Military rape victims are re-victimized by the military. Soldiers are often ostracized, punished by the chain of command, and ultimately forced to leave the military because they report being raped. My former shipmate, Petty Officer Second Class (PO2), Rebecca Blumer, chose to report her rape and suffered the consequences. After reporting rape, female service members are often ostracized by individuals in their chain of command. This happened to Petty Officer (PO) Blumer even before his attack became public knowledge. She was drugged and raped after going out for drinks in 2010 (Erdely). PO Blumer was stopped for driving without lights on and arrested for driving under the influence. After the master-at-arms picked her up from prison, even though she told him she needed to go to hospital, he took her to the offices of the Judge Advocate General (Erdely). Her chain of command was waiting to punish her for drunk driving (Erdely). He wrote his own statement about what he thought had happened and how he needed urgent medical attention (Erdely). She was told she would be taken to the hospital, but only for a toxicology report, to see if there were actually anti-rape drugs in her system (Erdely). “Whether you get a rape kit is up to you,” the JAG told Blumer (Erdely). She was later shaken by the Jag's question: "Did you inflict your wounds yourself" (Erdely). The rumor around the command was that he made up rape to get out of a DUI. “Literally, the day he left “I went back to work, we heard about it here,” says former Petty Officer 3rd Class Jennifer Kinnaird-Estrada, a linguist stationed at Blumer's previous command in San Antonio. “They were like, 'She's such a bitch here, was she like that there? ?...... halfway through the document ...... was discharged from the Navy 10 days later.”(Erdely). The common story of victims who report being raped, according to a worker at the Military Rape Crisis Center, is that they were "greeted with disbelief and skepticism, blamed for the crime, and eliminated in one way or another" (Kitfield). Until the military stops re-victimizing victims, it will never be able to completely eradicate rape from the ranks. Works Cited Erdely, Sabrina Rubin. “The Rape of Petty Officer Blumer: Inside the Military Culture of Sexual Abuse, Denial, and Cover-up.” Rolling Stones magazine. February 14, 2013. Web. November 4, 2013 http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-rape-of-petty-officer-blumer-20130214 Kitfield, James. “The enemy within”. The National Newspaper. September 13, 2012. Web. November 4, 2013 http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/the-military-s-rape-problem-20120913