*Triggers Possible* My experience of military sexual assault in the 2000s
farfromhome
Registrant
I would like to share a story here about my experience in the military, with the acknowledgement up front that this is more a story of gay bashing and physical abuse. I have never told this story to anyone outside of very close friends.
I was an active duty infantry officer in the US Army for nearly a decade (I'm leaving out specific dates to avoid revealing personal info but it was during the 2000s-2010s). I am a survivor of childhood physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, and I hadn't sought help for it when I was in the military. For the benefit of clarity: both parents abused me physically, but my father also sexually abused me.
By the time I commissioned I had accepted that I was bisexual and had been emotionally / sexually involved with women and men. During the early years of my career, and all 4 years of college ROTC beforehand, Don't Ask Don't Tell was in effect. So, it was against UCMJ to admit you were gay or have gay sex but your leadership didn't have the right to ask you flat-out (this is not how it actually went down, as I'm sure many of you know).
During the basic infantry officer's course, I lived with roommates in an on-post house on Fort Benning that we'd rented together. I was 22 years old at the time. One of my roommates was a prior enlisted guy who, one night, overheard a conversation I had on the phone with a friend and determined I had had sex with men before. Bad OPSEC on my part.
He later confronted me one night while we were drinking. I told him the truth, that I'd had sex with men and women, and he seemed pretty intent on forcing me to tell him exactly what age of male I was attracted to. This felt extremely strange, but he then revealed he'd been raped by a male at age 6 and did not feel comfortable around any men who were attracted to other men, and he very threateningly demanded to know if I was attracted to children.
I told him no, of course not, which is the truth. He still wanted to know the youngest age I was attracted to, and I finally told him I didn't feel any attraction at all for anyone under roughly high school age, and even if they were objectively attractive to me, I would rule out any sort of contact with someone underage or someone who was still in school even if they were 18 because we're not on equal footing. Maybe that's the wrong answer but it's what I said at age 22.
(Incidentally this is stuff that literally happened to me later on, like at age 23-24 I turned down overtures from a 17-year-old girl in my neighborhood when I was stationed elsewhere in America, and I turned down a similar offer from our 18-year-old battalion paralegal who was gay, and not because I'm frigid or whatever but because it would have been a f_____ terrible idea and caused them, and me, a lot more stress and anxiety than anticipated. Besides the point, but you can see why this conversation was so odd to me).
I was getting more and more irritated and weirded out. Apparently this answer wasn't good enough for him, because even after he let me go that night, his hostility and suspicion never seemed to diminish. He basically kept grilling me until well past midnight and it seemed almost manic on his part.
A few weeks later he got drunk and had an argument with neighbors (they kicked him out of their house for saying something sexually vulgar to a woman guest), and then came to talk to me about it. He came into my bedroom at 3 am and wouldn't stop grousing about this argument until I finally stood out of bed and said "get the fuck out of my room, man." He immediately punched me in the face, wrestled me onto my bed, and started pummeling my midsection. I was half asleep and didn't have my guard up at all. He got me into a chokehold and gave me this furious lecture about how people like me didn't belong in the army. He didn't try to sexually violate me but he made it very clear that he could: he put his mouth very close to my face and said "you're a weakling. I could fuck you right now if I wanted to," and I had no reason to doubt he was serious. And he did it all quietly enough to not wake up our other roommate.
The next morning when I woke him up and confronted him, I found him asleep in his bed with a loaded civilian pistol on his dresser (obviously we were on post and that weapon should have been in the unit arms room). I don't know what he was planning and I didn't touch the weapon, but there was a magazine in the well and another full magazine lying next to it, plus a box of 9mm rounds. I just stood between him and the dresser in case he went for it and said that what had happened the previous night could never happen again. He moved out a few days later and wound up failing out of our Ranger school class. I never saw him again.
People have asked me why I didn't tell our unit leadership, or the MPs. And the answer is: that would have led to a statement about my sexual orientation and the possibility of me getting kicked out for DADT. And in truth I wanted to be in the military at that time. I was just so humiliated by it.
I had some friends who were prior enlisted lieutenants that understood and protected me, as well as my other roommate, and I'm so grateful for their total support of me despite not being particularly accepting of any kind of sexuality other than straight. We're talking guys who went to bible colleges for undergraduate degrees, and they were unambiguous in saying that they didn't care, didn't judge, wouldn't report me, and had my back no matter what when it came to this guy. I hate every minute of this memory but even decades later I am warmed by the memory of their kindness. What can you call it besides a kind of brotherhood.
When I got to my first unit I met another lieutenant in my battalion and found myself deeply attracted to him. I think it would have been reciprocal, as I strongly suspect he was gay, although closeted and from a religious background. But the experience of what happened at Benning shook me so profoundly that I never once approached it with him. Our brigade deployed to OEF and he died in a roadside bombing. I wound up helping recover his remains. It has taken me nearly two decades to work through the grief and regret.
The man who attacked me sent me an email on AKO a few years later apologizing for his behavior. He was deployed at the time, and he wrote to tell me that he had come to realize that nothing about his behavior was acceptable—and while he didn't expect forgiveness, he just wanted to say how sorry he was. I told him I accepted it and that I wished him well. I have no idea what happened to him and I have zero desire to find out.
Thank you for providing a space where it is possible to talk about things like this.
I was an active duty infantry officer in the US Army for nearly a decade (I'm leaving out specific dates to avoid revealing personal info but it was during the 2000s-2010s). I am a survivor of childhood physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, and I hadn't sought help for it when I was in the military. For the benefit of clarity: both parents abused me physically, but my father also sexually abused me.
By the time I commissioned I had accepted that I was bisexual and had been emotionally / sexually involved with women and men. During the early years of my career, and all 4 years of college ROTC beforehand, Don't Ask Don't Tell was in effect. So, it was against UCMJ to admit you were gay or have gay sex but your leadership didn't have the right to ask you flat-out (this is not how it actually went down, as I'm sure many of you know).
During the basic infantry officer's course, I lived with roommates in an on-post house on Fort Benning that we'd rented together. I was 22 years old at the time. One of my roommates was a prior enlisted guy who, one night, overheard a conversation I had on the phone with a friend and determined I had had sex with men before. Bad OPSEC on my part.
He later confronted me one night while we were drinking. I told him the truth, that I'd had sex with men and women, and he seemed pretty intent on forcing me to tell him exactly what age of male I was attracted to. This felt extremely strange, but he then revealed he'd been raped by a male at age 6 and did not feel comfortable around any men who were attracted to other men, and he very threateningly demanded to know if I was attracted to children.
I told him no, of course not, which is the truth. He still wanted to know the youngest age I was attracted to, and I finally told him I didn't feel any attraction at all for anyone under roughly high school age, and even if they were objectively attractive to me, I would rule out any sort of contact with someone underage or someone who was still in school even if they were 18 because we're not on equal footing. Maybe that's the wrong answer but it's what I said at age 22.
(Incidentally this is stuff that literally happened to me later on, like at age 23-24 I turned down overtures from a 17-year-old girl in my neighborhood when I was stationed elsewhere in America, and I turned down a similar offer from our 18-year-old battalion paralegal who was gay, and not because I'm frigid or whatever but because it would have been a f_____ terrible idea and caused them, and me, a lot more stress and anxiety than anticipated. Besides the point, but you can see why this conversation was so odd to me).
I was getting more and more irritated and weirded out. Apparently this answer wasn't good enough for him, because even after he let me go that night, his hostility and suspicion never seemed to diminish. He basically kept grilling me until well past midnight and it seemed almost manic on his part.
A few weeks later he got drunk and had an argument with neighbors (they kicked him out of their house for saying something sexually vulgar to a woman guest), and then came to talk to me about it. He came into my bedroom at 3 am and wouldn't stop grousing about this argument until I finally stood out of bed and said "get the fuck out of my room, man." He immediately punched me in the face, wrestled me onto my bed, and started pummeling my midsection. I was half asleep and didn't have my guard up at all. He got me into a chokehold and gave me this furious lecture about how people like me didn't belong in the army. He didn't try to sexually violate me but he made it very clear that he could: he put his mouth very close to my face and said "you're a weakling. I could fuck you right now if I wanted to," and I had no reason to doubt he was serious. And he did it all quietly enough to not wake up our other roommate.
The next morning when I woke him up and confronted him, I found him asleep in his bed with a loaded civilian pistol on his dresser (obviously we were on post and that weapon should have been in the unit arms room). I don't know what he was planning and I didn't touch the weapon, but there was a magazine in the well and another full magazine lying next to it, plus a box of 9mm rounds. I just stood between him and the dresser in case he went for it and said that what had happened the previous night could never happen again. He moved out a few days later and wound up failing out of our Ranger school class. I never saw him again.
People have asked me why I didn't tell our unit leadership, or the MPs. And the answer is: that would have led to a statement about my sexual orientation and the possibility of me getting kicked out for DADT. And in truth I wanted to be in the military at that time. I was just so humiliated by it.
I had some friends who were prior enlisted lieutenants that understood and protected me, as well as my other roommate, and I'm so grateful for their total support of me despite not being particularly accepting of any kind of sexuality other than straight. We're talking guys who went to bible colleges for undergraduate degrees, and they were unambiguous in saying that they didn't care, didn't judge, wouldn't report me, and had my back no matter what when it came to this guy. I hate every minute of this memory but even decades later I am warmed by the memory of their kindness. What can you call it besides a kind of brotherhood.
When I got to my first unit I met another lieutenant in my battalion and found myself deeply attracted to him. I think it would have been reciprocal, as I strongly suspect he was gay, although closeted and from a religious background. But the experience of what happened at Benning shook me so profoundly that I never once approached it with him. Our brigade deployed to OEF and he died in a roadside bombing. I wound up helping recover his remains. It has taken me nearly two decades to work through the grief and regret.
The man who attacked me sent me an email on AKO a few years later apologizing for his behavior. He was deployed at the time, and he wrote to tell me that he had come to realize that nothing about his behavior was acceptable—and while he didn't expect forgiveness, he just wanted to say how sorry he was. I told him I accepted it and that I wished him well. I have no idea what happened to him and I have zero desire to find out.
Thank you for providing a space where it is possible to talk about things like this.
