ANDALE, Kan. – Army Spec. Natalie Longee flew home from Iraq carrying a bitter burden.
But first, homecoming: Longee’s family, beaming at the airport, and a small crowd of local reporters; red roses; a rib-eye steak dinner and chocolate cake decorated with her picture and the words “Welcome home, Natalie. We love you!”
During it all, a piece of paper rested in the pocket of her Army camouflage jacket with the phone number she had been told to call about her rape.
In January, Longee says, she was raped in her barracks at Fort Hood in Texas by a fellow soldier. As a military police officer, she knew the difficulties she would face, she said, and after bundling up her stained clothing, she agonized for two days before reporting the assault.
The man she identified as her attacker has not been charged, she said. The military never gave her a victim advocate or offered counseling, she said.
Investigators want to talk with her again, she said, which is why a sergeant in Iraq pressed the phone number – for a military prosecutor – into her hand as she left for a two-week leave in the United States.
The time was supposed to be sweet: to know the infant niece she had never met, wrap her arms around her younger brothers, share Thanksgiving with family. Now, she said, she must use some of that time to relive her assault.
Two months after reporting it, she was sent to Iraq. Already traumatized, she said, she has faced more challenges as a driver and gunner escorting convoys.
And there is retaliation. Longee said a sergeant told her that due to her “poor decisions,” she did not deserve promotion. He also rebuffed her efforts to see a chaplain for counseling, she said, telling her to forget the rape and “drive on.”
Her new supervisor, once a roommate of her assailant, treats her with contempt, she said, and the attitude has spread in her platoon.
“When I walk by.” she said, “some of the men tell me to kill myself. I feel like a freakin’ kid, running away from the bullies in high school. And I’m an adult.”
At the Wichita airport on Friday night, celebration masked her turmoil. Longee embraced family, then spoke about Iraq.
“I will never be the same,” she said into television microphones. “I will never take anything for granted, ever again.”
Her dinner at Bolton’s, a steakhouse in Wichita, was on the house. Later, she sat in her parent’s living room handing toy camels to her niece and nephew, imported coffee to her stepfather and an Iraqi shawl to her mother.
But the rape never left her mind, she said.
Her mother, Margaret Vague, 47, said she is horrified at her daughter’s treatment, and calls commanders at Fort Hood every other week, looking for answers.
“I’ve been told there is DNA evidence against him,” Vague said of the accused assailant. “It’s been almost a year – why is he still walking around? It’s like they are trying to break my daughter.”
A spokesman for Fort Hood said that officials couldn’t comment because Longee’s rape case was under investigation.
Her story echoes what dozens of women told The Denver Post in its nine-month examination, published Nov. 16-18, of how the military mishandles cases of sexual assault and domestic violence.
The armed services have discouraged victims from reporting, deprived them of advocates and counseling, and conducted shoddy investigations, according to interviews with more than 60 military women and a review of records.
Like Longee, the women feared retaliation and damage to their careers if they reported. Those who did come forward often were blamed, ostracized or punished.
“I want the pain to end, but it doesn’t ever,” Longee, 21, said through tears on Saturday, a day after returning to her hometown, Andale, population 766.
She met with a reporter at a hotel, away from little brothers who might overhear. The rape was horrific enough, Longee said. What she suffered for reporting it, she said, was worse.
“I feel dismissed. Why is it forgotten? Why do I have to live life this way because they don’t want to do anything?”
Since she was 3 years old, Longee said, she wanted to be a cop. “I like the responsibility,” she said. “I like to help people.”
Born in Poplar, Mont., Longee lived for a time on an Indian reservation. Her parents, from different Sioux tribes, divorced. When her mother remarried, the family moved from Montana to Andale.
In January 2001, at 18, she joined the military. Her mother took Longee to get her waist-long hair cut, keeping it in honor of their heritage.
In January 2002, Longee went to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to guard detainees from Afghanistan.
After six months, she returned to Fort Hood. On Jan. 5, her roommate was out when another police officer from her unit came to her barracks. The two had served together in Cuba, she said. “He was supposed to be my friend.”
They played Nintendo, she said, until she told the man he could continue but she was going to bed. She changed into her pajamas in the bathroom, she said, and fell asleep.
She awoke with him on top of her, Longee said. Afraid he would hurt her more if she fought, she froze, she said, as he raped her.
“I was trying to tell myself it wasn’t real. I was scared of what my platoon sergeant would say. I was afraid of being in trouble.”
For the next two days, her mother said, Longee called home, talking of nightmares.
“Natalie, what’s wrong?” Vague recalled asking.
“Mom, (he) raped me,” she said her daughter told her.
Vague said she reported the assault to a sergeant in Longee’s unit. Longee said she went to the base clinic, then a military hospital, where the staff mistakenly told her too much time had passed for them to conduct an exam. She returned to the base, where a male investigator interviewed her for several hours, she said.
After the interview, an ambulance took her to a civilian hospital. Because the assault was reported within 72 hours, she said, physicians there performed a rape examination. Later, she said, investigators collected evidence, including her attacker’s semen and blood from her underwear that was caused by injuries from the rape.
At the hospital, a civilian advocate talked to her, Longee said, and scheduled another visit. A few days later, an Army major who identified herself as a counselor called Longee. The woman never asked how Longee was doing or what had happened, Longee said. “What she wanted to know was why was a civilian involved?”
Soon, she said, her attacker began following her. He would park his car next to hers, stand outside her barracks, wave his arms and shout. Supervisors agreed to restrict his movements. Yet all they did was move the man from her building to one next door, she said.
When she learned her unit was being deployed to Iraq in March, Longee said, she felt relief.
“It was the only way I could get away from him.”
In Iraq, Longee said, she had nightmares, sudden flashbacks to the rape, depression.
Longee is part of a unit that escorts civilians and soldiers. She had been in Iraq a month when she was ambushed. “A van had blocked us off. Tried to separate us.”
She kept driving, she said, while firing her 9 mm handgun out the window. Nobody from her unit was injured that day.
Combat, Longee said, is the only time she forgets about the rape.
Over the past several months, her case has been passed around among investigators, she said, and when she asks for updates, supervisors tell her they don’t know.
She is torn between professional duty and personal dread.
A year ago, “I was all about, ‘Go Army!”‘ she said. “I loved my life. I felt I was making a difference.”
Now, “I feel like I’m being treated as less than a person.”
The prosecutor’s phone number still rests in her Army jacket pocket. She will call it, she said.
At the hotel, she covered her face with her hands so her mother could not see her tears.
“Sometimes I don’t want to live anymore. I don’t like the person I am anymore. I can’t smile. My whole life has been taken from me.”
Amy Herdy can be reached at aherdy@denverpost.com or 303-820-1752.
