Democrats know they are about to lose control of the House of Representatives in the 2022 midterm elections next month. Some campaigns are taking noticeably dark turns as Democrats become more desperate. October surprises or not, when a female candidate’s information on a past sexual assault is deliberately released, or for whatever reason, a line has been crossed.
I can hear it now – politics isn’t beanbag. Spare me. This is different. The stakes are high this election cycle and the sexual assault suffered by Indiana CD-01 candidate, Republican Jennifer-Ruth Green, has nothing to do with her campaign. Green is challenging the incumbent, Democrat Frank Mrvan, who is serving his first term in the House. The information was released in a piece published by Politico. Politico claimed documents “were obtained by a public records request and provided to Politico by a person outside the Mrvan campaign.”
Hello, October. This surprise is not welcomed by Green. Who would blame her? I read about the story of Green’s sexual assault while she served in Iraq a couple of days ago. The first I read of the story was in an online publication that focuses on Indiana politics called “Importantville” written by Adam Wren, a Midwestern journalist who is a contributing editor at Politico. At first glance, I was curious why the story was coming out at all. It’s mixed up in what I assume is the author’s larger point – Green received a couple of performance evaluations in which she received a “does not meet standards” rating in leadership skills. Leadership skills are important for politicians, right?
In the Importantville article, the author starts out by explaining that Green, a Black Republican, is trying to turn Indiana’s 1st Congressional District red. For 100 years, it has been a Democrat district. She graduated from the US Air Force Academy in 2005, one of 15 black female cadets in a class of 919.
Her intention was to become a pilot but she didn’t pass her flight training, according to military records, and transferred into special investigations, which “identifies, investigates and neutralizes criminal, terrorist and espionage threats.” By 2009, she was a captain stationed in Iraq, part of a unit responsible for turning over the provisional government to the Iraqis. “It was a treacherous time,” she said.
Her job, in part, was to conduct site visits at the national training center, Iraq’s FBI equivalent, evaluating their facilities and law enforcement curriculum. Her military evaluations praised her for evaluating 24 Iraqi intel course syllabi, something that expedited “curriculum development by months” and “professionalized agent training.” She “personally advised [the] Iraqi equivalent of [the] FBI Academy Director,” according to military records I obtained.
Green’s mostly stellar military record took an unexpected hit in early 2010, according to military records. In an evaluation of her performance spanning from March 15, 2009 to Dec. 15, 2009, she received a “does not meet standards” rating in leadership skills, professional qualities, and judgment and decisions. The evaluation centered on “two instances of lacking judgment while deployed; handling your weapon and wandering away while at a [forward operating base].”
In the first case, she was given a letter of counseling for loading her weapon inside a military facility. The second more serious incident occurred in September, according to her military records, when she and a small group of officers visited the national training center. She left the group to climb into a cramped guard tower where Green says an Iraqi serviceman sexually assaulted her by grabbing her breast and exposing himself.
She was advised not to report the assault. Her adviser, a staff sergeant, said “if American leadership complained to Iraqi leadership, they would continue to see women as liabilities and limit their ability to serve….” The poor evaluation she received was performed by someone not even in Iraq with her.
The poor evaluation, which was performed by someone who was not in Iraq with Green, affected her ability to rise in the ranks and in 2012 she was removed from active duty as part of a larger force reduction, according to her records. Green has appealed the evaluation, citing supporting letters from her superiors stationed in Iraq. Her direct supervisor, a senior agent in the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, wrote in her appeal that she “did an outstanding job in her duties; I did not question her leadership, judgment or professional skills.”
It sounds like she got a raw deal all the way around. Politico rates the race as leans Democrat. The truth is that Green is giving her opponent a real race. The Democrat status quo is threatened. I wonder who the person is who is “outside the Mrvan campaign” who gave Politico her documents, don’t you? Her story has stuck with me since I read it and today I see she is fighting back. Good for her.
Green says that her opponent “illegally” obtained the information. She accuses Mrvan and Politico of behaving as her assaulter did.
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“The reality of it is – like I said at one point in my life to my assailant, ‘No. Please stop. Don’t.’ – and he did what he wanted to do … This is the exact same situation all over again, all because there was a man who wanted some sort of gratification,” Green said. “Congressman Frank Mrvan gets his gratification of trying to think he’s smearing my name. Adam Wren gets his gratification of thinking he’s going to get a good smear story out of it. And all it does is essentially reopen wounds for victims.”
Green insisted that Wren failed to garner the full story of the incident and took her “experience and diminished it to a place where he can just say a clinical report of exactly what happened.”
“I’m surprised because Adam Wren spent time in this article focusing on every single detail down to the skirt I was wearing, down to the color of the skirt I was wearing, down to every single knob I touched, all of those things, but yet he writes clinically about one of the worst days of my life,” Green added. “He has no idea the concept of being forced to be in a four by four, round circular area, 30 feet in the ground in a tower where you only have windows and a 30-foot drop on the other side, 30-foot drop to escape somebody who was blocking your path [with] somebody who has a clear intent with a weapon in hand, who is focused on trying to take advantage of you, and you’re able to escape that with minimal physical harm. And he wants to reduce that to 50 characters.”
Green wants an investigation into how the documents were provided to Politico. She calls it an “unauthorized, unlawful” release of her Air Force personnel file.
In the letter, Green made it clear that she “did not consent, in writing or otherwise, to the disclosure of my personnel file to Politico or anyone else” and pointed to the Privacy Act of 1974, as amended, 5 U.S.C § 552a, as proof that her file should not have been released.
“Coming as when it does – in the closing weeks of my campaign for Congress – makes me believe that this is a politically motivated attempt to impact the upcoming election,” Green concluded in the letter.
She said she pleaded with Politico not to publish the information about her sexual assault.
“I believe Congressman Frank Mrvan illegally obtained those documents and was floating them around to press,” Green said. “That’s what our Politico team told us, that they were farming it out to several different press outlets to see who could write a very disgusting, ugly smear piece against me with the intent to paint me as a disgraced military officer.”
She’s speaking up. She also points to the double-standard in politics when it comes to acceptable behavior.
“If I were on the other side of the ticket, they would weep for me, they would mourn for me,” Green said. “Only because I’m a Republican do they feel this is acceptable. But it’s unacceptable for every vet, it’s unacceptable for every woman, it’s unacceptable for everybody who has ever been a victim of sexual assault in their entire life.”
What this kind of story does is punish the victim twice. Now, since she’s in a political campaign, she will be asked about it every time she is interviewed or in a question and answer session. She has to re-live it over and over again.
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