I had the privilege of interviewing 58 women veterans from WWII up to and including Iraq and Afghanistan between 2006 and 2012. It was sparked by a story I listened to of a woman veteran mail clerk who was assaulted by a postal inspector. He had done his white glove inspection and left. She changed into civilian clothes and was outside when he told her he forgot something and needed to go back in. Once inside, he forcefully raped her. Even though she fought valiantly and even found a letter opener to help her, he was able to use that against her by stabbing her in the foot. She reported what happened the next day and was confined to her quarters. Weeks later she was feeling ill and went to sick call only to learn that she was pregnant. The captain told her “Pregnant women were not allowed in the army,” and she was told to take off her uniform and was confined her to quarters. He insisted she wear only civilian clothing. She was given a discharge and escorted off the base without any belongings or even money for a phone call. She found work and places to stay until she had her baby at an unwed mother’s hospital and gave the baby up for adoption. She told me she was a citizen, a soldier and lost her health, career, her child, and her future, while the rapist got away with no consequences. He had a good life, married, had children, retired from the army and lost nothing. She told me she was proud she served, but “Look what my country did to me!”
That story took me on a six -year journey learning all I could about military sexual trauma and listening to many women veterans share their stories. Each was different, but after a while it was clear that when a woman reported a sexual assault she was retaliated against severely, often shunned by her military unit/family and put through an emotional hell worse than the rape itself.
From that time to now, reports of sexual assaults in the military have doubled and the retaliation rate went from 62% to 64%. Nothing helpful has been done to stop all this.
It is time to acknowledge that our young women in military are being sexually assaulted mercilessly, being retaliated against for reporting the crime and finally in their emotional distress and lacking support, they take their own life. Military Sexual Assault is the biggest factor in military women committing suicide.
“They say that rape is the worst crime you can survive. It is the murder of one’s soul, and an extremely difficult reality to deal with…to be raped by someone you have been told you must trust and then scorned by your unit. You try to do what is right. You go to the Army Criminal Investigation Command for help. They tell you that you are lying and they are going to press charges. No one in your unit will talk with you, fearing guilt by association. That is just the beginning of Military Sexual Trauma (MST).” -Susan Avila Smith, founder, Women Organizing Women.
I have been writing about this subject and sending them out for years to NO Avail. Rarely are they published. It has been discouraging and frustrating. It feels that no one cares or is interested in supporting women in our military. I decided to write this memorial to highlight these women and their plight and see if someone will publish it so it can get out.
Sissy Cox is described as a miracle baby by her parents Beatriz and Jeff, because she only weighed 2 ½ pounds at birth. She grew to be a strong young woman, full of life. Sissy joined the Air Force after 9/11 telling them she wanted to serve her country. After a good first six months she was sexually assaulted by her superior at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. After that she was diagnosed with military sexual trauma syndrome and sent to San Antonio, Texas to be closer to home. She was on the mental health ward of the San Antonio Military Medical Center when she was raped again, this time by a contracted certified nurses’ assistant. She was suffering immensely already and after being raped, supposedly while safe in the hospital, she felt she could not go on, purchased a gun and shot herself May 12th of this year, 2020.
Julia Villalobos, a 51- year-old social worker from Kent, Washington deliberately put her body down on Interstate 5 where she was instantly killed by a semi truck. Julia had served in the Coast Guard for five years with two tours in Iraq, one at Gitmo, where she was sexually assaulted. For years after her assault she was in one or another type of therapy to help heal from her trauma including a writing group. Recently, women veterans from the writing group turned on Julia and both rejected and abandoned her. They were her support group. Other women veterans I knew, were willing to support Julia, but after the electroshock therapy, which altered her brain so that she was no longer herself, her emotional pain intensified to such a degree she could not endure. It was from that intense ongoing pain from the military sexual trauma and having other women veterans isolate her, that she took her own life. There is nothing more painful than having your own brother or sister soldiers or veterans turn on you.
For any veteran to heal they need an empathic, supportive, loving community. I have been fortunate at age 80, to find just such a community in the Puget Sound area and beyond on Zoom. Veteran Rites has regular circles of return filled with veterans of all ages seeking to let go of what still causes them emotional pain in a non-judgmental space. In Veteran Rites there are many options to connect with other veterans, learn to do art, write, sing, and go out on the land for more releasing and healing. www.veteranrites.org
The culture of abuse toward women in the military has never been acknowledged by the military and it is so pervasive and embedded in military culture and supported, that it may never change. It is an outrage and leads to the loss of far too many strong women.
They take their lives to relieve themselves of their ongoing pain and distress caused by their military sexual assault and subsequent retaliation for reporting. I am writing this so that readers know it is happening all too often. These women need help.
The one thing that might make a difference is the passage of the Military Justice Improvement Act (MJIA), which would take reporting out of the chain of command. But it would be only a start. In 2012, I wrote a personal note inside 108 copies of my book: Women Under Fire: Abuse in the Military, which I gave to senators and congressional representatives in hopes they would support passage of the MJIA. That legislation did not pass. There is so much to do to get each and every branch of the military to clean up their unacknowledged, yet supported, culture of abuse toward women in the military. For more detailed information on this see www.womenunderfire.net
Sarah L. Blum, is an 81- year-old decorated nurse Vietnam veteran who earned the Army Commendation Medal serving as an operating room nurse at the 12th Evacuation Hospital
Cu Chi, Vietnam during the height of the fighting in 1967. Sarah is the author of the book: Women Under Fire: Abuse in the Military.
