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Some photographs show female Marines posing topless in their
dress uniform slacks, or with their camouflage blouses open, in
pictures they thought would forever be secret. Others show
private moments swiped from their personal social media sites.

In one photograph, surreptitiously taken in February, a female
corporal from Camp Lejeune, in North Carolina, is shown bent
over from behind. The image, once posted online, was flooded
with derogatory comments, including suggestions that she should
be raped.

Now the Defense Department has opened a criminal investigation
and the Marine Corps is facing its latest unwanted controversy
after it was revealed over the weekend that a secret online
Facebook group of active-duty and veteran Marines shared
thousands of naked and private photos of Marine Corps women.

The invitation-only group, called Marines United and made up of
more than 30,000 active duty Marines and veterans, built online
dossiers on Marine women without their knowledge or consent,
listing dozens of women’s names, ranks, social media handles and
where they are stationed.

The Marine Corps quickly condemned the all-male group, saying in
a statement on Sunday that Marines United’s conduct “destroys
morale, erodes trust and degrades the individual.” The Naval
Criminal Investigation service has opened an investigation, and
the Marine Corps said that any Marine who “directly participates
in, encourages or condones” illicit activity could face court-
martial. The Marine Corps declined to say how many Marines were
being investigated.

The news of the group’s existence was first reported by a
veteran’s news organization, The War Horse, on Saturday.

One of the victims of the group was Marisa Woytek, a Marine
lance corporal serving at Camp Pendleton, who had photos taken
from her Instagram account and posted to the group. She was
alerted by friends and sent a screen shot.

“They were nothing scandalous, just me saying good morning,”
Corporal Woytek said in an interview. “But the comments went
just as far toward sexual assault and rape and degrading as your
imagination can go.”

“I love the Marine Corps,” she added. “But after seeing that, I
wouldn’t re-enlist.”

Several Marines said the Marines United postings are an
evolution of a retaliatory practice called “make her famous.”
Marines would share nude photographs of girlfriends or spouses
they believed were cheating through text messages to a broad
swath of people, encouraging them to forward the photos.

Jason Elsdon, a Marine in his early 40s, who said he was a
member of Marines United and said he played no role in posting,
organizing or disseminating the photographs, argued that people
were overreacting. “It was just nudes,” he said. “I scrolled
past it.” He added: “I don’t feel that it’s right, but I don’t
feel that people should be utterly surprised that it is
happening. There are other groups, and many are civilians, that
are the same way.”

He defended the larger mission of the group and the web page,
which is a grab bag of military news and humor, saying it
provided needed support. He cited instances in which servicemen
were contemplating suicide and the page would “light up” with
people who wanted to help.

Though all military branches face problems with integrating
women, the Marine Corps has perhaps the toughest challenge. Not
only does it have the smallest proportion of women of all the
services — 7 percent, compared with 14 percent in the Army — it
also has the highest rate of sexual assault reports. Reforms
also continually collide with a culture of ground-pounding
infantry fighters that despite the efforts of some in the
leadership, embrace a tradition of brawling, hard-drinking and
sexual exploits.

“As Marines, we revel in all of it,” one online poster said in a
debate on Reddit about the group, posted months before its
existence was publicly revealed. “As a whole, Marines are a
rough and tumble group of war dogs with a taste for the carnal
things in life.”

But many Marines have pushed back against the idea that crude
behavior is intrinsic to their identity.

“That is absolute nonsense,” said Maj. Clark Carpenter, a Marine
Corps spokesman. “A true warrior carries himself with a sense of
decency and compassion, but is always ready for the fight,” he
said. “Those who hide in the dark corners of the internet with a
shield of anonymity and purport to be warriors are nothing of
the sort — they are nothing more than cowards.”

Still, the Marine Corps leadership has never fully rid the Corps
of its rough ethos, and in recent years it has been hit with a
number of scandals when this mentality broke into the open,
including allegations that commanders retaliated against women
who reported sexual assaults and recent reports that drill
instructors hazed recruits, especially Muslims.

The Marine Corps is also the military branch that has put up the
stiffest resistance to opening combat jobs to women, with
several high-ranking Marines saying the move could hurt combat
effectiveness. A small group of women joined combat units in
January.

Women in the Marine Corps say the culture has been hostile to
them for years.

“When I was in Iraq, I always carried a can of black spray paint
to cover up what was written about me in the port-a-johns,” said
Kate Hendricks Thomas, a Marine veteran who is now a professor
of behavioral health at Charleston Southern University. “I tried
to laugh it off, but the harassment is so pervasive that it can
have a real effect.”

Marines United collected thousands of photos that appeared to be
a mix of private photos shared by former partners and images
taken from personal accounts. Some were photos of women clothed,
and others in various states of undress, in civilian and
military clothing, and often accompanied by a blizzard of lewd
comments.

In September, a Marine veteran named John Albert was invited to
join the site, and, disgusted by what he found, alerted Facebook.

“I have tons of friends who got killed in Afghanistan and have
died since they came home. These types of actions dishonor their
names and the entire Marine Corps,” Mr. Albert said in an
interview.

Facebook took down the page temporarily for violating a ban on
nudity after the complaint, Mr. Albert said, but the group
apparently got around restrictions on nudity by shifting photos
to a shared Google file.

Then on Saturday, a Marine veteran named Thomas Brennan, who
served in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he was wounded by a rocket-
propelled grenade, and later founded the nonprofit news site The
War Horse, wrote about the group.

Marine Corps officials, alerted to the site by Mr. Brennan,
contacted Google and had the files removed.

Since publishing the story, Mr. Brennan said he and his family
had received death threats from members of the group. He charged
that one member was offering “500 bucks for nudes” of Mr.
Brennan’s wife and said he was “cooperating with multiple law
enforcement agencies” regarding threats to him and his family.

“I’m no angel. I have deployed just like these Marines. I’ve sat
around a fire in Afghanistan and shared that dark, dark Marine
humor. In ways, that humor has healing properties. But this is
different. It has gone too far,” he said. “We are hurting other
Marines.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/06/us/inquiry-opens-into-how- 30000-marines-shared-illicit-images-of-female-peers.html
 

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