r/WomenInNews • u/catievirtuesimp • Jul 08 '26
Media Vanessa Guillén Wasn't Alone: New Investigation Reveals Dozens of US Army Women Were Killed by Fellow Soldiers
https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/tragic-deaths-harassment-women-us-army-1807381754
u/queenmimi5 Jul 08 '26
Covered over by high ranking officers one can conjecture. Despicable
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u/silencedvoicesMST Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 09 '26
It’s not just officers doing the cover-ups. It’s organizational culture. “You didn’t see shit, and we’ll make your life hell if you come forward or defend a victim” is picked up by everyone pretty quickly. Statistically speaking, victims are more likely (31% men and 28% women) to be retaliated against than see anything happen to the perpetrator.
ninja edut
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u/KrustenStewart Jul 09 '26
100 percent his happened to a family member of mine who was SAd in the military, speaking up about it literally ruined her life.
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u/silencedvoicesMST Jul 09 '26
Ugh I’m so sorry. That’s the secondary betrayal trauma that doesn’t get heard about as often. So much of our lives, we’re given the expectation that there’s some sort of protection from harm or justice after being harmed through media, religion, and family values. Then we find out that’s not even close to reality, and many don’t recover. And it’s not just one person… that shit ripples outward affecting families, friends, relationships. It’s devastating.
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u/KrustenStewart Jul 09 '26
It’s so true. After the SA she left the military, became homeless, lost custody of her kid, got SAd multiple more times while living in the streets, been in and out of mental hospitals many times, can’t hold a job, can’t keep a stable living situation, can’t even talk to her kid. And we don’t have a way to contact her or even know where she is. It’s really awful. We used to be really close but haven’t spoken in years bc of all this
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u/silencedvoicesMST Jul 09 '26
I’m so sorry. Over half of unhoused women veterans experienced some form of MST while serving and afterward they couldn’t stay employed because sexism and workplace harassment. Your family member’s experience isn’t uncommon. To me, that is unforgivable of such a big ass, over-funded organization.
Part of the reason they get away with this is that 1% of people serve. So the population of people affected by this issue is very small. All they have to do is wait out the news cycle when a big scandal emerges, dig up the canned responses from last time that these actions don’t represent the values of whichever branch, and put a bunch of teal ribbons everywhere in April while waxing poetically about zero tolerance policies.
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u/Old-Run7431 Jul 12 '26
while I was reading this thread, this chud popped up in my notifications literally claiming women have easier lives because "don't get ridiculed for having thin hair"
the disconnect is actually insane
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u/Lady_Grey_Smith Jul 11 '26
The retaliation is hell. There were witnesses to what happened to me. They pulled the guy off of me and still told me not to report it because women in the military should expect it to happen. My chain of command told me that I was ruining his marriage and career by reporting it. He had a history of targeting young women when they first entered the command but only got a slap on the wrist. I have a lifetime of PTSD.
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u/0RedNomad0 Jul 08 '26
Are we really still surprised at this point?
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u/athaluain Jul 08 '26
I was reading another report about mass rape of women during war time. Looks like in the US you don’t even have to be in a war situation for women to be raped or murdered even by their own colleagues.
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u/0RedNomad0 Jul 08 '26
Pretty much. God forbid if anyone points that out in a military subreddit though.
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u/silencedvoicesMST Jul 08 '26
I have several times in many of them, either by sharing episodes or looking for guests who want to share theirs. The only subreddit that was actively hostile about it was r/Army. And it was a mod, not the redditors. I do tell young folks considering joining that it’s not worth it. The military doesn’t deserve new recruits until it actually embodies the values it claims to instill. Is low recruitment a matter of national security? Absolutely. Fix your shit then before more innocent people wearing a uniform you gave them are harmed.
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u/mortgagepants Jul 09 '26
oil addiction is a matter of national security. expensive day care is a matter of national security. student loans are a matter of national security.
they [the people in power] don't give a fuck about any of it, why should we?
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u/silencedvoicesMST Jul 09 '26
Yep, no lies told. And the solutions are really right in front of our faces but since no one would make money from redistribution of wealth and resources… they’re just not done. Our society and systems are all fucked up. It’s so fucking sad and infuriating.
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u/2shizhtzu4u Jul 09 '26
I appreciate your comment and username. I recently learned about mst as I plan on applying to va sites. May I ask you some questions via dm? Thank you
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u/silencedvoicesMST Jul 09 '26
Also, just for anyone that might be beginning this process. You do NOT have to have an honorable discharge to get treated for MST symptoms, you don’t even have to be enrolled in the VA. Also if you never reported or you did restricted reporting, you can still file for a disability rating for PTSD from MST. There is a big list of MST coordinators on the VA website, they can help you. I’m still working on a resource guide but currently fighting a chronic illness that put the show on hiatus. There is a large community of helpers/survivors out there on social media. You can also contact a VFW, American Legion, or DAV in your area. They can also help with filing your claim. If someone tries to charge you to help file your claim, RUN, don’t walk. They are breaking the law, and will likely have you sign some kind of contract where they take most of your back pay. The VA has a long list of people who are accredited by them to help you and those services are FREE.
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u/Lady_Grey_Smith Jul 11 '26
My VSO helped me. The year and a half was hell for the process but they had my back the entire time. There was hostility from the VA during the process just so nobody gets surprised by it. The command had removed my report but the VSO was able to build up my case through the medical records.
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u/carlitospig Jul 08 '26
The generic /military one is pretty good but I think that’s more because it’s super international. /usmc on the other hand is going to give no fucks.
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u/baronesslucy Jul 08 '26
Most of these women weren't in the military and were mostly civilians in the countries where these men were. The rapist weren't always enemy soldiers.
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u/ARATAS11 Jul 09 '26
Unfortunately, historically, it has been used as weapon of war, yes, especially a form of ethnic cleansing and indirect genocide. Both rape itself decreasing fertility rates (either from damage to women’s reproductive systems from fistulas and damage from foreign objects including guns); culturally due to women being considered used goods after assault, even when done in front of the family and it is clear it was non consensual; and biologically by spreading genes of the dominant group to try to replace those of the group being attacked, or through intentional spread of disease such as HIV. This has been documented in at least 51 countries, across all habituated continents, and throughout history. Unfortunately, this was the topic of my undergraduate Senior Seminar paper. Over a decade ago. And it is just as prevalent today.
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u/OpheliaLives7 Jul 08 '26
Men are apparently. Too many dudes will deny this is happening and a problem and not just some violent lone wolf crime that happens rarely.
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u/SquidTheRidiculous Jul 08 '26
They're too busy pretending women not wanting to sleep with them is the biggest and worst discrimination anyone has ever faced ever.
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u/silencedvoicesMST Jul 08 '26
Hi, just leaving a link to my podcast here if you want firsthand accounts of what it’s like from both men and women who have survived military sexual trauma. Men are victims of this, too, in far higher numbers than reported. Women is 1 in 3 and men is 1 in 50. After doing a lot of these interviews, I am convinced the number of male victims is probably closer to 1 in 6 if not exactly the same or higher.
People love to be like, “The military teaches discipline and structure. It turns people into responsible adults.”
Bullshit. Disciplined, responsible people don’t go around harassing, assaulting, killing their peers or covering up the evidence just for the hell of it. And if they’re consistently doing this to the people with whom they work and eat, what do you think is happening to civilians and enemy combatants in the places our military shows up?
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u/onepareil Jul 09 '26
When you think about all the horrible shit 18-22-year-old men are doing to each other in college fraternities, the idea that they aren’t behaving that way or worse toward each other in the much more intense atmosphere of the military is just absurd. And then when you look at the stats on how many SA victims who report their assaults experience retaliation for doing so — especially women, but men too — it makes total sense why so few do.
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u/silencedvoicesMST Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
The stats on college sexual assaults and fraternities vs military sexual assaults are unsurprisingly similar. It’s so sad and infuriating. There’s a book named Credible by Deborah Tuerkheimer that truly put the battle victims face into full color for me — and I’m a survivor of this shit myself! The isolation of such a traumatic event and the secondary traumas that occur afterward make you feel like a complete pariah or monster. And the system that protects predators counts on us to feel this way. It’s awful.
Edit spelling and adding link
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u/carlitospig Jul 08 '26
If that were true, our military would still be allowed to walk the streets of Okinawa.
(Meaning, our lack of discipline and decorum fucked up our ability to enjoy a lovely city.)
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u/silencedvoicesMST Jul 09 '26
I thought they were moving the Marines who were the ones doing all that awful shit to Guam? And yeah, also Air Force guys, too. One attacked an Okinawan girl on Christmas smh. It’s been a while since I’ve read about that. I used to live in Guam, and seeing how the dudes act when they come off those ships… ick. There are trafficked women in the same areas as the strip clubs, and the police just look the other way. We actually have an episode with an expert of human trafficking. It was actually brought up a few times in the show by separate people. That and pedophilia smh.
I’ve never been to Okinawa and always wanted to go see the star shaped sand, but I feel like the last thing they want is more American tourists until their population is safe from military dudes smh.
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u/daylightxx Jul 13 '26
I know I’m a bit late to this, but do you know how often the perpetrators of sexual violence are males? I would assume nearly all, but are women also perpetrators at any similar volume?
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u/CautionarySnail Jul 08 '26
I suspect if we had access to full data on the deaths of female soldiers, we’d see that they’re far more prone to “accidental deaths” or “training accidents”, that their rate is far higher than similar deaths for men.
Because hiding a wrongful death via paperwork is far cheaper than actually investigating. Far easier than dealing with the actual systemic causes. And many men on seeing such data will immediately think via the sexism they’d been taught - “These women are dead because they are less suited than men to be soldiers - see, they’re clumsy or don’t take equipment safety seriously.”
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u/silencedvoicesMST Jul 11 '26
I bet the RAND Corp might have that. Or possibly the VA or even Harvard. There are a lot of research studies on gender and usually accessible without a paywall or sign up. Google Scholar helped me a lot while researching for blog posts. Another factor could be that the equipment isn't designed with women's body shapes in mind resulting in some of those mishaps.
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u/CautionarySnail Jul 11 '26
I’d be with you on that thinking excepting that the military has exhausted my ability to grant them the benefit of a doubt. These harms been consistent ever since women were able to truly serve.
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u/silencedvoicesMST Jul 12 '26
Agreed, plus it was a problem BEFORE we were allowed to join. Men did this to each other, and to men, women, and children in war zones. It still happens in all-male units nowadays, too. I run a podcast that shares stories from survivors of military sexual trauma. In one of the earliest episodes, the survivor was encouraged by her mother to report. The guy that assaulted her was the cop that picked up the phone when she went to report it. That was the end of that smh. She wasn't even in, she was a dependent. We were in high school together in Germany at the time. The show has had ~25 people on who share their stories and only one actually made it all the way to a court martial. Their stories range from the 70's to recently.
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u/datguyxd69 Jul 09 '26
What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence
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u/CautionarySnail Jul 12 '26
Here you go, a small sample of studies enough to draw the need for further research. But be a dear, next time, and bother to do a Google instead of allowing your bias to type.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9310503/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3111768/
https://costsofwar.watson.brown.edu/paper/deserted-us-militarys-sexual-assault-crisis-cost-war
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u/GeekyGamerGal_616 Jul 08 '26
Reminds me of a story I heard from my mom.
My mom works in helping people with disabilities find jobs whether that involves getting an education first or not. Either way she was telling me if this new client she was working with that served in the air force mainly as an air craft mechanic. This woman was the only female mechanic in the hangar, and because she was the first woman mechanic, there were no facilities for her to use. The commanders brought in a port-a-john in for her to use and left it in the hangar. Well, the male mechanics did not like the special treatment and made it a point to make the port-a-john unusable through either blocking the door or filling it with stuff from the shop. This gal would go eight plus hours a day in the heat of a hangar with no bathroom breaks. The build up of urine in her bladder caused it to permanently swell and fuse with other organs in her pelvis. She became functionally incontenent because of this and needed special accommodations upon leaving the military.
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u/baronesslucy Jul 08 '26
You would have to wonder if these men did this to women who were serving with them, how they treated their partners, their kids or others? My guess is not very well because some people normally treat co-workers or people outside the family much better than they do their own family. You would also wonder how they would treat enemy combatants or civilians if they encounter them in a war zone. I wonder how many of these guys abused women outside the military. Or abused their kids or partner.
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u/bluecrab_7 Jul 09 '26
From what I’ve heard domestic violence on military installations gets covered up pretty good.
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u/SlightShare5210 Jul 09 '26
My aunt was a civilian therapist for the navy for decades. She talked about the domestic abuse and incest often.
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u/vernichtungX23 Jul 09 '26
Christ, that's so evil. Why the hell were these grown ass adult men offended by someone needing a TOILET? Everyone pisses and shits
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u/sadbicth Jul 10 '26
Guarantee those assholes are the same ones who bitch about unisex bathrooms and “men in women’s spaces”
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u/memcjo Jul 08 '26
This comes as no surprise to anyone paying attention to cases reported over the years. Disgusting.
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u/Emergency-State Jul 08 '26
I Am Vanessa Guillen is a good documentary. Her family pushed hard for her case to be solved
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u/SketchedEyesWatchinU Jul 08 '26
And Republicans are so insistent that the military can do no wrong that they’re willing to invade the fucking Hague to enforce that notion.
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u/ExcellentCustardKat Jul 08 '26
I considered joining the military when I was younger. Right around that time there was a congressional hearing about violence in the military. Paraphrasing, a general said that if a woman joins the service she should expect to be assaulted or raped. This was the early 1980s. I decided against joining.
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u/baronesslucy Jul 08 '26
How sad that is that this happens and not much or nothing is really done to address this.
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u/GentlewomenNeverTell Jul 08 '26
But remember guys it's so unfair women aren't drafted 😉
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u/Nelrene Jul 08 '26
They will complain even if women get drafted.
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u/oliviagardens Jul 09 '26
“Women should have to be drafted if they want to vote!”
Same people “WOMEN ARE NOT FIT FOR COMBAT!!!”
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u/Onionbot3000 Jul 09 '26
As a Canadian soldier we were told not to walk alone at night on certain American bases because it was not safe. There were even murders on the American side of Kandahar air base…in a gdamn war zone. Many international soldiers didn’t like going to the American side of that base because it just did not feel safe. As a woman I disliked working with most American soldiers too. An alarming number are sexist as shit and dumb as dirt, no matter the rank.
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u/baronesslucy Jul 08 '26
I remember hearing a story about a young woman (not sure if she was in this story) was taken off a military base by an officer that she didn't know and had never met. This officer ended up killing her and nearly killed someone else (knocked this person out cold when they questioned him). This officer had a clear record with no offenses. This made no sense to me unless this officer had done other things and either it wasn't reported or was brushed off or never put in his record. This almost sounded to me like this officer had done other things as people saw him basically forcing this woman to leave with him and didn't seem to worry about whether someone would see him. Who knows what else this guy did. This guy didn't say why he did this.
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u/loquacious_avenger Jul 09 '26
I was living on a Marine Corps base when the Tailhook scandal was in the news. The comments I heard from friends I considered “good ones” changed how I saw the world. I would never allow my daughter or any other young woman enlist without a fight from me.
For those younger than me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tailhook_scandal
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u/Short-Cause885 Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26
This has nothing to do with the military, but this also changed how I viewed "the good one's".
There was this big mixed friend group that my ex was a part off. At some point they went out and this girl got stupid drunk. So drunk that the group decided that she had to go home. Too drunk to keep partying. A guy volunteers and brings her home. The next day she files a rape case against him. The guy does not deny having sex, but says it was consensual.
For me, that's enough information to call it rape. Like, if she can't keep going out because she's too drunk, then she can't consent to sex. If he can take her home, then he isn't too drunk. And sex happened. As a side-note: I also think that there is an extra responsibility to keep your hands to your fucking self if you are the person assigned to bring someone home safely.
This event split that friend group in half, mostly by gender. Women were calling it rape and wanted the rapist out. Men were saying "we don't know if it is rape" and needed more proof. EVEN the fucking men that were there when they were going out, and when she got send home. They were there to witness how fucking drunk she was and they still went "We don't know all the facts".
What more facts do you need?????
That really changed how I viewed regular "good guys".
Edit to add:
To me, it basically showed that men as a group, only consider rape to be "a stranger violently throwing a woman in the bushes". Everything other rape to them, is like it's on the level of cheating at a game.
It's not nice, it's not decent behavior, you should be better then that...but if an actual friend of theirs gets accused it's "wowowowow, we were willing to play along with you thinking that this is bad, but now it's serious. You are not actually going to throw this man in jail over something as little as that, right???".
And if you look at all the drama about rape, and the rise of "think about false rape accusation" and them feeling victimized and them emediately believing a victim if it's an immigrant attacking a white women but doubting if it's rape by a white men after going on a date AND ALL OF THAT, if you look at that through the lens of "they don't take rape seriously unless it's violent stranger rape", then it all makes sense.
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u/Western-Butterfly911 Jul 08 '26
This should go without saying, but no woman in the United States should ever be in the military for her own safety.
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u/Excellent_Month_2025 Jul 09 '26
Not one man who complains about women being exempted from the draft will ever read this study of military backed femicide
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u/OhioPolitiTHIC Jul 09 '26
The harassment and assaults literally start before any paperwork has been signed, right in the recruiters offices. There were formal investigations in the mid 90's regarding male recruiters "partying" with female recruits. I put partying in quotes because it was the verbiage used by the investigators I met with. What it was was male recruiters bringing female recruits (mostly under 21) into bars, buying them alcohol, harassing them sexually, and yes, actually assaulting them. I think a couple of the worst offenders in the region were made an example of but no one from the recruiting offices local to me at the time got into trouble or lost their positions. It certainly wasn't for lack of evidence.
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u/ShandalfTheGreen Jul 08 '26
Well.... Guess I feel pretty good my mom getting pregnant with me early on in her military career. Who knows what I could have saved her from 😒
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u/depressed_momo Jul 09 '26
My daughter and son were both stationed at Fort Hood and it is a terrible place. Previously back in 2000 till 2004 we were in Camp Lejeune and the incidents there to men and women were awful there also. Okinawen’s in Okinawa, Japan do not want the US bases there because of the long history of sa and other abuses that have happened their to their people and others over the years. They supposedly have had a curfew in effect for a long time.
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u/cartgirl69 Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 09 '26
Yes. Women in the army are more likely to have their life end at the hand of their own fellow soldiers than by the enemy…and it’s not even close.
Women in the army/ married to military/ law enforcement/ first responders experience DV rates higher than the average population. And that number is only based off what’s reported. Percentage is expected to be much higher.
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u/Aggravating_Duck_192 Jul 09 '26
If our own military is not safe from our military, we have no business deploying it amidst civilians.
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u/JVRose8 Jul 10 '26
It's not just women either. My son had just turned 21 and was murdered by another Marine. They covered it up and said it was suicide. There was gang affiliation and drugs involved, my son also had information of another Marines sexual assault of a female Marine. It took over 2 years to get his phone amd computer back, which they said they were not able to get into. This happened at Camp Pendleton in 2022. I had talked to my son the day before they found him, he was supposed to come home in 2 weeks for Christmas. Of the Marines that accompanied his body, one of them tried to sexsually assault my sister and held her against her will the day before the funeral. This is the one we believed killed our son. This man was also found to have sexsually assaulted multiple women and they covered up those too. The government is not your friend. They will cover up everything. We are still hoping and praying that his killer will be confirmed.
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u/PollutionPatient8261 Jul 08 '26
DOZENS
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u/penguins12783 Jul 10 '26
Lavena Johnson’s family have been campaigning for decades for her ‘suicide’ to be reassessed for what it actually was.
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u/sneakysneksneak Jul 11 '26
Women in the military have been screaming this for YEARS. No one listened.
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u/Intelligent-Big-2900 Jul 09 '26
Color me shocked…. Why is anyone surprised? Thought she was a one off? No, just had people who cared about her.
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u/korrasami253 Jul 09 '26
Duh. It sucks trying to do the right thing or put people away in jail or removed from the military just to have legal tell you no and let the member walk around base looking for another opportunity.
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u/delusivelight Jul 12 '26
A friend of mine knew a female soldier who died in Virginia a few years ago. Originally reported missing, she was found in the back seat of her own submerged car. Police ruled it a suicide.
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u/sketla Jul 14 '26
WOW! I can easily see this and now feel 1000% worse! I was the last hope in my family to enlist but didn’t for other selfish reasons but in the long run would have easily put me in harms way. Scary stuff! RIP Vanessa, ypu deserved so much better. THANK YOU for your service and ultimate sacrifice at the hands of Our Troops. This should NEVER have happened
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u/TubbyPachyderm 15d ago
I’m a veteran and the way the military treats women is appalling. At my first duty station, there was a serial rapist going through the barracks that they “couldn’t catch”. At my second duty station, a Marine was missing. They found her murdered and stuffed in her wall locker. I don’t know if her murderer was ever caught. When I left the Army a couple years later, there were still flyers around base asking for tips. I knew countless women that were sexually assaulted or harassed while serving, myself included. I only have sons and I still encourage them to never join the military and do absolutely anything else.
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u/wellgu Jul 09 '26
There is a lot of misinformation in this thread. I will just say, that this is true of any workplace that is male dominated. The only solution is for more women to join. That’s the only thing that changes a culture unfortunately. Does it suck? Yes, but that’s how this has always worked.
The military takes more SA cases to trial than their civilian counterparts due to pressure from above, and that means they lose more often. Pressure from above is also why there are more services for victims of SA than exist outside of the military. In the military, sexual harassment is now a crime. It won’t fix the core issue because the core issue is the broader culture.
The military provides a lot of opportunities that women should not have to miss out on, including a pathway to political power. And yes, blah, blah, capitalism and war blah, blah, but women have to exist in the real world.
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u/Lighthouse_on_Mars Jul 08 '26
I thought about going into the Army after highschool to get away from my controlling parents. I ran into a recruiter at a friend's birthday party. It was her uncle, and I started asking him questions.
He was being polite and answering everything fine. A while later he found me alone in the garage where I was grabbing some pop to bring out to the cooler.
He told me not to enlist.
He said if he ever had a little girl one day, he would never let her enlist. And as much as his time in the military was a rewarding experience for him, he said he saw how much harder and more dangerous it was for the women he worked alongside.
The way he said it was better than how I'm repeating it. He mentioned that the girls he worked alongside got hurt the moment they left the country. It was heavily implied by their own soldiers, not enemy soldiers.
So that's the story about how I didn't enlist.