Navy veteran Linda Miles was raped at gunpoint during ROTC boot camp in Orlando, Fla., in June 1975, she said. She was 20. “I never told anybody” for fear of not being believed, she said. “I isolated. I drank.”
Later, she heard that the man who raped her was court-martialed for being a serial rapist, and that helped her heal, she said.
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In 1979, Miles was stationed in Sicily, at a base with 2,000 men and 50 women. “It was unbearable. I’ve never been called ‘bitch’ so many times in my life.”
While stationed there, she was supposed to model in a fall fashion show, and she invited a fellow sailor she had formerly dated to the event. Before the show, he suddenly became angry with her, dragged her to a remote part of the parking lot, and beat and raped her, she said. When she returned to her base, she reported the rape, Miles said. “I was asked, ‘What did you do to provoke it?’ – and I had two black eyes and a broken nose.”
Her attacker was given a psychiatric evaluation and then fined, she said.
They were left on the same base together. “I was scared to be anywhere. I got out and came home. I could not stop crying.”
She had a nervous breakdown, records show, and moved in with her parents in Southern California. For years, she said, she stuffed down the painful memories with drug and alcohol addictions.
Then in 1994, Miles began attending a women’s group at a Veterans Affairs center in Los Angeles and became sober. For the first time in years, she said, she has hope, not just for herself, but for other women like her.
“Every time I meet a woman in this group, I know there’s a way out for her,” she said.
Recently, she received a bachelor’s degree in business administration. She became certified as a drug and alcohol counselor. She receives disability from the VA for post-traumatic stress disorder from her sexual trauma in the military, records show. The trauma still resurfaces.
At work in December 2002, a male co-worker grabbed her in anger, and it triggered flashbacks of her attack. She became inconsolable and went into a deep depression. “I could not function.”
Now, she wears dark sunglasses when she goes to the VA for counseling to avoid eye contact with the men in the lobby.
