Medically released from the military last year at the rank of corporal, Skibinsky said he was sharing his story with the Star to help shine a light on the experiences of male survivors of sexual violence in the Canadian armed forces. With the help of therapy, Skibinsky was able to come to terms over the years with the fact that he was sexually assaulted.īut the long-lasting psychological impact remained, including post-traumatic stress disorder, exacerbated by what he described as inaction by the military police when he first tried to report it, along with the failure of fellow soldiers to stick up for him publicly. “No guy wants to admit that somebody else got the better of them that way and it’s hard for me to admit.”
“I don’t like admitting it and I always say ‘Oh, I wasn’t raped,’ but that might be a bit of male bravado,” said Skibinsky in an interview with the Star, speaking publicly for the first time about his experience as a male survivor of sexual violence in the Canadian armed forces. When he was 24 years old, Colten Skibinsky was sexually assaulted in the showers of a military base.Īlthough he didn’t call it that back in 2013, when he says two fellow male soldiers came into his shower stall at CFB Borden, one attacking him while the other stood nearby. Warning: Story contains details of a sexual assault
