Citation

Holmes WC, Gariti KO, Sadeghi L, Joisa SD. Mil. Med. 2007; 172(2): 175-181.

Affiliation

Physician, Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion, Philadelphia Veterans Affairs Medical Center, PA 19104, USA.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2007, Association of Military Surgeons of the United States)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

17357773

Abstract

We assessed detainee abuse acceptance and variables associated with it. Outpatients from a veterans' hospital were administered questionnaires with three increasingly severe scenarios of a U.S. soldier abusing a detainee. Three questionnaire versions differed in the final line of each version's scenarios, describing abuse either as: soldier initiated, superior ordered, or wrong by a "whistleblower" soldier. Three hundred fifty-one veterans participated, 80% with service during the Vietnam War. Zero tolerance for abuse--"completely unacceptable" regardless of who the detainee was--increased with abuse severity (16% for exposure, 31% for humiliation, and 48% for rape of detainee) and with soldier initiation. The strongest, most consistently significant odds were of depressed veterans, veterans with comorbid depression/post-traumatic stress disorder, and men being approximately 2, 3, and 4 to 20 times more tolerant of abuse than those without depression/post-traumatic stress disorder and women, respectively. There may be potential value to using similar scenario-based questionnaires to study active duty military perceptions of detainee abuse. Results may inform prevention policies.

Language: en