This is part of the Scars of Service series.

Along the lines of the veterans’ stories I’ve been sharing, I think this is a good time to talk about Military Sexual Trauma.

I’ll start with the usual “trigger warning.” I’ve always thought that phrase is a little overused. Not because the subject should be softened — but because this subject shouldn’t be whispered about at all.

It should be shouted through a bullhorn.

Military Sexual Trauma is a serious and persistent problem inside the armed forces. Despite public statements and policy changes over the years, the culture around it has often lagged far behind the words used to describe it.

Before getting into my story, it helps to understand what MST actually means.

What Is Military Sexual Trauma?

Military Sexual Trauma (MST) is a broad term used by the Department of Defense and the VA to describe sexual harassment, sexual assault, or rape experienced during military service.

Under military law, several articles of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) apply to these crimes:

• Article 120 — Rape and Sexual Assault
• Article 134 — General Article (sexual misconduct, indecent acts)
• Article 93 — Cruelty and Maltreatment
• Article 128 — Assault
• Article 133 — Conduct Unbecoming an Officer
• Article 80 — Attempts

Military members operate under a different legal system than civilians, and these articles exist to maintain discipline and protect service members.

Very rarely do MST cases make national headlines. The military institution has historically preferred to handle these cases quietly. Unfortunately, society at large often prefers not to look at them too closely either.

To be fair, some improvements have occurred in recent years.

A senior Army officer friend explained it this way:

“They are all taken very seriously. It has changed in recent years how they are prosecuted and mostly taken out of the commander’s hands, with special prosecutors and victim advocates. In the Reserves it is done by a regional commander, not the assigned chain of command. We used to have monthly calls for all reported cases until there was resolution.”

Removing some cases from the direct chain of command has helped reduce retaliation and conflicts of interest. But even now, victims often remain in the same unit as the people involved.

And culture is harder to change than policy.

The Culture I Served In

When I served — from the mid-1980s through the mid-1990s — there was a culture of silence around sexual assault.

It simply was not discussed.

If anything did surface, suspicion often fell just as quickly on the victim as on the attacker.

For gay service members the situation was even more complicated. At the time, the military operated under regulations that made homosexuality incompatible with service. Being suspected of being gay could end a career.

That environment shaped how I lived in uniform.

I already knew I was gay when I joined the Army.

But I also knew something else: without the Army, I likely would never have been able to afford college or build a career. So I did what many people in that era did.

I kept quiet.

I served.

And I tried not to draw attention to myself.

Desert Storm

My story begins during Desert Storm.

After the war ended, our unit occupied a former Kuwaiti military base. Compared to sleeping on a tank in the middle of a dust storm, actual barracks felt almost luxurious.

Around that time I began exchanging letters with friends from another unit in the task force. They were people I had known earlier in my service and simply wanted to keep in touch with.

The letters were ordinary.

“Hey, how are things going?”
“What are you guys doing now?”

Nothing inappropriate. Nothing romantic.

Just friendship.

But the mail passed through the hands of my platoon sergeant.

And he noticed.

One day I was told to meet him on a stair landing in the barracks. When I arrived, he wasn’t alone. Several tank commanders were standing with him.

What followed was about an hour of interrogation.

Why was I writing to that soldier?

Did I have a sexual relationship with him?

Why did I write to him and not others?

They began dissecting small details of my life — where I went off-duty in Germany, who I associated with, how I behaved.

The purpose was obvious.

They were trying to determine whether I was gay.

I denied everything. Mostly because the specific relationship they were accusing me of didn’t even exist.

By the end of the interrogation my platoon sergeant told me:

“You may deny it now, but I’ll find out the truth.”

From that point forward something fundamental changed for me.

I had always trusted my unit.

After that day, I didn’t.

The Assault

A few weeks later I came back from guard duty and went to sleep in the barracks. The rest of my roommates were out on various assignments, so for once the room was quiet.

In a combat zone, quiet is a rare luxury.

I don’t know how long I had been asleep before I woke up choking.

Something was forcing its way into the back of my throat.

When I opened my eyes I realized an infantry corporal was on top of me. I wasn’t looking at his face — I was looking at his pubic hair.

In that moment I froze.

People often imagine victims fighting back in situations like this. But the truth is that sometimes the brain simply locks down. And in that position, physically restrained, fighting felt impossible.

Then I heard another voice.

A familiar one.

From near the door someone said:

“See? I knew you liked it.”

The man guarding the door was my platoon sergeant.

The same man who had interrogated me weeks earlier.

He stood there while the assault happened.

Eventually the corporal stopped and said:

“You proved my point.”

That was the end of it.

I gathered myself together, crawled to the showers, cleaned up, and returned to the room before anyone else came back from duty.

Aftermath

For about two weeks I convinced myself the worst was over.

I was wrong.

Three days later I was visited by CID — the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division.

The interrogation that followed was even more intense than the one conducted by my platoon sergeant.

Their goal was the same.

They wanted me to admit I was gay.

They pushed hard for hours.

But the rape itself was never mentioned.

In the end I admitted nothing — not my sexuality, not the assault, not anything else.

After that, the incident simply disappeared.

When we redeployed, my platoon sergeant and several others involved rotated out to other assignments. I was placed under a much better NCO.

The subject was never spoken of again.

But the damage was already done.

The Long Shadow

What does the aftermath of something like this look like?

If I had a nickel for every answer to that question…

Triggers are strange things.

Sometimes it’s a smell. Sometimes it’s a sound.

My attacker was Puerto Rican, and Puerto Rican Spanish has a distinctive melodic rhythm. Even now, hearing that accent can send my mind straight back to that moment.

That reaction isn’t rational, and I know it. I have friends who are Hispanic and have never harmed me in any way. But trauma doesn’t always respect logic.

Night terrors are another part of it.

Many nights I wake up screaming.

And very often it happens between 2:00 and 3:00 a.m. — roughly the time the assault occurred.

Thirty-five years later, the body still remembers.

Why I Use the Word Rape

People often prefer the phrase sexual assault.

It sounds softer.

More clinical.

But what happened to me was rape.

The word matters because it reflects reality. Sanitizing language may make listeners more comfortable, but it rarely helps survivors.

Life After

I managed to stay in the Army for about six more years.

Eventually the PTSD became too much.

I left after just over fifteen years of service. People still occasionally ask why I didn’t stay until twenty.

The answer is simple.

I couldn’t do it anymore.

My final assignment as a recruiter made it even harder. It becomes difficult to sell something you no longer believe in.

Civilian life wasn’t easy either. For years I rarely stayed in a job longer than two years. The mistrust and anger I carried from the Army followed me everywhere.

It took twenty-five years before I could finally tell someone what happened.

In a follow-up piece I’ll share that person’s story and what life has looked like for him since.

Because unfortunately, I was not the only one.

What Remains

After all the mistrust and damage that followed, there were still two things that remained constant in my life.

My mother.

And my dog.

Their loyalty was never in question.

Sometimes, after everything else falls apart, those are the anchors that keep you here.