TICKER: Majority of sexual assaults and rapes committed in military in 2011 were against men

Rape is not just a nightmare for military women.

Of the estimated 19,000 reported sexual assaults and rapes in the armed forces last year, the majority were actually committed against men.

Men are assaulted at a lower rate — 1% of servicemen reported being attacked by a comrade last year versus 4.4% of women — but that still translates to more than 10,000 cases compared with 9,000 attacks on female recruits and officers.

“This is the supersilent epidemic,” said Dr. Curt Dill, chief of emergency medicine at the Manhattan VA, who recently opened a safe haven for female vets to get help for military sexual trauma.

“It is not accepted in our culture that this happens to men, so they are far more ashamed and embarrassed and far less likely to talk about their experiences with their health care providers or even their loved ones,” Dill said.

Long Island natives Michael Matthews and his social worker wife, Geri Lynn, are on a mission to change all that. They have teamed up with a New Mexico filmmaker on “Justice Denied,” a documentary about sexual assaults against military men.

Michael Matthews was raped in 1974 at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, a year after graduating from North Babylon High School.

Three servicemen, he said, were lying in wait in the dark and struck him from behind as he walked past a construction site on base. He was knocked unconscious, beaten up and sodomized.

Afraid he would be kicked out if he reported the incident to his superiors, Matthews, like most victims of military sexual trauma, suffered in silence for his 20-year career as a communications specialist and electrician.

“I lived with this beast in my head for nearly 30 years, before telling my wife and going for counseling,” said Matthews, who spent years with pent-up rage and depression and had two failed marriages. He tried to commit suicide several times.

The media have mostly focused on sexual crimes against women, but Matthews said abuse in the military is “not a gender issue but a human rights issue.”

“It’s rampant and nobody knows about it,” he added. “Our government has to change the laws to make the perpetrators and commanders accountable.”

Last week, the Daily News ran a two-part series on the shocking numbers of military women who have been sexually assaulted by their comrades. Three generations of women spoke of the horror of rape and sexual harassment — and lives forever marked with posttraumatic stress disorder.

The Brooklyn and Bronx VA hospitals have started therapy groups for male survivors. The ages of the veterans range from 25 to a man in his 80s who was raped during World War II.

Brooklyn VA social worker Patti Marin said she has counseled about 40 men, and decided to start a group session because all her male patients believed they were the only man this had ever happened to and it was somehow their fault.

“They feel terrible guilt as men they weren’t ‘strong enough’ to stop it,” said Marin. “A lot of military sexual trauma survivors also develop a drug or alcohol problem to try to numb themselves or forget about it.”

The majority of the attacks are committed by straight men against other straight men as an act of power or violence, but gay men in the military have also suffered horrific attacks.

Mark, a 30-year-old flight attendant from the Bronx, joined the Air Force in 2000, following in his family’s footsteps. He was trained as a cop and was stationed in Alaska for much of the time. He said he endured constant sexual harassment and taunting, although he never said he was gay.

In 2002, two men from his unit paid him a visit at his solo post in the middle of the night.

“They exposed themselves and said, ‘C’mon, you know what to do.’ It was degrading,” Mark, who asked that his last name not be used, told The News. “I became depressed, my superiors took my weapon away, and I was forced out.”

“I wish I could have stayed and had a career, but it was too much,” he said.

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