Amnesty Magazine
Women's Voices
From Camouflaging Criminals: Sexual Violence Against Women in the Military
Serving their country, often in dangerous combat zones, women in the military are coming forward to report rape and sexual assault at the hands of fellow soldiers. The women’s voices, and those of the wives and girlfriends of soldiers suffering domestic abuse, reflect not only pain and grief, but outrage at a military they think has betrayed them.
MARIAN
HOOD
The men including her drill sargent took turns raping and sodomizing
her, Hood said. They beat and kicked her, fracturing her ribs, right
knee, nose, right cheekbone and spine. They urinated on her, burned
her with cigarettes, split her lip and spit on her, while threatening
to kill her, she said.
Years later, still suffering from the attack injuries, she has been diagnosed with cancer. Her instructions for her daughters are explicit. “I have a will. They join the military, they get no money.” And although she is a veteran, she refuses to fly an American flag. “The red represents the blood I’ve shed. The blue represents my bruises—the way my face looked. I was beaten and raped for my country. That should be enough.”
CONSTANCE
CULBRETH
The scene where Culbreth lay dying was so gruesome that the first police
officer to look into the room exclaimed, “Oh, my God.”
Her boyfriend, a sergeant who had returned from Kuwait six weeks earlier, confessed, telling detectives that he had been stressed while he was stationed overseas and was worried that Culbreth was being unfaithful.
“He felt like she drove him to do what he did,” recalled a Tampa homicide detective.
FRANCES
HUDSON
“I have problems to this day—nobody can touch my face,”
said Hudson, now 60. “I freeze; I get flashbacks. I can’t
breathe because he [the rapist] covered my face. ...After all the brainwashing
you get in the military, you really feel it’s your fault. The
hardest thing to get past is that you are not the guilty one.”
IOLANDA
THOMPSON
“I was afraid to say anything, afraid of failing, afraid of being
sent home. …My father was in the military, and my mother had pleaded
with me not to join. I was under the impression I’d be in a lot
of trouble.”
SUSAN
ARMENTA
“You just didn’t hear about being raped in the military,”
said Armenta, who was alone in her barracks when a supervisor sexually
assaulted her. As he was leaving, Armenta recalls his saying, “Thank
you. You just made my day.” She did not report him, she said,
for fear she would be demoted or punished.
BEVERLY
KONDEL
The military attitude concerning rape, she said, “was that it
was always the woman’s fault.” So she did not report it.
“After being raped, you don’t think you deserve much in life. So it’s real hard to get it when you don’t think you deserve it.
“I think I should have been a different person.”
DEBORA
JOHNSON
“People who know me know I’m not crazy. I’m really
not crazy. If you want to join the military, join the military. But
by God, watch your back.”
After Johnson and several other female soldiers reported they had been drugged and gang raped at a party by fellow soldiers, the army took no disciplinary action against the men, she said.
“Yeah, I was pregnant from the rape and reported I didn’t know who the father was because it was multiple men, so the military gave me an abortion and then after the abortion discharged me because they didn’t want women like me in the military. ...So I went home in disgrace. I went home and I became what I was accused of, basically. I was out of control. I remembered walking down the street thinking about committing suicide [but] instead became very promiscuous, and I learned later that this was normal. ...I’m not going to stop living for what somebody else decided they wanted to do to my life. I try to do the best I can.”
FAREN
JONES
“They looked at me and laughed. I still get angry about that.
I was powerless, and have been powerless ever since. But I’m working
on it.”
At the hearing, Jones said, she was asked, “What clothes did you wear? Did you brush your breasts against them?”
The men were given verbal warnings. “They got nothing. I got destroyed.”
SHARON
MIXON
“I was just told, ‘What do you expect being a female in
combat? What do you expect? You think it’s bad now, you open your
mouth again.’ And because I wanted to be a soldier I didn’t.
I actually had this warped sense of obligation and duty to the military...and
one of the reasons I didn’t say anything was because women are
only now being accepted as soldiers and this was something I wanted
to do. I wanted to serve my country and I didn’t want anyone to
know that this happened in the military because: How would people think
about the army then and then they wouldn’t want to join? And I
thought that I...was serving my country.
“Being shot at is hard, but being raped... And every time they treat me like crap. I’m not talking about special treatment, I’m talking about getting treated like a soldier. It’s like being raped all over again: Fighting for money from the VA. Fighting for treatment. Fighting for somebody just to give you an answer...is like being raped because it takes a part of your soul.”
GLORIA
SCOTT
“I didn’t report it because where was I safe on that base?
He could go anywhere...and who was I going to tell?” Now that
she is trying to get benefits, “they tell me they need proof something
happened to me. How dare they?”
PAULA
GLOVER
“You have to report it [sexual assault and rape] to a man, who
talks to a man, who gives it to a man, to make the decision. ...This
thing needs to be told so badly.”
SOFIA
RODRIGUEZ
“[I learned] if you find yourself in a place like I’ve been,
and we’ve been, to not hide it, to stand up and know that you
have support, that you’re not alone, and that we can get through
by supporting one another, and go inside, find that place that is who
you really are, that nobody can take away.
“That no man, no organization, no system, nothing can take away that place that you have if you believe.
“Don’t give up. Hope. Don’t die.”
Photos by Lyn Alwies, Helen Richardson and Katherine Osler.
