatric services had 2- to 4-fold elevated odds of all subtypes of domestic violence (emotional, physical and sexual) compared to the general population. These findings suggest that clinicians should routinely enquire not just about physical domestic violence, but also emotional and sexual abuse – especially given the increasing evidence that emotional abuse may have a greater health impact than physical violence (Yoshihama et al. 2009; Jewkes, 2010). The relationship between experiencing violence and SMI is likely to be bi-directional (Danielson et al. 1998; Chen et al. 2010; Jonas et al. 2014), but we report increased risk of recent violence occurring after illness onset. In this study, substance misuse appeared to account for a proportion of the excess violence risk, and may be a suitable target for intervention, although the direction of causality is unclear, since being a victim can lead to increased substance misuse as a coping mechanism (Coker et al. 2002).

We found that family violence comprised a greater proportion of overall domestic and sexual violence experiences among victims with SMI than general population victims (Krug, 2002). People with SMI are known to have elevated risks of childhood maltreatment, and abuse by family members, including parents, may extend into adulthood (Varese et al. 2012). Most domestic violence prevention policies among working-age adults have focused on partner violence, but our findings suggest that interventions among patients with SMI also need to target family violence.

We detected a 6- to 8-fold elevation in the odds of sexual assault among both men and women with SMI. This is lower than the 17-fold risk reported in a recent US study (Teplin et al. 2005), but we adjusted for a broader range of confounders, and included estimates for lifetime rather than just past-year sexual assaults (where prevalence is low and estimates are imprecise). Half of the women with SMI who experienced SSA reported attempting suicide as a result of these experiences. In patients with SMI, suicide attempts may be seen as a direct result of acute psychotic relapse (Fialko et al. 2006), with under-detection of trauma and related post-traumatic stress disorder as a trigger for suicidal behaviour.

The finding of substantially elevated risk of domestic and sexual violence victimization among patients with SMI mirrors the findings of a high prevalence of all types of victimization, including violent crime by strangers or acquaintances (Bengtsson-Tops & Ehliasson, 2012; Katsikidou et al. 2013), as well as non-violent crime such as thefts, burglaries and criminal damage (Teplin et al. 2005). Future research should explore shared and unique risk factors for these victimization experiences, in order to guide effective interventions. Patients with an abuse history may benefit from trauma-focused psychological therapy (Warshaw et al. 2013; WHO, 2013b). These interventions have an evidence base in non-psychiatric populations, mainly in antenatal or accident and emergency settings, but their effectiveness for patients with SMI has not been fully explored (Mueser et al. 2008).

Among victims of sexual assault, a higher proportion of SMI than control victims reported their experiences to the police, but there is evidence that they are often disbelieved and discriminated against within the criminal justice system (Hester, 2013; Pettit et al. 2013). Only 43% of patients had disclosed their experiences to a healthcare professional, despite the fact that this patient population had received intensive support from psychiatric services for at least a year in order to be included in the study. Health professionals often fail to detect trauma histories in patients with SMI, or where they do detect it, they often fail to address it in patients’ management plans, (Howard et al. 2010; Nyame et al. 2013). This may lead to treatment resistance for the primary mental disorder (Mueser et al. 2002). There is therefore a need for interventions that improve detection of violence by healthcare professionals, and the provision of subsequent support. There is evidence from a pilot study that a complex intervention which includes reciprocal training of mental health and domestic violence sector professionals, and a care pathway with integrated advocacy services, can improve detection and outcomes of domestic violence among psychiatric patients (Trevillion et al. 2014). Our findings suggest the need to include screening and support for sexual assaults in such interventions. Effective interventions would require joint working with voluntary sector organization and the criminal justice system (Krug, 2002; WHO,
2013b).

Strengths of this study include: the large randomly selected sample; reliable, validated measures of violence experiences; hypothesis-based analyses and careful adjustment for confounders. We adjusted for a broader range of confounders than most previous related studies (Hughes et al. 2012; Oram et al. 2013), including adjustment for demographics and individual/area deprivation. We also explored potential mediation by substance misuse. One limitation is the lack of data on violence perpetration among controls, so we could not adjust for the potential mediating effect of this factor.

Potential limitations include the cross-sectional nature of the study, which precludes firm conclusions about direction of causality. All patients had been under the care of mental health services for more than 1 year, so by definition past-year violence would have occurred after the onset of SMI (notwithstanding measurement error). Nonetheless the causal direction remains uncertain, since patients with SMI may have had historical victimization experiences, which may put them at risk of recent violence.

The response rate was somewhat low at 52%, but we researched a sensitive topic in a hard-to-reach population. Although domestic and sexual violence are sensitive topics for any group, they may be even more sensitive and complex for patients in secondary mental healthcare to discuss. This is because this particular group suffers from stigma related to violence risk (Link et al. 1999), and may worry about additional consequences of disclosure such as involuntary hospital admission (Pettit et al. 2013). We used a rigorous random sampling procedure rather than a convenience sample (unlike many previous related studies) (Hughes et al. 2012; Oram et al. 2013), and nonresponders had the same demographic profile (in terms of age and sex) as participants. We did not have additional details on the characteristics of nonresponders, so it is difficult to comment on the likely magnitude and direction of non-response bias.

It is worth noting that this study relates to patients with SMI in contact with secondary mental health services, so the findings may not generalize to those with similar mental disorders who do not require on-going psychiatric care. In national UK surveys, two thirds of patients with a diagnosis of a psychotic disorder were found to be in contact with mental health services (McManus et al. 2010). Those in contact with services may be at increased risk of victimization, due to a potential excess of risk factors such as social isolation, substance misuse or violence perpetration.

The crime survey definition of domestic violence does not have sufficient detail on context, severity and frequency to allow a distinction between recurrent, controlling severe abuse and incidents of violence reflecting relationship couple tension (Johnson, 2006). Reporting bias is possible, since patients and controls may have different thresholds for disclosing violence, although there is no evidence to suggest that people with SMI over-report these experiences (Goodman et al. 1999). Residual confounding is possible. This general population control sample may have included a small proportion of people with SMI (<3%) (Health and Social Care Information Centre, 2013) although the effect of this would have been to have biased the ORs closer to the null. We compared a London-based patient sample with a national control sample (to ensure adequate power), but violence prevalence did not differ by region of residence in the control group (ONS, 2013). The findings from the sensitivity analysis, which compared patients to London-based controls, were consistent with those comparing patients to national-based controls.

Conclusion

Men and women with SMI who are under the on-going care of psychiatric services are 2–8 times more likely to experience sexual and domestic violence than the general population, with a high relative burden of family violence. Women with SMI are more likely than women in the general population to suffer psychological ill health and attempt suicide following sexual assaults, but most do not disclose violence to healthcare professionals. Healthcare professionals need to work closely with the voluntary sector and criminal justice system in order to effectively address the high burden of violence in this population. Potentially effective support includes advocacy and trauma-focused psychological interventions (Mueser et al. 2008; Trevillion et al. 2014). Healthcare professionals need to consider victimization as a potential trigger for suicide attempts among patients. Future research should explore reasons for non-disclosure to healthcare professionals, and test the effectiveness of interventions to improve the detection of victimization and support offered by mental healthcare professionals.

From The New York Times, an article on how the young women rescued from the house in Ohio can possibly heal from their trauma. One thing they fail to mention in this article is that the single greatest predictor of how someone recovers from this kind of traumatic experience is determined by the quality of their attachment relationship with their primary caregiver as infants and toddlers. Secure attachment allows much quicker and complete healing, insecure attachment generates more intense PTSD and prolongs the healing process.

Elizabeth Smart, who was abducted at age 14.

Emotional Recovery Seen Possible for Victims of Prolonged Abuse

By ERICA GOODE
Published: May 9, 2013

Day after day, it was his voice they heard, his face they saw.

He was their tormentor and their deliverer, the one who — at his whim — could violate their minds and bodies, the keeper of the keys and the source of food and water. His dominion was a ramshackle house with boarded up windows. His control was absolute.

For the women he is accused of kidnapping and holding prisoner for a decade in a home on Seymour Avenue in Cleveland, their captor was for all intents and purposes their world.

Therapists experienced in the treatment of trauma survivors said on Thursday that how the three women — Amanda Berry, now 27, Gina DeJesus, 23, and Michelle Knight, 32 — interpreted that relationship and the small ways that they struggled to preserve their selfhood in the face of physical and psychological intimidation will be critical to their recovery.

The women were finally freed on Monday after two neighbors responded to Ms. Berry’s call for help by kicking in the front door. Ms. Berry’s 6-year-old daughter, who was born during the ordeal, also came out of the house. Ariel Castro, who the police say imprisoned the women and initially kept them tied with chains and rope in the basement and sexually assaulted them repeatedly, has been charged with four counts of kidnapping and three counts of rape.

David A. Wolfe, a senior scientist and psychologist at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health at the University of Toronto, said that in situations of long-term sexual abuse and threat to life, victims inevitably develop complicated and ambivalent emotions toward their abuser in order to survive.

“You turn the devil into something you can handle,” he said, adding that the first thing he would want to know from someone who survived such an ordeal would be “What was your feeling about this person during the captivity?”

Dr. Wolfe and other therapists noted that all traumatic experiences are different and that many details of the women’s ordeal have not been made public; some experts argued that for the women’s sake, they should not be.

But they said many people can and do rebound from even the most extreme abuse, aided by the support of family and friends, the use of specifically tailored therapies and the privacy, safety and time to digest and come to terms with their experience. It is important, some therapists said, that the women not be turned into a spectacle, their identities as individuals diminished to “kidnap victims.”

“We know that resilience exists and that recovery is possible,” said Dr. Judith A. Cohen, medical director of the Center for Traumatic Stress in Children and Adolescents at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh. “For people who believe that it’s inevitable that a horrific experience like this would leave lasting scars, the evidence does not necessarily support that.”

That does not mean that the women, who with the exception of Ms. Knight have been reunited with their families, have an easy road ahead. Studies have found that about two-thirds of children who are kidnapped or abused have lingering psychological disturbances, including depression and the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. The toll of prolonged abuse is physical as well as psychological, as the body tries to cope with constant fear.

“Your brain is being flooded with stress hormones,” Dr. Wolfe said, “just like you’ve been sitting in a cage with an animal for a long time.”

Yet about 80 percent of abuse victims who receive trauma-focused weekly therapy show significant improvement after three to four months, studies find — the authorities in Cleveland are arranging for the women to receive trauma therapy, according to a person with knowledge of the situation. Some survivors of lengthy captivities can have continuing problems, especially if they were already experiencing emotional difficulties before their abduction, and so, are more vulnerable. Others — like Elizabeth Smart, who was abducted from her bedroom in 2002 at the age of 14, and Jaycee Lee Dugard, who spent 18 years as a prisoner after being kidnapped in 1991 and had two children by her abductor — have apparently done well, going on to write books about their experiences and work on behalf of other abuse victims.

Terri L. Weaver, a professor of psychology at St. Louis University who has been a consultant in long-term kidnapping cases, said that the presence of the other captives in the Seymour Avenue house may possibly have helped each woman cope.

“My hope would be that they could have provided some degree of support with one another,” Dr. Weaver said, “and that may have aided in their ability to emotionally, and perhaps even physically, cope with the situation.” In fact, the person familiar with the investigation said the victims felt they were like sisters now because of what they went through.

Ms. Berry’s young daughter, Dr. Weaver said, who, like the child in Emma Donoghue’s 2010 novel “Room,” was born into captivity, has an equally good chance of surmounting the adversity of her early life.

“There are all types of children in this world that were conceived in violent and traumatic circumstances who come to an understanding of those circumstances and go on to have very happy lives,” Dr. Weaver said.

Like cases of domestic violence, Dr. Weaver and other therapists said, the stories of women who remain with their captors for years sometimes give rise to misconceptions — like the idea that the women could have escaped. But such notions vastly underestimate the psychological and physical control exerted by perpetrators, and often arise from people’s desire to believe that they themselves would not fall victim to a similar fate.

“Rape in conjunction with life-threatening force is very powerful,” Dr. Weaver said, “and it’s repeatedly used by men against women.”

Dr. Cohen put it more sharply: “It’s very easy to sit in your living room and second-guess from the safety of your couch why somebody didn’t act a certain way. But when your life is under constant threat, you think and act and feel quite differently.”


Steven Yaccino contributed reporting from Cleveland.

Shame - The Story of Mukhtaran Mai

Incredible courage from this Pakistani woman - this documentary, Shame (2006), tells the story of her rape and her decision to stand up and seek justice for herself, and eventually for other women as well.

 

Mukhtaran Bibi (Punjabi, Urdu: مختاراں بی بی‎, born circa 1972,[1] now known as Mukhtār Mā'ī,[1] مختار مائی) is a Pakistani woman from the village of Meerwala, in the rural tehsil (county) of Jatoi of the Muzaffargarh District of Pakistan. In June 2002, Mukhtār Mā'ī was the survivor of a gang rape as a form of honour revenge, on the orders of a tribal council of the local Mastoi Baloch clan that was richer and more powerful as opposed to her Tatla clan in that region.[2][3]

Although custom would expect her to commit suicide after being raped,[4][5][6] Mukhtaran spoke up, and pursued the case, which was picked up by both domestic and international media. On 1 September 2002, an anti-terrorism court sentenced 6 men (including the 4 rapists) to death for rape. In 2005, the Lahore High Court cited "insufficient evidence" and acquitted 5 of the 6 convicted, and commuted the punishment for the sixth man to a life sentence. Mukhtaran and the government appealed this decision, and the Supreme Court suspended the acquittal and held appeal hearings.[7] In 2011, the Supreme Court too acquitted the accused.

Though the safety of Mukhtaran, and her family and friends, has been in jeopardy[8] she remains an outspoken advocate for women's rights. She started the Mukhtar Mai Women's Welfare Organization to help support and educate Pakistani women and girls. In April 2007, Mukhtar Mai won the North-South Prize from the Council of Europe.[9] In 2005, Glamour Magazine named her "Woman of the Year".[10] According to the New York Times, "Her autobiography is the No. 3 best seller in France , and movies are being made about her. She has been praised by dignitaries like Laura Bush and the French foreign minister".[11] However, on 8 April 2007, the New York Times reported that Mukhtar Mai lives in fear for her life from the Pakistan government and local feudal lords.[12] General Pervez Musharraf, the former president of Pakistan, has admitted on his personal blog[13] that he placed restrictions on her movement in 2005, as he was fearful that her work, and the publicity it receives, hurt the international image of Pakistan.

Shame

This stun­ning Special Emmy winning doc­u­men­tary tells the true sto­ry of in­ter­na­tion­al hu­man rights icon Mukhtaran Mai, a Pak­istani peas­ant who was gang-raped and pub­licly shamed in her vil­lage, but used her trau­ma to spark a le­gal rev­o­lu­tion that ex­posed cen­turies of bru­tal trib­al con­flict and gov­ern­ment mis­man­age­ment.

Court Rules Woman Technically Not Raped Due to an Arcane Law (1872)

This is so effed up it's almost impossible to comprehend. In a situation such as this there needs to be some mechanism through which the judges can throw out the old and outdated law and rule on the facts of the case.

This may be one of those rare instances where justice might be outside the legal system.

Court Rules Woman Technically Not Raped Because of Marital Status

Posted Jan 4, 2013

A California appeals court has decided that an 18-year-old woman technically wasn’t raped by a man who had sex with her while she was asleep because he was pretending to be her boyfriend. But if he had been her husband? The court acknowledged the outcome would have been different.

Wait, what?!

Here’s the reason: a ridiculous and arcane law from 1872 that says it would be considered rape only if the woman had been married and the man had been impersonating her husband.

“A man enters the dark bedroom of an unmarried woman after seeing her boyfriend leave late at night, and has sexual intercourse with the woman while pretending to be the boyfriend,” the court decision read. “Has the man committed rape? Because of historical anomalies in the law and the statutory definition of rape, the answer is no, even though, if the woman had been married and the man had impersonated her husband, the answer would be yes.”

Yeah, that’s all kinds of messed up.

And because it’s unclear whether the court convicted Julio Morales for having sex with a sleeping woman (which would be considered rape), or for deceiving her into thinking he was her boyfriend (which is not considered rape because the woman is not married), the 2nd District Court of Appeal in Los Angeles overturned the conviction of Morales and ruled he must be retried.

“Today’s news is such bullshit that it’s hard to process even with that in mind,” Jezebel’s Katie J.M. Baker writes Friday. “Sleeping with someone while they are sleeping is rape. Tricking someone into sleeping with you is also rape, to say the least of what that is. The definition of rape should depend on the act itself, not on the identity of the person you are impersonating. Maybe that didn’t go without saying in the Victorian Era, but it sure should now.”

Exactly.

—Posted by Tracy Bloom.

Documentary - The Invisible War (1 in 3 Military Women Raped)

I saw this film, The Invisible War, when it first aired on PBS Frontline - it is moving, infuriating, and painful. The fact that 1 in 3 women in the military will be sexually assaulted by their peers and superiors is simply incomprehensible to me. Even worse, many survivors are the ones investigated and often discharged as "mentally ill."

In 2011, there were 3,191 reports of sexual assaults ranging from wrongful touching to rape — but even Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says he believes that because it is such an underreported crime, there were actually as many as 19,000 such attacks.

Only 8% of these rapes go to trial, which probably explains (along with the blame-the-victim approach) why the reports have gone down since that 2011 stat was recorded.

According to another article:

more than one-fifth of all active-duty female soldiers have been sexually assaulted, leaving women who have been raped in the military with a higher rate of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) than that of men in combat.

I tend to believe the 1 in 3 stat because I know how often rape goes unreported.

The Invisible War

From Oscar_®- and Emmy_®-nominated filmmaker Kirby Dick (This Film Is Not Yet Rated; Twist of Faith) comes The Invisible War, a groundbreaking investigative documentary about one of America's most shameful and best kept secrets: the epidemic of rape within the U.S. military. The film paints a startling picture of the extent of the problem-today, a female soldier in combat zones is more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire. The Department of Defense estimates there were a staggering 19,000 violent sex crimes in the military in 2010. The Invisible War exposes the epidemic, breaking open one of the most under-reported stories of our generation, to the nation and the world.

Another summary:

The Invisible War is a groundbreaking investigative documentary about one of our country’s most shameful and best kept secrets: the epidemic of rape within our US military. Today, a female soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan is more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire with the number of assaults in the last decade alone in the hundreds of thousands. Focusing on the powerfully emotional stories of several young women, the film reveals the systemic cover up of the crimes against them and follows their struggles to rebuild their lives and fight for justice. The Invisible War features hard-hitting interviews with high-ranking military officials and members of Congress that reveal the perfect storm conditions that exist for rape in the military, its history of cover-up, and what can be done to bring about much needed change. — (C) Official Site