Clearing the Fog of War

Beyond Lackland courtroom, a victim's suffering

When Air Force basic training instructor Peter Vega Maldonado cut a plea bargain and went on trial a year ago this week, some may not have seen what was coming – a series of seemingly endless trials.

But another basic training instructor faces a special court-martial today, and after Staff Sgt. William Romero is tried, two others will follow this month.

He could get a year in jail if convicted of having illicit relationships with four women in technical training as well as committing adultery, but there is more to the Air Force’s worst-ever sex scandal than the banging of a gavel and a judge’s ruling on guilt or innocence.

Ask Virginia Messick about that.

Or her parents.

Now living in California, Messick is 21 and wrestling with demons that resemble combat PTSD, but were born in Air Force basic training. Her training instructor, then-Staff Sgt. Luis Walker, was supposed to be a role model for every recruit, the very embodiment of the Air Force’s core values  of integrity, service before self and excellence.

He wasn’t.

Busted to the lowest rank and now doing 20 years at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., he preyed on 10 women in basic training, one of them Messick. He lured her to a vacant dormitory, where they had sex. Messick now says she was raped, but the allegation wasn’t made at Walker’s trial last summer and he wasn’t convicted of it.

Whatever happened, she’s a much different person these days.

Messick doesn’t get out much. A shut-in much of the time, she carries a knife in her purse. She won’t answer the door if someone knocks. She notices if anything in the house has been moved.

And in addition to hyper-vigilance, a classic PTSD trait, she has trouble sleeping. And there are nightmares.

As a child and later a teenager, Virginia Messick was the kid no one worried about, a cheerleader at Baker High School in Florida who made friends easily.

“She was the one you didn’t have to worry about when she went to school. There was never going to be a question of her grades. She got it, she picked it right up,” said her father, retired Air Force Tech. Sgt. Tracy Simmons, 49, of Midwest City, Okla.

“She could make friends in a heartbeat. She was bubbly, she was happy. She didn’t become a cheerleader by being a wallflower. She was outgoing, she was scared of nothing.”

After basic training, she was lost, disillusioned angry and sometimes out of control.

“In one act by one person, she went to the complete opposite end of the spectrum,” her dad said.

Marla Simmons described her daughter as strong and self-sufficient, and proud of following her father and a grandfather into the Air Force. But she could tell something was wrong even when Messick was in technical training. Things later got so much worse, Simmons wanted to commit her daughter.

“Jenny went though all the stages of being raped. There was denial and then there was shame, then she wanted to hurt herself. She was angry,” said Simmons, 47, of Baker, Fla.

“It’s all come in stages and my daughter, you d never have to look at her and wonder if she was happy until after it happened. Then you could see would be OK one minute and then she would be completely unglued the next.”

Original link here: http://blog.mysanantonio.com/military/2013/04/beyond-lackland-courtroom-a-victims-suffering/

Lackland instructor's victim speaks of trauma, fear

Airman Basic Virginia Messick walked into the office of a vacant dormitory one day in April 2011 but couldn't see the person who had called her to the room. The door closed behind her.

Staff Sgt. Luis Walker, her basic training instructor at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, grabbed her and threatened to destroy her career after ordering her into the empty dorm, Messick said.

A few weeks earlier, he stuck a hand down her shirt and kissed her when they were alone in his office, so she said she knew what he wanted. Alone, she said, she had no way out. There were no other recruits nearby to cry out to and no security cameras to monitor the area.

“He just looked at me, and he grabbed me and pulled me next to the bed and started taking my top off and he pulled his pants down” and indicated he wanted her to perform oral sex, she said. “And I just looked at him, and he just said, 'I told you what you are going to do, so you'd better do it.'”

Walker is serving 20 years in prison for raping another recruit and having illicit relationships with 10 women in basic training. Messick and prosecutors said at his trial in July that the dormitory encounter was consensual, but she now calls it rape and accuses Air Force investigators of botching her interrogation.

The Air Force said Messick never alleged during the investigation that she was raped or that nonconsensual sex took place. Later, at trial, defense attorneys pointed out that Messick had said in the statement, “It wasn't sexual assault. I engaged willingly.”

She says she was too scared at the time to tell the truth.

Nearly two years after the incident, Messick says she is talking with the media for one reason: to persuade other victims to report their crimes and get psychological help.

She says she suffers emotional trauma that resembles post-traumatic stress disorder in combat troops. Hyper-vigilant, she keeps the blinds closed at her home in Marysville, Calif., and carries a knife in her purse. If someone knocks on the door, she won't answer. At 21, Messick doesn't have a job and isn't sure she could keep one.

On medications to cope with anxiety and stress, Messick says she screams at people, cries for no apparent reason, struggles to sleep and has nightmares — one so bad she punched her husband in the face. There are days she can't get out of bed.

Like virtually every other victim in a scandal that has seen 33 basic training instructors fall under investigation for allegations of misconduct with 63 recruits and technical training students, she didn't report the incident.

When confronted by investigators, Messick said she feared for her career and didn't tell them she was raped. She said the interrogation turned contentious, with a male agent slamming a document on the table and telling her that if she would sign it, they would leave.

She did, offering a vague recollection of a tryst, not rape.

“How do you want to talk about what happened to you when you have two strangers come into a room and one of them is getting hostile with you? And in whose right mind would you want to say, 'This is what happened to me?'” Messick said.

Read more here: http://www.mysanantonio.com/default/article/Lackland-instructor-s-victim-speaks-of-trauma-4398889.php

Sniper's killing raises concerns: Local group works with troubled vets

The shooting deaths Saturday of decorated Navy SEAL Chris Kyle and a friend at a North Texas shooting range are certain to put a spotlight on post-traumatic stress disorder.

Those who work closely with troubled war veterans acknowledge potential perils, though they say serious, even deadly incidents, are by far the exception, not the rule.

A flurry of news reports said Kyle, 38, and Chad Littlefield were killed at a shooting range near Glen Rose by a mentally disturbed veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan. Police arrested Eddie Ray Routh, 25, but did not offer a motive, the New York Times reported.

Retired Air Force Chief Master Sgt. Bob Laymon said he routinely tells volunteers who converge every summer on Canyon Lake for Operation Float a Soldier to be alert to wounded war veterans on the edge.

“One of the things we tell them is about PTSD, that some of these guys will give you incorrect or even threatening answers to your questions,” Laymon, 62, of Universal City, said Sunday. “And son of a gun, here I am one of the people briefing that, and I had a guy threaten to tear my head off .... over a routine question.”

Kyle, who held two Silver Stars, was credited with killing around 160 enemy troops. His book, “American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History,” brought him fame and a generous speaking fee. He agreed to waive the fee recently for St. Mary's University's Center for Terrorism Law's 10th anniversary gala next month in San Antonio.

“That was very gracious of him because he gets $15,000 a pop for speeches,” said retired Army Lt. Col. Jeffrey Addicott, the center's founder and director.

The story shocked many in the veterans' community, among them Laymon and Janis Roznowski, founder of Operation Comfort, a group that has helped troops recovering from their wounds at the San Antonio Military Medical Center.

Rosnowski, whose group provides financial support and a variety of sporting events that include a sled ice hockey team for amputees, said wounded GIs can face extreme stress.

Read more: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/military/article/Sniper-s-killing-raises-concerns-4247925.php#ixzz2JysfQ8Nq

Most suicides ever for Army, military

The Army, by far the largest branch of the armed forces, set a record for suicides last year with 325, almost two-thirds of all military suicides.

It also was a record year throughout the military, with 516 suicides across all branches.

Suicides have bedeviled the military for years, with deaths rising after the U.S. went to war in Afghanistan and Iraq. But the Army, which has borne the brunt of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, has suffered the most.

Posts most involved in those wars reflect the problem, and none has more suicides than Fort Hood.

The Central Texas installation, which sent two divisions to Iraq three times, has had 129 suicides since 2003, including 19 last year.

The Army's Health Promotion, Risk Reduction and Suicide Prevention Office has found that suicides are driven by a complex set of factors ranging from deployment time and relationship problems to substance abuse and money woes.

The typical active-duty and reserve component soldier committing suicide last year was male, enlisted and had deployed at least once. A majority of them, 136, were married, with just 11 divorced.

The Army has initiated a flurry of programs over the years to counter suicides, as has Fort Hood, but deaths have remained high.

Army Col. Carl Castro, director of the Military Operational Medicine Research Program, said that while much is known about factors involved suicides, the Pentagon is playing catch-up.

Rigorous science is lacking, he said, explaining there are only 20 to 25 investigators in the world qualified to test and validate approaches to suicide prevention — far fewer than researchers in such areas as cancer intervention.

“And I think that's sort of where we're at and why this is such a difficult problem to get a hold of,” Castro said. “They're all fully engaged, so I think until we can sort of turn that corner and get that sort of maximum involvement, it's always just going to be a real tough nut to crack, but we are committed to solving this problem.”

Read more: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/military/article/Most-suicides-ever-for-Army-military-4244378.php#ixzz2Js6j2f6L

Military suicides set new records

The military's chronic problem with suicides set a sobering record last year, with at least 493 suicides across the services, a rate of one death every 18 hours.

And the record, more than double the number of suicides in the first year of the Iraq war, is sure to rise further when the Army provides its final statistics this month.

The wife of a Marine Corps aviator who killed himself after returning from Iraq said Monday that as hard as war has been, peace might be worse.

GIs long stressed by deployments are coming home to a shrinking military and a slow economy, and they might be wrestling with financial and relationship woes as well as wounds that include traumatic brain injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder.

“I think for a warrior ... who has been trained to fight a war and that's become their identity, that's become their sense of purpose, that's become their meaning in life and then that's taken away, it's hard to shift,” said Kim Ruocco, 49, of Newbury, Mass.

“It is really hard for them to shift back to their families, communities, regular jobs, regular relationships, and if they have an injury or illness that adds complexity to that.”

The figures for active-duty and reserve forces included final statistics provided Monday by the Marine Corps. They were released a day after the San Antonio Express-News reported that 2012 was the worst year in a decade of war for military suicides.

The statistics detailed a continuing increase in suicides in recent years. The Army's Health Promotion, Risk Reduction and Suicide Prevention Office has found that suicides are driven by a complex set of factors ranging from deployment time and relationship problems to substance abuse and troubled finances.

Read more: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/military/article/Military-suicides-set-new-record-4193784.php#ixzz2IZFFK4Ml

Army suicides hit a record high in July

The Army said Thursday that 38 soldiers committed suicide in July, the highest monthly mark since it began keeping records.

"Suicide is the toughest enemy I have faced in my 37 years in the Army," the Army's vice chief of staff, Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, said in a prepared statement.

Suicides have plagued the armed forces for years. They began to rise amid repeated tours to Iraq and Afghanistan, with about two-thirds of all deaths occurring among those who have been deployed at least once.

Army Sgt. Sean Greany served in Afghanistan during President Barack Obama's surge, returning home in late 2010. Struggling to sleep and often having nightmares, he was put on trazodone.

The drug is an antidepressant used to treat sleep disorders, but it also can cause anxiety, panic attacks and depression. Greany, 28, of La Plata, Md., fatally poisoned himself on April 11, 2011.

"In the end he was just like very terrified, he got more aggressive, agitated and all he got was trazodone," his mother, Petra Patterson of Hughesville, Md., said, adding that he was never monitored while on the medication.

120 confirmed this year

The highest number of suicides has occurred over the years at the nation's largest and busiest posts, and the July figures reflect the trend. Fort Bragg, home of the 82nd Airborne, leads the Army this year with 13 deaths.

Fort Hood had 12, and set a record for Army suicides just two years ago, with 22. It leads all posts with 122 GIs taking their lives since 2003.

So far this year, the Army has recorded 187 possible suicides in the active-duty and reserve component, with 120 of those confirmed. Most of the cases have occurred among active-duty soldiers, with 116 dying.

The deaths have come despite Army leaders instituting a variety of programs, some intended to strengthen the resiliency of stressed-out soldiers and families.

Read more: http://www.chron.com/news/nation-world/article/Army-suicides-hit-a-record-high-in-July-3794577.php