The way wartime sexual violence against men is perpetrated dramatically complicates the allocation of responsibility. Many of the cases that have so far been documented are extremely complex, involving, for instance, male prisoners forced to rape others, or to bite off their testicles, as in the Omarska Camp in Bosnia-Herzegovina, for instance, (Bassiouni 1994). The fact that wartime sexual violence against men, especially rape, is often committed collectively, thus diluting responsibility both in terms of initiation and of actual perpetration, also entails accountability issues. In addition, some of my interviews suggest that cases where perpetrators have been victimized in the past, or where victims (are forced to) become perpetrators, are not uncommon. How are we to judge these cases? Should we hold prisoners accountable for what they have done to other prisoners, or should we consider that they had no choice and that the only ones who should be condemned are the ones who ordered them to perform those acts? But then shouldn’t we also take into account the peer pressure factor in the perpetration of sexual violence by members of armed groups? New recruits, for instance, are likely to be under specific collective pressure, since the perpetration of sexual violence is often seen as a proof of loyalty and commitment to the group. As Price explains (2001, 224) in the case of sexual violence committed during the break-up of former Yugoslavia, “It is important not to dismiss the very real, immediate physical threat under which some perpetrators felt themselves to be. Surrounded by armed men drunk on alcohol, testosterone, and triumphant nationalism, men who knew that their worst excesses would be ignored (if not condoned) by their political and military masters, it is perhaps understandable that some men raped out of fear for their lives”. Conversely and as we have seen in chapter 3, there is ample evidence of cases where members of armed groups and armies, including new recruits, refused to commit those acts, in spite of peer pressure. Most perpetrators—save, perhaps, prisoners whose only alternative is likely to be death—seem to have a choice, even if this is a limited and costly one.
What is more, the fact that most perpetrators seem to be perfectly aware that perpetrating sexual violence against both men and women is forbidden by their hierarchies if not by law, and that many of them judge it morally reprehensible,[1] suggests that they should be held fully accountable, even in cases where group pressure is high. Some of the perpetrators I have interviewed perfectly knew that their acts were illegal and could someday be prosecuted:
It was wrong what I did. It was against the law, and against the laws of God and nature. I will pay for it one day, maybe if they set up this Reconciliation Commission they are talking about. (Joseph 2013, interview)[2]
At the same time, some obviously thought that prosecution was unlikely:
Of course it was wrong, we knew it was forbidden to do such things [sexual violence against both men and women], our commanders had told us so, many times. But everybody was doing it. So what can they do to us now? Put us all in prison? Execute us all? (Serge 2010, interview)
Some of my research participants even seemed to think that they were somehow above the law, and, therefore, could not be held accountable:
We have a conflict here. You can’t expect us to respect the rules. It is those who are the most powerful who impose their rule. (Richard 2009, interview)
This underscores the lack of signaling effects of previous or current cases of prosecution of wartime sexual violence, because there have so far been too few of them, and because they are more likely to take place in the post-conflict phase, thus after the peak of violence: “In part, there is a lack of evidence on signaling effects—for the obvious reason that there have been very few cases of wartime rape that have ended up in trials and subsequent punishment. Also, when there have been such trials, they have occurred after a conflict has ended, and can, therefore, only affect other ongoing conflicts or future conflict behavior” (Nordås 2013, 3).
Accountability can also be a problematic issue when soldiers, armed combatants or police officers use sexual torture as part of routine interrogation procedures. Can, for instance, a criminal tribunal accept the excuse, or mitigating fact, of following orders or an established procedure? The so-called “superior orders” defense, according to which a member of the armed forces or a civilian cannot be held responsible for actions that were ordered by a superior military officer or a public official, has been at the core of several court cases since World War I, with various outcomes. In the specific case of acts of wartime sexual violence against men though, the ICTY has rejected such plea and has often charged the person ordering and the person perpetrating such acts in the same way. As observed by Askin, in the “Miljković and others, ‘Bosanski Šamac’ case”, “the individual directly responsible for the sexual violence and the superior who failed to prevent, stop, or punish him were charged under exactly the same articles and sub-articles” (1999, 118).
But even if perpetrators can be held accountable, prosecution is often impeded by a series of additional issues, in particular related to under-reporting. Victims are more likely to relate cases of sexual violence that they have witnessed than the one(s) that they have experienced. And, as we have seen, when they speak about what happened to them, they often do so by qualifying it as torture, beatings, abomination and so on. Because of the strong taboo related to that type of violence, many victims do not describe, and perhaps perceive, what happened to them as sexual violence. For instance, they very rarely use words like “rape” or “castration” (Manivannan 2014, 651). Unfortunately, and as underscored by Leiby (2012), the fact that male survivors rarely speak directly about the sexual violence that they have endured can only reinforce existing stereotypes that many officers conducting the interrogation or gathering testimonies are holding. In other words, the fact that survivors often remain silent about their sexual victimization only comes to confirm the idea that they cannot be sexually victimized. These stereotypes, as well as a lack of training on these issues, in turn prevent police investigators and judges from looking for, and from recognizing cases of sexual violence against men. Existing interrogation procedures with regard to sexual violence, even in the frame of investigations conducted during a conflict or after, therefore, usually focus exclusively on cases of sexual violence against women. And many male survivors, if not specifically asked, will never really disclose what happened, which means that a large number of sexual assault cases might never be uncovered.
In addition, many male survivors refuse to testify in front of a court, either because of shame, or because of a fear of reprisal (Karabegović 2010). The OSCE report on criminal proceedings before the courts of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, for instance, lists a series of cases where male victims did not even want criminal proceedings to begin, or stopped cooperating with the prosecution when they realized that the investigators had information about the sexual violence they survived, and some of them even retracted their declarations (OSCE 2015, 39–40). In those cases, only eyewitness testimonies were presented, which sometimes led to an abandoning of the charges, or a significant weakening of the cases: “In the case of Monika Karan-Ilić, the male victim of alleged sexual violence refused to testify before the court. The prosecutor read the most relevant parts of his investigative statement and the victim-witness only confirmed. The defense was not in a position to cross-examine this witness, as the witness stated that he did not feel well, did not remember what he was saying at the time, and did not want to recall the alleged event” (OSCE 2015, 40). Of course, similar issues exist in cases related to (wartime) sexual violence against women, and it raises the important question, not yet satisfactorily addressed by international and national courts, of how to best organize the collection of testimonies in such sensitive cases. What makes the reporting and subsequent prosecution of such crimes difficult is also the fact that in many countries where homosexuality is penalized, survivors run the risk of being accused of having engaged in (illegal) homosexual acts. This would have both penal and social consequences for the survivor, since he would run the risk of being condemned to pay a heavy fine or even to be jailed, and he would also have to bear the stigma, and related ostracism, of being labeled homosexual in sometimes very homophobic societies. In other words, reporting these acts would mean, for male victims, becoming visible either as “women” (“womanized” men) or as homosexual.
1
Néhémie (interviewed in Goma, North Kivu, DRC, 3 May 2009), for instance, described it as “pure evil”.
2
He was referring to the Burundian Commission Vérité et Réconciliation (Truth and Reconciliation Commission, CVR), which was finally established, after many years of debate, in May 2014.