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.
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