Others tell of Fort Hood sexual abuse
AUSTIN — Maria Valentine says she was just months into her training at Fort Hood in 2006 when a sergeant with a history of alleged harassment toward other soldiers wrote her up after she complained she didn’t want him touching her during body mass measurements.
She said authorities promised the disciplinary report would be wiped from her record if she didn’t make a formal complaint.
Valentine’s decision not to file one would haunt her years later when she learned another woman had accused the same sergeant of rape.
Valentine is one of five women — two active duty soldiers, two veterans and one civilian — who spoke to the Associated Press about experiencing harassment, assault or rape by soldiers at Fort Hood.
The other four cases occurred since 2014.
Current and former soldiers have taken to social media with their own accounts of sexual assault and harassment at the post following the disappearance and slaying this year of Spc. Vanessa
Guillén, whose family members say was sexually harassed by a soldier who’s believed to have killed her.
“I wasn’t surprised,” Valentine said after learning about Guillén’s story. “That was the environment. I live with the regret that I did not go through with the complaint.”
Maj. Gabriela Thompson, a Fort Hood spokeswoman, told the AP she had no information about Valentine’s allegation.
Members of Congress launched an investigation of Fort Hood in September after Sgt. Elder Fernandes was found dead Aug. 25,
hanging from a tree in Temple months after reporting sexual harassment.
Guillén and Fernandes are among 28 soldiers at the post to have died this year, including five homicides and six suicides, Army data show.
Army Secretary Ryan Mccarthy says that based on Fort Hood's average of 129 violent crimes between 2015 and 2019, it has one of the highest violent crime rates among Army installations.
The Associated Press typically doesn't publish the names of sex abuse victims, but two women who said they were sexually assaulted by soldiers at Fort Hood decided to speak on the record to describe what they say is a disturbing culture at the post.
Many victims have become connected by sharing their experiences using the hashtag #IAMVANESSAGUILLEN.
Among them is Deborah Urquidez, who told the AP she was raped by the same sergeant Valentine said harassed her more than a decade earlier.
Urquidez said her relationship with the noncom in 2014 began consensually, but that later he raped her while a friend desperately tried to break into the room to stop him.
Then came months of stalking, threatening messages and a lengthy battle in military court in which he was found not guilty, court documents show.
Urquidez was given a temporary military protective order against the sergeant for an “alleged sexual assault.”
The Veterans Affairs Department considers her permanently disabled after she reported the rape and the trauma, which included multiple suicide attempts, documents show.
“There was never justice for me,” Urquidez said. “In any other world, what more evidence do you need?”
The sergeant later filed for a protective order against Urquidez. A Fort Hood spokesperson said the Army's Criminal Investigation Command investigated and the accused was acquitted of all charges following a military court martial in 2017. He remains on active duty at Fort Bliss. Officials from Fort Bliss did not comment or provide a comment from him.
Kaitlyn Buxton, a civilian, said her partner, then posted to Fort Hood, beat her numerous times and raped her in 2018 at their off-base apartment in Killeen.
On one occasion at the barracks, he pinned her down and repeatedly punched her in the face while she screamed for help, Buxton said.
A Fort Hood officer went with his wife to their apartment during one altercation after Buxton called for help. Buxton said members of her partner's chain of command saw her body bruised on more than one occasion.
The Killeen Police Department eventually granted Buxton a protective order and charged her partner with assault with bodily injury and assault by strangulation, but records show he bonded out and the case was closed.
Buxton said military police have taken no action on a separate case she filed in 2018, which was briefly closed and then reopened this past August. He since has been discharged from the Army on unrelated matters.
“The whole process has been a constant victimization,” Buxton said. “No matter what I do, my voice is not being heard.”
Sean Timmons, the man's attorney, said his client “maintains his innocence to all allegations and charges and believes they are fabricated.”
The Killeen Police Department didn't respond to a request for comment. A Fort Hood spokesperson said they had no information on this allegation.
According to a federal complaint, the soldier who killed Guillén, Aaron Robinson, died by suicide in July when confronted by police.
Natalie Khawam, who represents the Guillén family, said Guillén shared with family members that a soldier of superior rank walked in and watched her when she was showering. Khawam said Guillén was too scared to file a report.
Mccarthy said though it is believed Guillén faced other kinds of harassment at Fort Hood, officials have found no report or evidence she was sexually harassed.
Since then, an independent inquiry of command climate has been ordered at the post, in addition to the ongoing investigation into the command response to Guillén's disappearance and death.
In a news conference the morning after Fernandes' body was found, Lupe Guillén,
the younger sister of Vanessa Guillén, said Fernandes was an example of why her sister did not report the harassment she experienced.
“How many more must die at Fort Hood for them to be held accountable?” Lupe Guillén said. “How many more have to be sexually harassed?”
Rep. Jackie Speier, a California Democrat who's among the members of Congress investigating Fort Hood, coauthored the I Am Vanessa Guillén Act. It aims to expand measures aimed at preventing sexual assault and harassment involving U.S. military personnel, including codifying sexual harassment as a crime in military law and removing decisions on whether to prosecute sexual assault and harassment out of the chain of command.
“The voices of those survivors have never been louder or more clear,” Speier said. “This is the military's #Metoo moment.”