Growing up on a Missouri farm, Iolanda Thompson learned how to drive big trucks. So in Army basic training at Fort Gordon, Ga., in 1978, Thompson was chosen to drive to a detail in a secluded area with three other soldiers – all men.
One of them attacked her. “He threw me down on the ground, ripped open my shirt, tried to stick his tongue in my mouth, attempted to rape me,” she recalled, wiping tears. “The other men didn’t try to help. They were close by.”
Tall and athletic, Thompson fought and screamed for at least a half hour, she recalled.
“He could not complete the act: I fought too hard.”
Finally, Thompson said, when her attacker was distracted, she ran to the truck and locked herself in.
“The men pleaded with me to let them back in. Said they wouldn’t touch me. Begged me not to leave them.”
Eventually, she opened the door. “I was afraid I’d get in trouble if I left.”
Heading back, her attacker was silent, but the other men said, “No one would believe me since there were three of them.”
“I was barely 18,” Thompson said of the 1978 incident. “Still a virgin.”
So she did not report it. “I was afraid to say anything, afraid of failing, afraid of being sent home. … My father was in the military, and my mother had pleaded with me not to join. I was under the impression I’d be in a lot of trouble.”
Shortly after that, another woman in her unit reported that a drill sergeant approached her sexually, Thompson recalled. “She was chastised, severely harassed and disciplined. Eventually kicked out. I learned, don’t report, because if you do, it will come back to haunt you.”
She was transferred to Fort Huachuca in Arizona, where she was attacked by another soldier. Again, she fought. “He pulled some of my hair out. I had bruises. Someone pulled him off of me.”
Because the attack happened off base, she reported it to civilian police, and the man was arrested. Yet she was never questioned about the case, or brought to court.
Shortly after that, she got married and left the military.
“I became very shaky and withdrawn. Married an abusive man. Controlling.”
She took a job in law enforcement, and when a supervisor inappropriately touched her, she blew up and walked off the job, Thompson said. The situation triggered flashbacks. She began having nightmares. Started drinking. “I contemplated suicide.”
But she had two children to consider. So she returned to work and filed a complaint against the supervisor. He eventually was removed.
During a recent visit to a VA medical center in upstate New York, Thompson said, she was asked if she had ever been traumatized in the military. “I said yes.”
Then six months ago, her niece was murdered in a domestic-violence case. “Everything came to a head … I started to feel if I had spoken up in my own life, done more, that she would be alive today. This brought back everything. The trauma, abuse I had experienced. I should have known better. I should have known. I wish I had handled my life better, urged her to get help.”
Thompson, 44, now attends group counseling. “Coming to the VA, it’s an eerie feeling. I’ve stayed away from the military all these years. … I come because I feel more comfortable in a group. It has helped me quite a bit. I feel safe, and that’s a first for me.”
