This is typical, I thought as I brushed my teeth. What surprised me most was that I wasn’t shocked to hear of how the soldiers protecting us are not being protected from unbalanced younger recruits in their units.  

I wiped the toothpaste from my mouth and scooped up my little crazy dog, Einstein and rather than put him in his cage, I opted to just tie him up by his food/water supply in the kitchen. (which later on proved to be a bad idea because he got loose and terrorized the house) I gave him some toys and told him I’d be back shortly after I picked up Levi from school. I grabbed my bag, keys, and water then headed out the door. 

I started the engine to my cock-blocker (2000 Chevy Lumina Sudan) and turned off the radio. I leaned back in my seat and looked out the passenger window toward my house. Silence is rape’s best companion, I thought as I sat there in my own stillness. I was quiet way too long about my own sexual abuse; mirroring the same reasons of ostracism, ridicule, no one believing me, and demotion in the eyes of family. My mother still hasn’t spoken to me in three weeks after calling me ‘crazy’ and a ‘liar’ referring to my own admission of being sexual abused by someone she respected and feared most of her life. We live in the same house but miles apart. 

My friend’s voice began reading to me again as I drove down the freeway, “The sense of betrayal runs deep in victims who joined the military to be part of a loyal team pursuing a larger cause; experts liken the trauma to incest and the particular damage done when assault is inflicted by a member of the military "family." Women are often denied claims for posttraumatic stress caused by the assault if they did not bring charges at the time.” 

The words: Betrayal, family and trauma kept repeating in my head as I pulled into the McDonald’s in front of Hastings to grab a $.99 cup-o-sweet tea. After going in and placing my order I gave the cashier a handful of change, grabbed my not-so-biodegradable cup and went to the soda fountain to get ice. As the ice fell rapidly into my cup, a pungent smell of human feces slowly started consuming the air around me. I looked around to find the source of the smell and made out what appeared to be a disheveled homeless woman pouring coffee next to me by the tea canisters. 

I have a very strong empathy for those living their lives homeless since I heard that Phil Collin’s song, Another Day in Paradise, as a child. Now, as a parent, when I see a homeless individual, I wonder whose child they are—and give them any change I have to spare. As I would hope someone would do for my child if he, god forbid, ever finds himself living on the streets without a name or home.

I always wonder how the homeless become homeless and maybe this statistic helps answer the cause for some.

I walked toward the exit door to see they had locked the troubled man out of the store and blocked the costumers inside from leaving. The guy was so angry he was banging the glass doors screaming, “Let me back in!” Then a mother had to console her toddler because he got really frightened and began crying as loud as crazy dude making all the scary noises. The employees were all on their cell phones calling the police while the woman who got hit in the head with a magazine started threatening to press charges.

Again, I heard my good friend’s voice reading to me: “Women are often denied claims for post-traumatic stress caused by the assault if they did not bring charges at the time. There are not nearly enough mental-health professionals in the system to help them.”

There was no tolerance or compassion for this man’s noticeable mental anguish as there is any rarely shown for victims of rape in the armed services. Only 8% of the rape cases investigated by the military end in prosecution and 80% of those convicted are just honorably discharged. 

The man was eventually restrained and we were able to leave the store. I could still hear him screaming, “Stop! Please, let me go!” as I drove off as the familiar cries of my voice echoed in my head— pleading those same words as child. I ended up at Barnes and Noble, where I easily found my own copy of the time issue and began flipping through the pages to read it as soon as I got in the car. I lite a cigarette and exhaled as I heard my own voice begin to read:  

“What does it tell us that a female soldier deployed overseas stop drinking water after 7 p.m. to reduce the odds of being rapped if they use the bathroom at night? Or the solider who was assaulted when she went out for a cigarette and was afraid to report it for fear she would be demoted—for having gone out without her weapon?”

Women represent nearly 15% of our armed forces and they are most likely to be raped than killed by enemy fire. Doesn’t that astonish you, that they fear sleeping around their fellow soldier’s more than they do being killed in combat in IRAQ?!

I thought to myself, Can you blame these women for not speaking up?  I mean, there’s a war out there ladies and gentleman and who has time to deal with a woman getting raped when there’s a war going on around it? Is it taken seriously? No, it’s not because war crimes are just collateral damage as are the victims. Women have and still are used as weapons of war in many parts of the world and the American government can not righteously speak out against these acts when we have our own military personnel sexually assaulting our women in uniform. 

The lack of effort to help stop the silence and do something about this situation is justified by the military’s mentality of ‘they can’t do anything if nothing is reported.” Have they ever considered this way of dealing with the problem is enforcing silence about the issue? This kind of rationalization reminds me of when my Grandpa told me at the age of 8, that “a woman can not be raped because she can move a little and it will slip right on out.”