Maurine, 72, joined the Air Force in 1951 at age 19. “I was treated with respect,” she recalls of basic training. “I was the only woman in medical supply.”
At a party outside her base in Westover, Mass., she accepted a ride from two officers, pilots as she remembers. They drove her to a secluded area and took turns raping her, she said.
“I was so scared,” Maurine said. “I didn’t know what to do.” She was 21. “You never heard much about rape then. … I remember thinking they could kill me.”
She did not report it at first. “They were officers. I was an enlisted person. We were not supposed to fraternize. I was afraid of being in trouble. You’re ashamed. You don’t want anybody to know.”
But soon she had to tell, because she was pregnant from the rape, she said.
“I told my commanding officers. They were dumbfounded, sympathetic. They found out the officers’ names. Nothing ever happened to them.”
Maurine, on the other hand, was forced to accept an immediate honorable discharge because of her pregnancy, her records show. She was sent to a Salvation Army home for unwed mothers in Connecticut. She arrived in May, had the baby in August. She put the girl up for adoption.
No one suggested she get counseling. “I was just sent away, and that was it.”
In the years since, she married, had children and worked a series of nondescript jobs so no one would check her background and perhaps find out about the baby, she said. “It’s guilt and it’s shame.”
Then her anger began to surface, and it turned to rage. Her marriage ended. “I couldn’t stand for anybody to touch me.”
Finally, in January 2002, Maurine blurted out to a friend that she had been raped. She began going to the VA in Boston and getting counseling, which helps, she said. “I’m trying to control my rage. I don’t get angry like I used to. Sometimes I feel like ripping the world apart. It’s a horrible thing, rage.”
After the anger, she said, comes depression. “Sometimes I get so depressed I feel like I’m an empty paper bag. But I fight it.
“I deserve more,” Maurine said. “My life was ruined; it was completely wrecked. I could have been anything. But I didn’t want anyone to know I had a baby. I could have stayed in the service, been an officer. I loved the service. And they told me, ‘You have to go.’
“Sometimes I feel like ripping the world apart. It’s a horrible thing, rage. … I don’t like people. I don’t trust people. I can’t work with the public. That’s why I stopped driving.”
She keeps a billy club at her bed. “I can tell you no one will ever touch me without my consent again. Never.”
