FEATURE FIGHTING FOR

Standing tall: Ruth on her Maine farm.

★★★★★★★★★★ Fighting

FOR WHAT’S rıght

I joined the Navy to serve my country, only to spend the next two decades in a different kind of battle—one that I hope will make life easier for all the military women who come after me. by RUTH MOORE

Ilive in the most peaceful place you can imagine, a farm in Milbridge, ME. But even here I have terrible nightmares and insomnia. I flip through TV channels and play Sudoku while my husband, Butch, and our daughter, Samantha, sleep. When I do sleep, Butch wakes me up in the morning by wiggling my toe—he learned the hard way that if he touches me anywhere else I jump up and start defending myself. I’ve had post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) for more than 20 years.

Butch is my rock—a gentle, easygoing man—and Samantha, 11, is worth life itself. She makes me so proud. Part of why I’m sharing my story is because I want her to be proud of me, too, to know I fought to make this country a place where what happened to me isn’t tolerated.

★★★★★★ New recruit My father served in the Army, my stepfather was a Marine, and I joined the Navy at 17 in 1986. I envisioned serving my country and becoming a professional woman. I had it all planned—I’d start as an aerographer’s mate (like a Navy weatherperson), then become an officer. I married a fellow sailor right after boot camp and was posted in the Azores, a group of islands about 1,000 miles from Europe in the Atlantic.

It was there, outside a club on base, that I was raped by my supervisor, a petty officer. To this day, the smell of his cologne, Drakkar Noir, brings on flashbacks. I get a tinny, acrid taste in my mouth, like the metal of the knife he held on me, and I can’t breathe.

I was terrified, but I knew I had to tell someone. Service members are supposed to report sexual

Butch supports Ruth as she testifies before Congress in 2012.

Ruth enlisted when she was 17.

assaults up the chain of command to their superiors, which would have meant my attacker’s friends. I couldn’t do it. The next day, I reported the attack to my squadron chaplain instead. He said that if I wanted to have a career in the Navy, I needed to get over it. Somehow, my attacker caught wind of the conversation, and a few days later he raped me again. “You just couldn’t keep your mouth shut,” he growled.

In the weeks that followed, I tried to simply do my job. I said, “Yes, sir” and obeyed orders from my rapist. It was crushing, humiliating. I had no one I could trust—the base was like a small town and communications were monitored, so I couldn’t even call or write home about it. I was scared he’d kill me.

Then, about a month later, I was diagnosed with chlamydia. It was just too much. I needed the fear and pain to stop, so I tried to kill myself. When they found me passed out in my barracks, I was shipped back to the States and put in a locked ward at Bethesda Naval Hospital. I told the doctors there that I’d been raped, but they didn’t believe me. They diagnosed me with borderline personality disorder, saying I must have experienced a “break from reality” and imagined the attack. Years later, I learned that this

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I reported the attack and was told that if I wanted a career in the Navy, I needed to get over it.

diagnosis—followed by a psychiatric discharge—was the fate of many victims of military sexual trauma (MST), a way to get rid of us without investigation or liability. At the time, I was furious. I insisted again and again, no, I wasn’t crazy—I had never had any kind of psychiatric problems—I’d been raped! But no one listened and I was discharged.

★★★★★★ My war at home I love my country and I wanted to serve it. But I couldn’t, and I couldn’t do much else, either. The night terrors and the migraines were debilitating, and relating to my husband was very difficult. I had panic attacks that came out of nowhere. I could only get low-skilled work, and had a hard time with bosses—especially men. My mind churned over issues most people would think were no big deal, and something would go wrong and I’d lose the job.

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My husband, Butch, says he was attracted to my strong personality and sense of fairness. He has never doubted me. Not once.

that there was no record of it. So I reapplied to the VA in 2003, this time for education benefits. My ex-husband wrote an affidavit corroborating my account of the rape Ruth with her two favorite people, Butch and Samantha. and I hand-delivered it to the VA office. Once again, the VA wouldn’t admit that it

In 1991, when the sexual assault battling to get them to agree that scandal at the Tailhook pilot’s the trauma I suffered while in the convention was in the news, service and the lack of treatment for I thought I might be believed. it had made me unemployable. They I applied to the Department of said they’d never received my ex’s Veterans Affairs (VA) for disability affidavit, then they said they’d lost benefits based on the injury I’d it. Each time, their decisions took incurred during my service—my months. The whole system seemed rape. But the VA denied me, saying designed to make me give up. had happened. I spent six more years

For the next six years, I tried to ★★★★★★ work and to maintain my marriage, One last stand but in 1997, it collapsed under the By 2009, I was deeply depressed. stress. I was despondent, living for a Butch gently told me our marriage time in my van and working at a farm was suffering. Desperate, I asked in Maine raking blueberries. I thought Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont I’d be alone the rest of my days. for help. His staff looked at my decades’ worth of paperwork, ★★★★★★ including the evaluations of a Making a life therapist I’d started seeing, and my By some miracle, Butch was working ex-husband’s sworn testimony. He at the farm too, and we were drawn got the VA to take action. to one another. He says he was At long last, in January 2010, attracted to my strong personality after 23 years, the agency said it was and sense of fairness. (He also “more likely than not” that I’d been thought I was cute!) Three years raped and agreed that because of the later, we married. Butch has never PTSD I suffered, I couldn’t work. I doubted me. Not once. Samantha was finally awarded full benefits. came along the next year, in 2001. When I opened that letter, I broke

My family made me so happy, down and cried in my yard. It was but I felt like a burden to them. I so incredible to be believed after all desperately wanted to work steadily. this time, like I was releasing the weight of a truck from my shoulders.

But I couldn’t stop thinking about how life might have been different for me—and for so many others. I was vivacious and ambitious when I joined up. If I’d never been raped or if I’d gotten help, would I have had a career? Could I have been spared homelessness and these terrible symptoms? PTSD, left untreated, can alter your brain’s pathways over time, making it harder to treat. I am sure that’s what happened to me.

So when I heard that Maine Congresswoman Chellie Pingree was introducing legislation to make it easier for MST survivors to access benefits, I called to share my story. She asked me to testify before Congress and, although I was terrified I’d be disbelieved yet again, I did it. For Samantha. And because I know that America, the greatest country in the world, can do better.

Within days of my testimony, the VA declared that it would ease the burden of proof for MST survivors. Pingree’s bill was renamed the Ruth Moore Act of 2013 and in June the House unanimously passed it. And President Obama appointed a commission to address sexual violence in the armed services [the Pentagon estimates that 26,000 servicepeople were sexually assaulted in 2012]. I don’t always agree with his decisions, but I can’t tell you how empowering it is when the leader of your country says, “This is wrong and we’re going to stop it.” I now have hope. My rapist was right about one thing: I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. And that’s a good thing. ✦