Military Reckoning

Right now, all over the news and social media is the horrific story of Vanessa Guillen and her tragic murder. The Army investigators say they have found no evidence of her being sexually harassed but her family thinks otherwise and I'm inclined to agree with them.Her death is one of many casualties of the United States military and its toxic culture issues. The military has long had a problem with sexual harassment/assault within its ranks and a reporting/ justice system that often harms the victims further. A large group of women veterans/servicewomen wrote a letter outlining demands to improve the failures of the service, titled “Women Vets & Servicewomen Demand #JusticeforVanessaGuillen - 4 July 2020”. I encourage you to give it a read, so many women risked putting their names out there and standing up for justice, that you can at least spend a moment to view it.

None of the issues are new, there already was a cloud of sexual harassment, assault and secrecy back in 2008 when I was at basic training at Lackand AFB. This isn’t the first time this toxic assault culture has come out into public view in a big way. In 2011 there was the news that broke about male MTI’s engaging in sexual assault and rape from 2009-2011. By the time the scandal had finished unfolding, 62 cadets alleged sexual misconduct at the hands of more than 30 training instructors. It all came to light because a trainee who hadn’t been assaulted told what she knew. I wish I could say that it had been me, but I didn’t have the courage back then to speak out and say what I knew. Keeping silent about what I knew until 2018 when I first wrote about it, is one of my biggest regrets in life.

I knew of several instructors who were sleeping with trainees at BMT( Basic Military Training). While I had heard whispers of rapes within the confines of the female dorms late at night, I personally knew of several young (18-22) women who were engaging in sex with instructors. I can’t use the word consensual here, even though the women wanted to have sex with the men, as there was an extreme power difference at play that I can’t ignore. When you are at BMT you are in a high stress environment where everyone is yelling at you and you have zero power or say in anything. You literally have to get a written pass to go see a doctor while in training. It is a place where the trainees are at the mercy of every MTI and leader on the base. This makes for ripe grounds for men in power to abuse it.

I spent several months as a “separation guide” which meant I was in a dorm and helped to out-process the trainees who were being discharged early, before completing BMT. The reasons people got an early separation ranged from previously undiagnosed medical issues that are disqualifying to service, to people lying on their forms or not being in the right mental state. There were many who ended up in that unit suffering from severe anxiety and PTSD, some of who claim they never had mental health issues before enlisting.

I was privy to many tearful breakdowns but the one that got to me the most was from the young woman who told me she was raped by a staff member but wouldn’t say who or report it. She came from a military family and said that she didn’t want them to be disappointed in her or blame her. She had spent her whole life preparing to enlist and she wanted so badly to serve her country as her family had for generations and yet one man chose to destroy it. Her heart was broken because that moment of violence took everything from her that she had dreamed of and she was too afraid to speak out. The only reason I think she even told me is because she had already completed the separation process and the bus taking her to the airport was about to leave.

It doesn’t just happen in training either, several close friends of mine were raped by higher ranking personnel within their own unit, after they were out of training. These women were attacked at their home bases, on deployments overseas and on missions. If you thought trying to get justice for rape in the civilian world was bad, you’ve never dealt with the UCMJ and seeing rape victims being threatened with charges of adultery and with loss of rank and pay for reporting. The military world is very insular and because of its very nature of constantly moving people around, everyone tends to have a connection to everyone else. Your entire life is in their control, from where you live, where and who you work with, it’s all decided for you. Who are you supposed to report your rape to when that person is the one who did it? These are the questions that victims ask themselves before deciding to say anything.

You can’t quit your job in the military, so when your unit starts harassing you, you’re fucked. Sure, try to transfer out and if they actually do it, you’ll end up somewhere worse with new people harassing you. This was the story from so many of my friends, and these stories keep coming. Some of the women ended up taking their own life, rather than deal with the constant abuse they got from their fellow servicemen after reporting. Many others have PTSD and lifelong traumatic memories. These stories and seeing what my friends had suffered through has affected my soul. Why don’t we, as a society, care enough about the women willing to lay down their lives for us? Or is it more of the general public not knowing how bad it really is?

I feel such a need to put these stories out there so that the world can know and to amplify those women who come forward. I suspect that most civilians have no clue of what’s going on and how the structure of the military puts up so many more roadblocks for victims. One of the first things you pick up on in training, is that units are supposed to stick together. You need this to be effective and work as a team and there are so many good things that come from being a strong unit, but that same group thinking can also turn out badly. This comes out in the worst way when the men in power all cover for each other and try to intimidate and harass a woman who reports assault against “one of them”, even if she is also part of that unit.

One of my best friends was raped by her First Sergeant when out on a training mission. He got her alone, raped her and later on that night she tried to kill herself. The medics saved her and it was called an accident. While she didn’t report her rape that night to the medics out of fear, she did eventually report it but afterwards she was harassed for months by the men she served with, until she took her own life. Military women are being killed at the hands of the men they serve with, some literally and some by their constant harassment and abuse.

The Pentagon report from earlier this isn’t encouraging. The Defense Department’s fiscal year 2019 report on sexual assault in the military said there were 7,825 sexual assault reports involving service members as victims or subjects, a 3% increase compared to 2018. According to the report there is still confusion among some service members on what constitutes sexual harassment. That is alarming.

My only hope is that there truly becomes a reckoning within the military, like there has in so many other industries in the last few years. But it’s not an industry or business, it’s the military and until those who are in control truly make change and turn the internal culture around, we will see more tragedies unfold like Vanessa Guillen.