“Almost. Every. Single. Female. Veteran. I. Know. Has. An. Assault. Story.”
#IAMVANESSAGUILLEN
“Look Mommy, it’s you, Captain Mama!”
My four-year-old daughter squeals excitedly, looking over my shoulder at the picture of the woman in Army uniform lighting up my phone screen. I can’t help it, I immediately burst into tears — the kind of ugly crying where snot runs down your nose and sobs wrack your whole body. The kind of crying you can’t hide from anyone, not even a child you love.
“What’s wrong, Mommy? Why are you sad? Aren’t you Captain Mama?” My daughter asks again, her concern plain in her voice. Good Night Captain Mama/ Buenas Noches Capitán Mamá by pilot and Airforce Veteran Graciela Tiscareño-Sato is her absolute favorite book, and she’s so proud that her own Mama was once a Captain in the US Army.
“Yes, Baby. I am.” I say through my tears and hiccups, trying to control my breathing.
The woman on the screen isn’t me. But it could be.
On April 22nd, 2020, Private First-Class Vanessa Guillen, a woman who’d dreamed of serving her country as a soldier since she was 10 years old, was bludgeoned to death by a fellow soldier and then her body was hacked to pieces and buried in shallow graves. Vanessa had repeatedly told friends and family she was being sexually harassed but was not going to bother reporting because, why? She assumed nothing would be done. Based on my six years of experience as a woman in the military, and four years of experience in the leadership of veteran service organizations — dealing with the aftermath — I can’t easily assume that she was wrong.
I looked down at my phone, at the image of Vanessa that someone had sketched into a beautiful caricature rendering of her Basic Training photo. I look nothing like Vanessa. I’m blonde, with transparent vampire-like skin and have been referred to as “Combat Barbie” on more than one occasion. Vanessa was a beautiful Latina woman, with a smile that lights up every photo, and I assume every room, that she was in. But our physical difference doesn’t matter here, that’s kind of the point of a uniform.
What my baby could see, what has nearly all female veterans reeling and shaking right now can see, is that we are all Vanessa, which is why we have created and spread the hashtag #IAMVANESSAGUILLEN. The whole point of a uniform is to make us identical, whatever our appearances, backgrounds, social status or race. And it falls woefully short when it comes to gender.
The day Vanessa was killed, I’d been off of active duty for years already. The day that I was held down and brutally raped by a Marine Corp veteran during my first deployment to Afghanistan, Vanessa was a bright eyed 11- year-old girl, full of potential, who had just made the decision to spend her life in service to her country. I’ve never met her. Never even heard of her during her all too short life. But she is my sister-in-arms, a fellow veteran, in more ways than one. The night her remains were found, I saw a sketch of her glowing face — a sketch that looked just like her, but also could have been me, or any of the millions of female veterans in our nation.
“Almost. Every. Single. Female. Veteran. I. Know. Has. An. Assault. Story.”
These were the words I typed into a Facebook post as I was gasping for breath, images flashing through my mind of her fear, her outrage, her dismembered body, and of all the women I know — hundreds of them — who’ve likely come closer than they know to this same fate. Brave women who’ve spoken out, brave women who haven’t. Women who’d found the strength to keep going and those who’d broken up completely. Me, I’m somewhere in between. It took me eight years to even talk about my rape, so tightly bound up in the shame and the rape-culture of it all — wondering if I could still be proud of my service, of the barriers I’d broken, of the years I’d spent at war, if I admitted to being violated. When I filed complaints for harassment they were ignored, and when, as one of the senior women in the battalion, I worked to help and protect other women, I was warned to be careful of my own career, which ultimately suffered.
Almost as soon as I hit post on a short statement, expressing my grief, my shock, my absolute horror that a human, a woman, a soldier got less attention as a missing person than every honest veteran KNOWS we would have given to a missing rifle, and mentioning how almost every female veteran I know has her own assault story, a friend reached out to ask me to make it public, because she felt a need to share it — and tell her own story.
In less than 3 days the post had been shared nearly 3000 times, and it’s only a tiny part of the absolute outcry of veterans — male and female — who are howling with rage, sharing the stories of their own hidden harassments and assaults, every one of which deserved, and still deserves, attention. Every one of us deserved justice. Every one of us deserved the right to serve our country without the risk of sexual assault and harassment. When asked at the women’s VA clinics if we’ve ever been sexually harassed or assaulted during our service careers, we deserve to be able to check the box that says “no”. But — by a huge majority, if not unanimously — we can’t.
What breaks our hearts the most is that none of this is new. Rape has been married to military culture for too long. It has been written about extensively, addressed to Congress, had national attention and started movements, much of that laid out in this convenient Twitter thread by author Kayla Williams. When will it actually change? How many more Vanessas and Daniellas and Allies and Kaylas and Michelles and Anuradhas and Ryans and Monicas and Laticias and Evelyns and Shellies and LeVena Johnsons do we need before we decide to take this aspect of our culture — one that impacts readiness, good order and discipline, unit morale and soldier well-being maybe more than any other — and turn our laser-focused, mission-planning might on it? In consulting, I use military strategy and planning tools to teach business leaders how to isolate and target cultural phenomena in their organizations and then change it. We need to turn that kind of thinking back around and challenge our military leaders at the highest levels to focus on this mission. To Army Chief of Staff and my former commander in the famed 101st Division, General McConville, I’m looking at you.
As my sister and battle buddy E.Tuiana wrote in her own impassioned post, “We can’t lose another one of our own to another one of our own.”
As newer and increasingly gruesome details are coming out, more and more men are beginning to share the post too, sharing their own stories of assault, or their own horror of this dark part of the service of which we are so proud. But as in the case of nearly every stride the military has made towards ending the pandemic of harassment, assault, rape and violence in our ranks, it’s still just too little, too late, and never enough. Male Veterans, we thank you for your service, now please step up and act like our brothers. That’s what you are.
So, as I sit here on the 244th birthday of America, all in black and not feeling much like celebrating, watching my beautiful little daughter — the one with two veterans for parents and a definite higher chance of going into the military than most little American girls — I don’t have too much hope. I honestly don’t know if this time we will come close to addressing the real issues — getting to the heart of the real cultural problems at that fester and bubble up out of rape-culture. But I’m willing to fight for it. I’m willing to bet that most other female veterans are willing to fight for it too. We are soldiers, after all. We will not be silenced. We are now sharing our stories. They can ignore us individually but they can’t ignore us when we all speak together. We are all shouting with one voice, #IAMVANESSAGUILLEN.
Please listen to us.
Where is the integrity.
Where is the honor.
Where is the leadership.
Today, I’m going to lean down and kiss my daughter and then I’m going to put on my armor for the fight that we need to have right now. I’m not hanging up my Captain Mama bars just yet.
Daniella Mestyanek Young is an American author and TEDx Speaker. Daniella has been breaking through barriers and challenging authority figures since her earliest childhood memories growing up in the horrifying Children of God Cult and on through her service and deployment to war twice. Daniella served as part of the first group of women who integrated into deliberate combat arms missions back in 2011 and has since spent the majority of her time leading in veteran service organizations to try and help folks heal and find their own definition of success after their service. Daniella is married to the world’s best special operations helicopter pilot and speaks primarily in Brazilian Portuguese with her daughter, who sasses her back in three languages. Daniella is currently at work on her memoir, details at www.daniellamestyanekyoung.com