For Frances Hudson, it’s hard to remember the details of each time she was assaulted while serving in the Army from 1965 to 1971.
There was the major who grabbed her until she kneed him in the groin.
There was another major who stopped by her apartment unannounced to talk about work, then began groping her. She screamed, and a neighbor came to her door. Her attacker left.
There was the commander’s driver who pushed her against a wall, trying to kiss her, until she began slapping him.
There was the officer who gave her a ride home when her car was in the shop and followed her inside. She fled to the bathroom and locked the door, staying there for hours until she was sure he had left.
The first time, Hudson reported the incident. She never heard back from the Army.
In 1969, after a party at a base in Germany, a lieutenant she had dated raped her in her apartment on Halloween night.
“I fought him at first, but he was getting really aggressive, and I was afraid I’d be seriously hurt,” Hudson recalled through tears. Finally, he fell asleep, and she fled to a girlfriend’s home.
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She did not report that assault. “There was no support,” she said. “The standard reply was, ‘Are you sure you want to ruin his career?’ It (the consequences of reporting) got around very quickly. The charges would never come out. You’d lose your position, be transferred.”
She became pregnant from the rape. “Even though I don’t believe in abortion, there was no way I was going to have his child and be reminded of him the rest of my life.”
She borrowed money and flew to England for the abortion.
Months later, she met the man who would later become her husband. He also was in the military. When he proposed, she consented under one condition.
“I told him I was raped and had an abortion, and if he could accept that and never mention it again. He agreed. We’ve been married 33 years this December.”
Hudson married and left the Army in 1971. She and her husband had one child, a son born with multiple disabilities. “I dealt with a lot of guilt from that. I didn’t know if it was from my abortion,” she said.
For years, she tried to never think about the rape, but memories of it surfaced.
“I have problems to this day – nobody can touch my face,” said Hudson, now 60 and living in Denver. “I freeze; I get flashbacks. I can’t breathe because he (the rapist) covered my face.”
Her son, who is in a wheelchair, has trouble understanding why his mother turns away when he reaches out to touch her face, she said.
She now attends group counseling. “After all the brainwashing you get in the military, you really feel it’s your fault,” Hudson said.
“The hardest thing to get past is that you are not the guilty one.”
