In the medical exam following her sexual assault on Jan. 21, 2001, the military doctor asked Navy sailor Kori Hansler if she had any bruising. “Then she gave me some ibuprofen,” Hansler recalled. “That was it.”
Hansler said she did not think to ask for emergency contraception. “I thought, ‘You can’t get pregnant from being raped.”‘
On Oct. 21, 2001, Hansler gave birth to a daughter, whom she named Angelina. Like all new mothers, she scrutinized her newborn, but for a different reason.
“When she was born, she looked just like one of the attackers,” she said. “She has his eyes, and his hands. The forehead and hairline.”
The method of her daughter’s conception does not change how she feels about her, Hansler said. “I just think about it like, a sperm donor. She was born on my Grandpa’s birthday. He had passed away the year before. I thought of her as a gift.”
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Yet her daughter also is prone to extreme mood swings, Hansler said, and she’s not certain how much of it is normal 2-year-old behavior and how much is passed on from her father.
“My daughter, she throws these fits constantly now. … The attitude, I want to blame on him.”
After her pregnancy became apparent, Hansler said, “the Navy just let me go. I was on the streets.”
She moved into a homeless shelter in Washington state, where she has lived for about a year. Her second daughter, 9-month-old Mackenzie, was the result of a brief relationship.
Hansler receives disability benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs for post-traumatic stress disorder and migraine headaches, and hopes to soon have a place of her own.
The migraines began after her rape, she said, and strike about twice a week. When they occur, she cannot function. “I get sick to my stomach. No lights, no kids. … I shut the door to my room, turn on one of my movies and just lay there.”
She is physically and emotionally unable to work, she said. “I can’t handle being away from my kids, even though I can’t handle being with them.”
She has no car and dreads the crowds on public transportation, so she and her daughters rarely leave their cramped apartment, where she shares her bedroom with the baby. She sees friends on occasion, and although she is not in therapy, she turns to her church for support.
Life holds little joy. Hansler says she is simply existing. Yet she is not bitter and is thankful for her daughter. “She’s helped me be stronger than I am.”
