Military’s #MeToo moment: Fort Hood victims speak out
AUSTIN, TEXAS >> Maria Valentine says she was just months into her training at Fort Hood, a U. S. Army base in Texas, in 2006 when a sergeant with a history of alleged harassment toward other soldiers wrote her up after she complained that 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 since 2014.
Current and former soldiers have taken to social media with their own accounts of sexual assault and harassment at the base following the disappearance and slaying this year of Spc. Vanessa Guillen, whose family members say was sexually harassed by the officer who eventually killed her.
“I wasn’t surprised,” Valentine said after learning about Guillen’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 on Aug. 25 hanging from a tree in Temple, Texas, months after reporting sexual harassment.
Guillen and Fernandes are among 28 soldiers at the base to have died this year, including five homicides and six suicides, according to Army data. 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 base. 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, Staff Sgt. Roberto Jimenez, Valentine said harassed her more than a decade earlier.
Urquidez said her relationship with Jimenez 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, according to court documents obtained by the AP. Urquidez was given a temporary military protective order against the sergeant for an “alleged sexual assault.”