Cindy’s Story

Based on an interview with WI-HER’s Julie Wheeler

Cindy is a former Marine cook who served in the Iraq War from February 2009 to September 2009. Her primary duties included cooking meals for troops stationed on a small FOB, Saul Sinjar. At the beginning of her deployment, she was one of only three women out of 1,500 troops on the base. Toward the end, she was the only woman on a base of infantrymen and her fellow cooks—her “brothers” as she called them.

While Cindy does not have combat PTSD, she does have a diagnosis of complex PTSD and Military Sexual Trauma along with depression, anxiety, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Her deployment to Iraq exposed her to a constant barrage of sexual harassment, not from the strange men she didn’t know but from the men she trusted and called her brothers. “They would rub against my breasts and butt. But it wasn’t until I became an adult that I realized that that was sexual harassment.” 

Cindy didn’t report her sexual assault because she had seen what happened to women who report;  “I remember they took her out in front of the entire platoon and interrogated her, they humiliated her and made it seem like it was her fault. I didn’t want that to happen to me.” Cindy is not alone; it’s estimated that 76.1% of women in the military do not report their abusers, compared to 63% of civilian women. Rape and sexual assault are considered the most underreported crime in both the military and society as a whole.

Cindy utilized the VA for her mental health care on and off from 2015 to 2021. She’s had upwards of 14 different providers for her medication management and more than 10 different therapists and/or social workers. At one point, she was on nine different medications, each with undesirable side effects. Sadly, Cindy has been hospitalized and has had three suicide attempts. Cindy’s last social worker from the VA was the final cause of her leaving the VA’s mental health care system. Of all the providers, she felt like no one approached her care with any sensitivity to her past sexual trauma. As a result, she seeks mental health care from the civilian sector. However, she has to pay out of pocket and most times, “ I can’t pay my medical bills.” She has tried to get the VA to cover her therapy, but because Cindy lives less than an hour away from a VA facility, she is not authorized for a referral.

Cindy kindly shared her story with WI-HER’s Julie Wheeler as part of the blog post, “Reaching the Unreachable: Strengthening Mental Health Care Services for Veterans.”