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The military has put forth lots of theories, but they have failed to connect the dots of the most shameful burden a soldier can bear . . .

The Military's Secret Shame — when men in the military rape other men in the ranks, no one dares talk about it. Why the rampant increase sexual assault of males in the service is covered up; it's politically incorrect.

Blake Stephens, a young Army recruit, was subjected to verbal and physical attacks. A group of soldiers tackled him, shoved a soda bottle into his rectum, and threw him backward off an elevated platform onto the hood of a car. 'You just feel trapped . . . They basically tell you you're going to have to keep working with these people day after day, night after night. You don't have a choice.”

His assailants told him that once deployed to Iraq , they would shoot him in the head. "They told me they were going to have sex with me all the time when we were there," he says.

Stephens twice attempted suicide. His marriage fell apart. Sen. Barbara Boxer’s office said, "There is no way for our office to administratively protect your son’s military standing . . ."

When Greg Jeloudov was gang-raped in his barracks by men who said they were showing him who was in charge. When he reported the attack to unit commanders, they told him, 'It must have been your fault. You must have provoked them."

Jeloudov and 16 other former and active-duty service members filed a class-action lawsuit against Defense Secretary Robert Gates and his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld, charging they "ran institutions in which perpetrators were promoted... and Plaintiffs and other victims were openly subjected to retaliation," reported Newsweek.

The Department of Veterans Affairs admits nearly 50,000 male veterans screened positive for "military sexual trauma" last year, up from 30,000.

For the victims, the experience is a special kind of hell—a soldier can't just quit his job to get away from his abusers. Fear of a ruined career is a major factor preventing victims from coming forward.

In 2010 the Pentagon anonymously surveyed active-duty soldiers who had been sexually assaulted about why they declined to report their attacks.

Almost half the responding men said they kept silent because they didn't want anyone to know, a third said they didn’t think anything would be done, and almost 30 percent said they were afraid of retaliation or reprisals, according to the Newsweek report.