Female veterans slam VA

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By MICHAEL GISICK
Thursday, April 05, 2007

It happened at a Christmas party on a U.S. air base in Germany in 1990.

Christin McKinley was a 20-year-old military police officer with the U.S. Air Force, six months out of boot camp and eager to prove herself. In a few weeks, her country and its allies would launch the first Gulf War.

She wanted, she says, to be one of the boys.

That night, one of the boys, a staff sergeant who was also one of her supervisors, pulled her into a bathroom.

She told him no, she says, but he covered her mouth, pinned her down and raped her.

Among the growing ranks of female veterans, McKinley, an Albuquerque, N.M., resident, is disturbingly far from alone. About 3,000 sexual assaults were reported in the military last year, a 24 percent increase over 2005, according to a Department of Defense report issued in mid-March.

Of 188 women now being treated through a clinic for post-traumatic stress disorder at the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Albuquerque, between 80 and 90 percent report some kind of sexual trauma while in the military, the clinic's director, Diane Castillo, says.

But McKinley, who works as a veterans employment representative with the state Department of Labor and is president of New Mexico Women Veterans, said the VA system remains poorly equipped to address the needs of women.

"There are some good programs and some good people," she said. "But when you find a lump (in your body) and you have to wait six months for an appointment, it tells you something is wrong."

Although state officials say they're trying to help fill the void, the state Legislature this session failed to pass a bill that would have funded a study on the needs of female vets.

Meanwhile, women are serving in the U.S. military like never before.

One in seven Americans deployed to Iraq is a woman. More than 450 women have been wounded and 71 killed, more than the combined total for women in Korea, Vietnam and the first Gulf War.

Most studies on PTSD have focused on two groups _ civilian women who have been sexually assaulted and male troops who've seen combat. Little research has been done on a group Castillo sees emerging from the ranks of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans _ women who've seen combat and been sexually traumatized.

The military's definition of sexual trauma includes harassment, but Castillo said even women who haven't been assaulted can suffer serious psychological consequences, likely accounting for a higher rate of PTSD among female vets than among men.

"Imagine being out there in a war zone, worrying about the enemy, and then also having to worry about being raped by your own comrades. It's a double stressor," Castillo said. "There's nowhere to turn."

Echoing accounts from elsewhere in the country, Castillo said she's talked to female vets who told her they took a gun to the latrine while in Iraq because they were so fearful of sexual assault. Others said they never went to the latrine at night, or would only go in groups.

The military has launched several initiatives aimed at sexual assaults, including a Web site that allows people to anonymously report attacks and harassment, and the Albuquerque VA says it's working to expand programs aimed expressly at women.

But five times more male New Mexicans are enrolled in the VA system, and McKinley said it remains an unpleasant and often unresponsive option for many women.

Like others, she says the closure two years ago of a segregated, full-service women's clinic at the hospital was a step in the wrong direction.

Gerry Oakland, the business manager for primary care at the VA hospital, said the decision to cancel the clinic came amid struggles to find steady staffing.

But McKinley said she's "not buying" the VA's explanation. "I don't think staffing was the issue, I think it was mismanaged. Now they're telling us it was a budgetary issue," she said. "We're seeing an expanding number of female vets, and other states are opening women's clinics. We're closing ours, and that's not acceptable."

Castillo, whose women's trauma clinic for PTSD patients is separated from male programs, acknowledged the importance of having separate areas for women, especially those who've suffered sexual trauma.

"It can be very difficult for women who've been through that to sit in a waiting area with a bunch of men," she said.

Barbara Goldman, director of the Santa Fe Rape Crisis and Trauma Treatment Center, said many women are hesitant to seek care through the male-dominated VA system even when programs for women exist.

"There's an understandable reticence to look for help within the same military culture in which you were victimized in the first place," she said.

The Rape Crisis Center is one of several New Mexico organizations outside the VA seeking to expand services for New Mexico's estimated 15,000 female veterans.

This year's Legislature approved $375,000 for the center to begin work on a statewide outreach program for female veterans. But a bill that would have tabbed $469,000 for a pilot program to study the needs of female vets stalled in the House.

State Veterans Services Secretary John Garcia said the Legislature appropriated money to hire five new veterans service officers across the state. Two of those, including one in Albuquerque, will be women, he said.

The department is also holding a conference on women's issues in June, he said, and is supporting the formation of a women's honor guard team. The department helped form New Mexico Women Veterans.

Stepped-up efforts to care for female veterans only deal with the end-result of the problem, and McKinley said she's dispirited by the continued prevalence of sexual assault in the military.

She hears the question: Should women serve alongside men?

"I turn that around," she said. "This isn't women's fault. It's the men who are doing this. They're the ones who need to change."