‘ I was used and spat out’
Former officer says telling Navy about rape was even worse than original incident
Hayley Young found telling the Navy about her rape worse than the act itself. The “soul-destroying” incident happened one evening in 2009 after Young had been out drinking with colleagues.
Almost a decade later, the former officer still gets occasional flashbacks when she is intimate with her husband. “If your mind wanders, it’s really easy to imagine that you’re back in that room and it’s happening and it’s not your husband and it’s someone else,” she said.
Young, who was posted in Britain when the incident happened, successfully lifted her name suppression last year so she could speak out against sexual abuse and harassment
publicly for the first time. “To have been raped, to me anyway, just felt like I had been completely desecrated, just used by someone and spat out and thrown away,” she said.
Young has never pressed criminal charges against the man she has accused of raping her.
She said the real problem is the culture within the Navy.
She said she had experienced months of sexual banter and objectifying comments from colleagues leading up to the event.
“I just felt so vulnerable and so alone and in a foreign country and I completely trusted this guy.”
Afterwards, she felt sick to her stomach. She didn’t tell the Navy about what happened until she left the Defence Force.
“Telling the Navy was by far the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. It was so retraumatising and probably worse than the event itself,” she said.
One of the things that made it so hard was Young’s fears of what people would say about her and how the case would be handled.
“I fell into a huge deep depression, I lost a hell of a lot of weight. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep. I was shaking all the time and just constantly crying in private . . . I’ve never felt so weak in my entire life.”
Young has rebuilt herself with therapy, self-love and exercise but is now fighting a legal battle. She contends the New Zealand and British Defence Forces failed to keep her safe.
Young is waiting for a Court of Appeal decision on whether she can bring her case for compensation against the British Government here in New Zealand.
The New Zealand Defence Force said it could not comment because the matter is before the courts.