San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Justice, answers overdue for family of Fort Hood soldier
According to her mother, Pfc. Vanessa Guillén wanted to be a soldier since she was 10 years old.
Gloria Guillén said she wasn’t happy about that. She told Jorge Ramos on Univision’s “Al Punto” she knew a career in the military could bring pain and she cried on the day her daughter, who went missing April 22, enlisted.
Like many Spanish-speaking moms in South Texas, she referred to her daughter as “la niña” and “mi preciosa.” Those terms of endearment bring to mind a girl, not a soldier. But then again, her daughter, who in a framed photo looks like a Latina Disney princess in uniform, wouldn’t be old enough to buy a margarita until later this year.
The soldier’s mother told Ramos that on Feb. 8, she confronted her daughter about a change in her behavior and Vanessa reluctantly told her she was being harassed by someone at Fort Hood, the Army post where she was stationed. Guillén said her daughter believed it was impossible to denounce that miserable person because other women had called him out and weren’t believed. They were laughed at and harassed further.
Vanessa’s family say they knew something was wrong the day she disappeared from a parking lot outside the armory, where she had been working. They spoke to officials at Fort Hood. They had suspicions. They say they named names.
I want to know what happened, Gloria Guillén said, at times furious and at times beside herself with grief. I want to know why they say there are no cameras in an armory on an Army base. I want to know why more people weren’t looking for her. I want to know what happened on April 22.
She asked those questions of Army officials at Fort Hood three times, Guillén said, and every time was told the case was being investigated.
She said all of that in Spanish on a Univision talk show.
Last week, authorities found what have been identified as Vanessa’s remains in a shallow grave near Fort Hood. A soldier linked to her disappearance — and, according to Natalie Khawam, an attorney representing the Guillén family, the man Vanessa said watched her shower in a locker room last October — shot and killed himself early Wednesday. Another person of interest, the ex-wife of a former soldier who reports say was dating the suspect, was in custody last week.
Vanessa’s older sister, Mayra, says she spoke to this man April 23; he laughed at her.
Her other sister, Lupe, has demanded justice. She said in the months since Vanessa went missing, other soldiers have gone public with stories of sexual harassment, on social media via #IAmVanessa. Her sister, who was always smiling and helping others, changed after arriving at Fort Hood, she has said.
Vanessa — and other young women and men in uniform facing sexual harassment — deserve better, she said.
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, has joined the Guillén family, who were in Washington, D.C., Wednesday calling for a congressional inquiry of Vanessa’s case and why so many questions went unanswered at Fort Hood for so long — including the recent discovery of human remains belonging to another soldier who disappeared close to a year ago.
Gabbard has also said she will push legislation that provides an avenue for soldiers to file complaints outside the chain of command.
That would be a much-needed change, considering the chain of command has the power to dismiss complaints or keep things quiet, especially if the perpetrator of wrongdoing is the next link in the chain. But that it has taken the disappearance and death of a young woman — a young soldier who had just begun her career in uniform — to help spark interest in this legislation seems wrong. We’ve heard these stories too many times before.
There might not have been enough interpreters on hand to have Gloria Guillén talk to the mainstream media the way she spoke with Ramos, but she deserves answers about the killing of her precious girl — our Pfc. Vanessa Guillén.
I think everybody can understand that.