Sigh.....Seriously

I've been debating about posting this since its sensitive in nature of the person I'm writing about. I have a major concern about females and the Army lately. I firmly believe in equal rights and feel that women do have a valid place in the military. What I don't get is why they are being treated with less than normal dignity when it comes to sexual assault?

Again I have to give the abridged version of this for space as well as her privacy but I'm friends with a female officer stationed here. She's been posting posts that were getting slightly and slightly more odd lately on the mil spouse board I am a part of. Then the other night she posted her whole story.

She posted how she was raped by her boyfriend's best friend with a shotgun next to her as a teen. How her parents blamed her for being raped, how her college experience included a close call with being assaulted again and then told she was worthless and shouldn't get a commission. She then recounts her time in one of the sandboxes, speaking of a fellow officer who stepped over the line with sexual comments and then proceeded to make uninvited visits to her hut in the middle of the night pounding on the door for the duration of her time downrange. When she reported the behaviors she was told to suck it up and that she was just taking it wrong. She filed an EO complaint, it was investigated and the guy was due a Art 15. Well some monkey butt down graded it to a local command letter placed in his file - yeah for attempting sexual assault of a female. Meantime the midnight door knocks continued while down range. She was alone in her room because she was the only female and they wouldn't room her with enlisted females.

Fast forward to the present and we find out that she's been trying to get through the behavioral health here only be be told that if she would just "submit" to her spouse and become a better Christian and an appropriate wife her feelings of fear and trauma from the rape, barely escaped assault, and attempted sexual assault down range would ALL go away if she'd just become the better wife and Christian. That makes me want to beat the man who told her that - I love Christians but I LOATHE zealots period. So she was basically handed three sets of pills and sent on her merry way.

Sadly the pills were the wrong thing to give and she wanted to sleep off her pain she was feeling and started mixing different pills with booze. Thankfully she figured it out, walked out of her bedroom and asked her husband to take her to the ER. They figured that if they went to the civilian hospital they might get better care - yeah uh no! The doc at the local hospital here marked her as combatant so the MPs showed up, cuffed her ass and took her to the military hospital. Here's a woman hurting due to being violated so many different ways and they cuff her as a threat of being combatant. If you'd see her you'd smack them for thinking that. She's a twig, a tiny, nasally talking twig not a combatant. When her husband spoke to her BN CO the next day she told the husband that his wife needed to "just let it go" and not take it personally that she was now being asked to work with a guy that tormented her the entire deployment. Way to go BN CO with being soo sympathetic to another female officer.

Not sure what's happening to her today other than behavioral health was supposed to follow up with her and they never did. She has her regular counseling appointment on Thursday but what if she didn't ask for help like she did? We already have the highest suicide rate in all of Army at this duty station but lets add to it by ignoring a true issue with women and the Army and their failure to address sexual assault.