BERLIN — Most cases of sexual misconduct in Germany’s armed forces go unreported, according to a major study presented Wednesday, as Defense Minister Boris Pistorius acknowledged a “systemic problem” in how the military handles complaints.
The report found that sexual misconduct was three to six times more common than official figures suggest. The findings come as Germany tries to recruit more soldiers, including more women, as part of efforts to rebuild its military.
Four in 10 female soldiers and roughly one in five male soldiers said they had experienced at least one form of sexual misconduct in the previous year.
That includes unwanted sexual comments, sexual images, unwanted touching and sexual violence. Over the same period, 2% of both women and men reported experiencing sexual violence.
More than 8,100 soldiers completed the July 13 to Aug. 27 anonymous survey, about 18% of those contacted. The researchers said they had adjusted the results to reflect the makeup of the military.
The study found that only one-sixth to one-third of sexual incidents were reported, depending on the type of misconduct, with many victims saying they didn’t want to draw attention to themselves. Others feared consequences or doubted that reporting an incident would lead to action.
Pistorius presented the findings to the defense committee in the country’s parliament alongside Germany’s top military officer, Carsten Breuer. Speaking afterward, he promised “zero tolerance” for sexual misconduct.
Pistorius called the handling of complaints a “systemic problem.” He said military structures and the traditional responses of some commanders to complaints were partly to blame.
He announced a 34-point plan to improve protection for victims and make it easier to report incidents, including a new advice service outside the usual military chain of command. The service is currently available daily but is expected to become available around the clock.
Commanders will also be assessed on how they respond to complaints, and victims will receive more information about investigations. Commanders who tolerate misconduct or fail to deal with it properly “will no longer hold a leadership position,” Pistorius said.
The study also found that women had reported less misconduct in units where they made up more than 15% of personnel.
Asked what he would tell a mother worried about her daughter joining the military, Pistorius insisted the Bundeswehr remained a “safe employer” because it was taking action.
Die Bundeswehr soll wachsen, doch eine neue Dunkelfeldstudie offenbart eine erschütternde Realität für Frauen in der Truppe. Wenn 70 Prozent der befragten Soldatinnen von sexualisiertem Fehlverhalten berichten, wird das Kulturproblem zur existenziellen Gefahr für die Einsatzbereitschaft. Verteidigungsminister Boris Pistorius steht vor der drängenden Frage, wie die Armee weiblicher werden soll, solange interne Strukturen versagen.
Im 200-Sekunden-Interview ordnet die CDU-Bundestagsabgeordnete und Berufssoldatin Vivian Tauschwitz den Schaden für die Bundeswehr ein. Sie erklärt, warum Täter sich im System bisher zu sicher fühlen und welche konkreten Führungsinstrumente sowie Ermittlungen jetzt greifen müssen, um das toxische Verhalten zu brechen.
Währenddessen verbringt Friedrich Merz seinen 71. Geburtstag nicht auf der Weltklimakonferenz, sondern im harten Ringen um die heimischen Finanzen. Rasmus Buchsteiner analysiert die Verhandlungen vor der Bereinigungssitzung des Haushaltsausschusses und beleuchtet, warum die Abwesenheit auf dem internationalen Klimaparkett ein politisches Signal ist.
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In October 2017, just one day before The New York Times published its investigative report exposing his long career as a rapist, Harvey Weinstein blew into the newspaper’s offices with a phalanx of lawyers. The film producer was intent on attacking Ashley Judd, the actress, activist and humanitarian who is one of the authors of this piece, saying she had “mental issues.” For support, Weinstein brandished a photograph of the two of them taken in 1997 during the Oscar party his company Miramax hosted at Beverly Hills’ Peninsula Hotel.
When she learned of his spectacle at the Times’ offices, Judd immediately recognized Weinstein’s slippery strategy as DARVO and felt a sense of relief. She knew there was language and a body of research that plainly identified and unpacked what can otherwise be a head-spinning distortion of reality.
An insidious response tactic — it never happened, you’re a liar, you’re the one who hurt me — DARVO is intended to disorient the victim, painting them instead as the villain. It follows a predictable pattern: deny the harm, attack the credibility of the person who named the harm, and reverse the roles of victim and offender. The acronym, introduced to the world in the 1990s by Jennifer Freyd, another co-author, has grown in usage by individuals, media and institutions as an increasing number of people have come forward to report sexual assaults and harassment. Since then, DARVO has become so ubiquitous that it has now been canonized in the Merriam-Webster dictionary and added to its list of trending terms.
DARVO was inspired by an infamous confirmation hearing. In 1991, Anita Hill testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that Clarence Thomas, her former supervisor at the Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, who was then a nominee for the Supreme Court, had sexually harassed her. Thomas and his supporters responded quickly. While he denied the allegations and claimed to be the victim of a “high-tech lynching,” Republican senators attacked Hill’s credibility and motivations — and Thomas was narrowly confirmed to the Court. Freyd, a psychology professor and trauma researcher, took notice. As she saw it, the collection of responses followed a specific pattern. Several years later, she introduced DARVO to the world in a research article.
At the time, Freyd called her acronym capturing how perpetrators deflect responsibility “very speculative.” Thirty years later and a #MeToo movement later, it’s no longer speculation. A growing body of research, some of it conducted by Freyd and Sarah Harsey, another co-author of this column, has provided important insights into this tactic. A database tracking DARVO research now counts 33 peer-reviewed studies investigating it.
The studies tell us that DARVO can shift observers’ beliefs about who is really to blame. This is a fundamental goal of DARVO-users: Convince others of your innocence.
The studies tell us that DARVO can shift observers’ beliefs about who is really to blame. This is a fundamental goal of DARVO-users: Convince others of your innocence. When study participants were exposed to a fictional perpetrator’s use of DARVO, they assigned less responsibility to the perpetrator and more responsibility to the victim. When a fictional perpetrator used DARVO to explain away sexual assault allegations, participants were less likely to say the perpetrator should face punishment and more willing to agree that the victim should be punished.
This research is consistent with what happened during Thomas’ confirmation hearing. After he testified, Thomas gained credibility in the public’s eye. Hill’s credibility, on the other hand, was damaged.
Research has also shown that DARVO is relatively common. When study participants were asked to report on their experiences confronting other people, nearly 72% had heard a denial, attack, and reversal of victim and offender. And the more DARVO participants heard, the higher levels of self-blame they felt. In a different study, exposure to DARVO was also linked to greater levels of psychological distress. Although these studies are correlational — which means it isn’t clear if hearing DARVO causes increases in self-blame or distress — they still suggest that being the recipient of DARVO is at least connected to worse well-being.
But what do we know about people who use DARVO? In a survey of over 900 participants, people who used more DARVO to respond to confrontation also reported perpetrating more sexual harassment. One reason for this finding is that people who engage in bad behavior — like sexual harassment — may be accustomed to responding with DARVO as a way to get away with their actions. This survey also found that people with greater DARVO tendencies were more accepting of rape myths, which are common but inaccurate beliefs about rape that excuse the actions of perpetrators and place blame on victims. The connection here may be simple: People who personally engage in victim blaming agree that victims, including victims of rape, are blameworthy.
As research continues to tell us more about DARVO, highly visible examples appear regularly in the news cycle. President Donald Trump, for instance, often reaches for denials, attacks, and victim-playing responses when faced with information that threatens his power or reputation. When talking about E. Jean Carroll — the writer whom Trump was found civilly liable for sexually abusing — the president has denied the sexual abuse, attacked her appearance, motives and sanity, and claimed to be the target of a witch hunt. Even Carroll herself couldn’t help but point out the pattern. In a 2019 interview with Anderson Cooper, she observed, “He denies. He turns it around. He threatens, and he attacks.”
Striking examples of DARVO can be found outside of the things political figures say. Beyond his noxious attacks on Judd, Weinstein has repeatedly used DARVO tactics in his many attempts to discredit the many women who come forward about his crimes.
More recently, the investigation into the seven Cornell University fraternity members who are accused of sexually assaulting a female undergraduate has unleashed a torrent of DARVO against the student known as Jane Doe. A visible part of the discourse about the Cornell Seven reveals how some have flatly rejected the possibility that Doe was assaulted, attacked her credibility and her appearance, and labeled the case as a “hoax.” Sympathy for the fraternity members is not too hard to find, either; Trump himself shared that he felt “badly” for the accused men.
Many may wonder whether DARVO is a necessary response to an accusation. How else is someone supposed to respond? But DARVO is not inevitable. Someone can admit their responsibility for causing harm and sincerely apologize, which is the most constructive path for all involved. If someone is innocent of the accusation — or wants others to believe they are — they can respectfully deny the allegation without attacking or putting themselves into the victim role. Thomas, for instance, who had chaired the very agency charged with enforcing sexual harassment law, could have responded to Hill’s testimony by saying: “I do not remember the events in this way but I know these conversations about sexual harassment are important, and I want to understand your experience.”
DARVO poses a significant social problem. For even the smallest transgressions between two individuals, it’s antagonistic and fails to provide a productive resolution. On a larger scale, DARVO stands in the way of justice by encouraging a pervasive and hostile disbelief of victims. Even our institutions can use this chilling tactic, resulting in a particularly harmful form ofinstitutional betrayal. This may be one reason many people fear coming forward to seek accountability and are effectively silenced.
Two stories of institutional betrayal were prominently featured in the 2015 documentary “The Hunting Ground,” which investigated sexual assault on college and university campuses. In 2007, during her freshman year at the University of North-Carolina, Annie Clark reported being sexually assaulted to campus officials. One employee compared rape to football. Annie was the quarterback; what could she have done differently? She had come seeking support and instead found herself being asked to account for her own supposed failure. Four years later, while a student at Harvard Law School, Kamilah Willingham encountered a struggle for accountability after reporting a sexual assault.
The stories of Clark, Willingham and others brought institutional betrayal painfully close: the place where you hoped to learn, belong and flourish can become another place entirely, one where you must fight to be heard.
When the documentary was recently screened at Harvard — one of the institutions whose responses it challenges — those stories were given particular force. They also offered a lens for examining institutional responses at Cornell University, the University of Chicago and beyond.
DARVO helps us name how institutional self-protection can become an attack on the person seeking help: deny responsibility, undermine the survivor’s credibility and cast the institution or the accused as the injured party. The student asking for protection becomes a threat to someone else’s future or reputation. Freyd has identified this institutional DARVO as a particularly harmful form of institutional betrayal.
But the film also follows Clark and her colleague Andrea Pino building a network of survivors who refuse to leave one another alone with these experiences. Universities could learn from them. The Center for Institutional Courage’s 12 steps call on institutions to welcome truth-tellers, respond well to disclosures, acknowledge harm and sustain the resources needed for change. Imagine the difference if a student’s disclosure was met with care — and a commitment to stay for the work of accountability and repair.
This underscores the good news of what we have learned: DARVO loses some of its power when people know what it is.
This underscores the good news of what we have learned: DARVO loses some of its power when people know what it is. In one experiment, some participants read a one-paragraph explanation of DARVO — what it stands for and why perpetrators may use it — before reading a fictional scenario in which a perpetrator used the tactic. Compared with participants who had not read the explanation, DARVO-educated participants believed the victim more and supported the perpetrator less.
Institutional DARVO can be combated, too, withinstitutional courage. By taking actionable steps such as cherishing whistleblowers, practicing transparency, and committing to seek truth and engage in moral action, institutions can act in ways that restore trust and help people who have been harmed come forward.
Judd has described the effect in her own life. “When I know I’m being attacked, I immediately remind myself that that is a common strategy,” she toldThe Hollywood Reporter in 2017. “It’s DARVO.”
This is why Merriam-Webster’s entry for DARVO matters. Its presence in the dictionary makes the term available to a wide audience; anyone can look it up and learn what it means. This access is especially important for victims who have been made to doubt themselves, who can now more easily reach for a term that shines a light on their experiences. It also offers a critical reassurance: No, you’re not crazy — you’re being DARVOed. The tactic’s efficacy depends on a confused audience, and every person who learns about the acronym is a little bit harder to fool.
“My name is Abdul; it means servant.” So begins the most compelling ad of this year’s election cycle. Dr. Abdul El-Sayed speaks, simply and directly, to the camera. Seated in a brown leather armchair while holding a coffee mug, Michigan’s Democratic Senate nominee lays claim to his Muslim faith in straightforward, affecting terms.
“I pray everyday,” he says. “I reflect on my role in this life, on this earth, how we leave it better than we found it, to serve God, to serve our neighbors.”
A cloud of suspicion, much of it tangled up in his ethnicity and religion, has hovered over El-Sayed’s candidacy. The othering has been both blatant and subtle. In August, I spoke with Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., as he made his way from the Capitol subway to his Senate office the day after El-Sayed’s primary win. Tuberville told me the Michigan Democrat was “a cheerleader for 9/11” and “basically” a terrorist. A pair of debates has seen El-Sayed’s Republican opponent, former Rep. Mike Rogers, accusing him of being “bought” by and “pledg[ing] his support” to the Muslim Brotherhood, claims that are unfounded. Others, including wavering centrist Democrats such as party strategist James Carville, who recently gave El-Sayed a reluctant endorsement, have pointed to the nominee’s attacks on Israel over the Gaza war as evidence that he is hostile to Jews and Judaism. More broadly, anti-Muslim rhetoric and attacks are becoming a defining feature of the GOP.
El-Sayed’s ad, released last Sunday, is entitled “Prayer” and marks an obvious attempt to refute those accusations and change the conversation — to persuade hesitant voters in the final days of this tight race to pull the lever for him. As El-Sayed speaks, snapshots roll. He stands with a voter, who points across the river, a subtle message of an aspirational future. There is El-Sayed standing and holding hands in prayer with a group of Black churchgoers. A menorah and a humble church flash on the screen. And then there’s the candidate himself, standing alone in prayer, his head bowed.
El-Sayed connects his belief to a national crisis of faith embodied in Washington: “We don’t have faith in our future; we don’t have faith that we can actually fix things.” Then he returns to his own candidacy. “I’m Abdul El-Sayed,” he says at the end. “A man of faith — and that’s a good thing.”
The ad offers a reason for his candidacy and life of public service, and ends what has been a tumultuous campaign on a grace note — and with an implicit promise. Everyone is welcome in my coalition, El-Sayed is saying, I’ll protect you.
A good election spot offers an appeal to voters by telling a story, and “Prayer” certainly does that. But there are other ingredients that can boost a political ad to the realm of greatness. In a positive ad, voters are offered an intimate look into the candidate’s reason for running. “Prayer” also does that, and therein lies its true power. It shows a different side to El-Sayed, whose refusal to back down from a fight and ability to cut through the noise, as Salon’s Amanda Marcotte recently wrote, “terrifies MAGA.” The ad offers a reason for his candidacy and life of public service, and ends what has been a tumultuous campaign on a grace note — and with an implicit promise. Everyone is welcome in my coalition, El-Sayed is saying, I’ll protect you.
Even though “Prayer” is targeted to Michigan voters, it cannot be divorced from what’s happening nationally. It adds El-Sayed to an emerging list of Democrats who, as unabashed members of the religious left, are comfortable talking about their faith openly. Most, such as Texas U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico, Kansas U.S. Senate nominee Adam Hamilton, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, are Christian. Others, such as Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, are Jewish. By attaching his name to those ranks, El-Sayed is staking out important space for Muslims in public life.
But there’s more to it than just his religious and ethnic identity. The ad’s message serves as a proxy for the stark choice facing voters across the country, and just south of the Wolverine State’s border. In Ohio, Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican nominee for governor, funded and produced an ad attacking Dr. Amy Acton, his Democratic opponent, and featuring her own mother.
The spot, released only 24 hours after El-Sayed’s, carries a message that is the direct inverse of the Michigan candidate’s. Rooted in cruelty and scripted with a lashing of DARVO, a tactic easily recognizable to victims of abuse — Deny, Attack and Reverse Victim Offender order — the ad is uncomfortable to watch, and vile.
Viewers see an elderly woman looking into the camera and identifying herself as Donna Arthur. “It’s not easy for a mother to say this,” she says, “but Amy has a serious problem: she is a liar.” Arthur goes on to attack her daughter’s credibility, but without producing any evidence beyond her own testimony, which is severely imperiled by a documented history of her own actions.
Arthur has been estranged from her daughter since 1978, when the 12-year-old Acton accused her stepfather of raping her. According to court records, Cledith Arthur was arrested and charged with the crime, but fled the state before being tried. When his wife supported him, branding young Amy Acton a liar, both the girl and her younger brother were removed from Donna Arthur’s custody and raised by their biological father. In a statement released by her campaign, Acton’s brother stood by his sister’s account and branded Ramaswamy’s campaign “despicable” for turning the abuse Acton says she suffered “into a political talking point.”
In the ad, Arthur does not mince words. “My daughter needs help,” she says, “and she can’t help you if she can’t help herself . . . Don’t vote for people who lie; don’t let her become your governor.”
Setting aside Arthur’s agency and the willing role she played in the ad, Ramaswamy has chosen to retraumatize his opponent before the eyes of millions of voters. By platforming a woman who is, at the very least, an enabler and accomplice to the alleged sexual assault of a minor, if perhaps only in the aftermath, he is sending a chilling signal to victims of abuse in Ohio and throughout the U.S.: There are consequences to speaking up.
But if Ramaswamy’s behavior wasn’t bad enough, Donald Trump and JD Vance had to get in on the act. Vance, who as an Ohioan has particular skin in the game, positioned himself alongside Ramaswamy as a truth-teller, saying he “wasn’t even supposed to talk about” the ad but “couldn’t help himself.” The vice president went on to praise the candidate for having the “audacity to run a TV commercial which calls it out like it is and calls Amy Acton a liar.”
On Thursday, the president was even more crass, calling the ad an example of “hitting pay dirt.” Ramaswamy, he wrote on Truth Social, “should keep it up, and let everyone listen to the mother of a defective, dishonest, and incapable Candidate, explain how the daughter is a DISASTER who, uncontrollably, lies, cheats, and steals! I only wish the mothers of my opponents would be so brave.”
A handful of other Republicans, including outgoing Gov. Mike DeWine and former Ohio Rep. John Kasich, decried the commercial and said it should be taken down.
There is no other word for the behavior of Ramaswamy and MAGA leaders: It is personally and publicly cruel, and the message it sends acts as a reveals far too much about Republican policies and the political leaders who advance and implement them. In their world, victims are treated with disdain and abusers defended while the American people are subjected to severe economic and psychological mistreatment.
The cost-of-living crisis is ignored, all because a vainglorious president decides to wage an unnecessary war in Iran. The healthcare of millions is stripped away to line the pockets of the wealthiest. The rights of women, people of color, immigrants and LGBTQ+ Americans are under assault because of leaders and voters who want to hoard their privilege.
Against this backdrop, El-Sayed’s ad stands as a balm for voters who long not just for a fighter, as he has well demonstrated he is, but also for a leader who is unafraid to lead with compassion and humility. It’s too early to know if his appeal will result in success at the polls. But the ad, in contrast to Ramaswamy’s, nonetheless underscores what’s at stake in the midterms: a choice between faithful service and abject cruelty.
Bernadette Greene-Placentia would like you to know the story of her rape is not an “October Surprise.”
She did not conspire with the media to publish the graphic details of her sexual assault on the same day early voting ballots were sent out to voters in Arizona. Her harrowing account of being bludgeoned and violated by two men in the middle of the night in a suburban parking lot is not a “hoax” she concocted to win over voters’ sympathies. Her fragmented memories of the attack, and her initial reluctance to go to authorities, are not evidence of an elaborate lie, nor of a nefarious Democratic plot to wrest control of Congress, as some right-wing influencers have suggested. It was hard enough coming forward to say she was raped, she told TPM. Now she has to contend with all these men, with millions of followers online, loudly asserting that maybe she wasn’t. She can’t help but remember that these men publicly trying to poke holes in her story have mothers. “Is this really how you were raised?” she wants to ask them.
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