{"id":43522,"date":"2023-04-26T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-04-26T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/marinecorpstimes\/uncategorized\/2023\/04\/26\/a-letter-to-the-ncos-that-saved-my-life\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T04:16:19","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T04:16:19","slug":"a-letter-to-the-ncos-that-saved-my-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/marinecorpstimes\/opinion\/2023\/04\/26\/a-letter-to-the-ncos-that-saved-my-life\/","title":{"rendered":"A letter to the NCOs who saved my life"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Six months before the \u201cMe Too\u201d movement, I was nineteen and serving on my first overseas deployment. I was so proud to be working in the hospital, doing my job, learning, and growing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On St. Patrick\u2019s Day, my life was forever changed. At my place of work, a patient sexually assaulted me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When it happened, I froze. He was an officer, and I was just a junior enlisted soldier. As is common with perpetrators of sexual violence, there was also trickery and deception involved that had me questioning what just happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, I reported the assault immediately to a supervisor, who then sternly told the patient \u201cnot to touch the medics.\u201d I pushed it out of my mind and went back to work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But afterwards, I skipped chow and went back to the barracks, just feeling really horrible and \u201coff.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was off duty the next day, and when I went to lunch, one of my favorite NCOs, who happened to be a military policeman, came to sit with me. He called me \u201cDoc.\u201d I looked up to him both as a big brother and also because he was well over six feet tall. He immediately noticed that \u201coff\u201d feeling that I couldn\u2019t seem to shake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When he asked me what was going on, I told him that something weird happened to me at work. As I recounted the situation, his eyes widened as I described behavior that he clearly thought was wrong. And he also clearly thought that just having my supervisor give the harasser a verbal warning wasn\u2019t enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even as I sat there, still wondering if I had made too big a deal of the incident, I saw him, the patient who assaulted me, walk by in the chow hall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe doesn\u2019t even live in this zone,\u201d I thought, my heart racing. \u201cOfficers don\u2019t live in this zone.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My NCO agreed, and kept telling me, \u201cDoc, that\u2019s not normal.\u201d And he encouraged me to tell my company commander, but I was scared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seeing that, he walked me over to see the company commander, his seasoned steady presence calming me down, and backing me up. He sat with me while I recounted to the commander all that had happened, and then he walked with me back to the barracks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From then on, whenever I went anywhere, I had an NCO with me. If it wasn\u2019t my tall NCO, it was someone I\u2019ll call the \u201ccalm NCO\u201d from the same military police section. Everywhere I went, I had my NCO guardians, carefully watching and protecting. I never walked alone, ate alone, or went anywhere alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Teal
Teal shoes on display at McMahon Auditorium April 22, 2021, painted teal and displayed to bring awareness to Sexual Assault Awareness Prevention. (Sgt. James Geelen\/Army)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The report of the incident went all the way up to our battalion commander, who had a stern talk with this young officer. Later, the battalion commander called me over after a briefing, and asked to talk to me in a crowded auditorium, with other troops in earshot. I stood at attention as he told me he had talked to the young officer, who had just felt so bad that \u201che scared me.\u201d The battalion commander told me the young officer was even crying in his office, and the commander said he was sure it wouldn\u2019t happen again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I walked back to our zone with the tall NCO accompanying me \u2014 and towering over me \u2014 and told him what the battalion commander had said, adding, \u201cI feel bad that I said anything.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My tall NCO gave the calm NCO a knowing look, then told me firmly, \u201cDoc, don\u2019t feel bad.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My tall NCO had seen this young officer after his meeting with the commander, talking to friends indignantly and making fun of me and my attempt to report his behavior. He wasn\u2019t sorry. His tears were for show; he just didn\u2019t want to be reprimanded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the assault, and despite the commander\u2019s lecture, my harasser was frequently in my zone, even though he didn\u2019t live there. It felt like I couldn\u2019t escape him. At the gym, or the chow hall, he would just appear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But my NCOs were always with me, at the gym, at breakfast, and at the smoke pit in the evening, cutting it up and calming me down. Or trying to. During this time, I began to have anxiety, insomnia, nightmares, and even suicidal ideations. I was sure that I was unsafe. This same thing and even much worse things were happening to many of the other junior enlisted females on our base. It was clear to me that I was not going to receive help from the chain of command until something much worse happened to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thankfully, my NCO guardians kept safe, at least physically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While I was overseas, I had no words for what happened to me. I didn\u2019t ever say out loud \u201csexual assault.\u201d I didn\u2019t say \u201cstalking.\u201d I didn\u2019t use the words victim or survivor<\/a>. And I certainly didn\u2019t recognize that I had the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. That\u2019s when the body\u2019s natural response to trauma, like hypervigilance, anxiety or nightmares, which normally subsides in a month or so, instead becomes habitual, and interferes with daily life. I had only heard of PTSD for war heroes, not for young girls too far from home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All I knew was something unfair had happened to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also knew that soldiers who asked for help for mental health issues stopped progressing in their careers, so if I sought help for my traumatic response to the assault and the stalking, I feared the same might happen to me. And I wasn\u2019t going to let this abusive officer take all that I had worked so hard for away. He had taken enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, I didn\u2019t get any mental health services.<\/p>\n\n\n\t