By Mark Curnutte
mcurnutte@enquirer.com
Jennifer Wells went to a fellow soldier's room at her base in Balad, Iraq, to borrow "The Pursuit of Happyness" DVD.
Trading movies is common among U.S. troops because it breaks up the monotony of life on a military base in a hostile land.
The soldier was a friend of someone in her unit, the 758th Maintenance Company.
"I knocked on his door. I said, 'Hey, I'm here to pick up the movie,' " Wells said.
Wells sat down as the soldier rummaged through the discs. He then he bent over and kissed her.
Wells quickly pulled away. "I said, 'What are you doing?' "
She tried to stop him by talking. She said she was not interested. She said she was committed to another man. He was 6-foot-5 and weighed 250 pounds -- easily twice her weight.
"He pushed me down on the bed," Wells said. "He pulled my pants down. He put his chest over my mouth, to where I could hardly breathe. It was really gross how he talked to me, like I was his partner, intimate stuff. He did his business. I pulled my pants back up and ran to my room."
Jennifer Wells was not just a victim, but a statistic.
An analysis of the medical records of 125,000 female veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan show one in seven suffered sexual trauma, ranging from harassment to rape.
Like many female troops who experience sexual trauma, Wells did not file a complaint. She worried if she reported the attack she'd be sent home and it would hurt her career.
"I had worked too hard to get where I was," said Wells, now 24. "I didn't want to lose everything."
She was not aware of the military reporting process, which provides confidential mental-health care and a physical forensic exam to rape victims. No one in the unit would have been told, and there would be no investigation. Her file would be saved for one year. Victims of alleged military sexual trauma also can request a full investigation.
"The one thing I did not want was to be seen as is weak," said Wells, who now makes her home in Greater Cincinnati. "It would be my word against his, rape versus consensual sex. I would be labeled a whore with a scarlet letter."
She decided to stuff the experience emotionally. She told herself she was stronger than a rape.
She showered within minutes of the attack. She popped four birth-control pills three mornings in a row to try to kick-start her period.
"Flush my system," she said. "You can't get a pregnancy test over there without everybody knowing."
She did not tell her mother or other family members in Connersville, Ind. She waited months before telling her boyfriend, now her fiancé, who also is in the military. He was enraged, she said, and wanted to confront the man who raped her.
In the days and weeks following her rape, Wells went about her duty. She went to the gym almost daily, rationalizing that if she had been physically stronger she could have fought off her attacker.
At night, the thought that she might have caught a sexually transmitted disease tormented her.
Wells had been in Iraq two months when she was raped. She deployed in July 2006 as part of a unit that specialized in cleaning up nuclear, biological or chemical weapons attacks.
Part of her job was to pull watch at the base. She and another soldier were stationed atop guard towers. One night - about eight months after Wells had been raped - the other guard went to use the latrine. He neglected to close the hatch door behind him in the tower.
While he was gone, there was a disturbance on the ground. Wells took a step back to aim her machine gun and plunged through the open hatch. She hit the ground 41 feet below and lost consciousness.
When she awoke, a bone was sticking out of her right forearm. She suffered head trauma and memory loss and fractured three vertebrae.
Since the fall, Wells has had one operation on her back and two surgeries on her arm. She went through speech and cognitive therapy at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Corryville.
The U.S. Army Reserve offered her an honorable discharge because of her injuries. She declined and is now employed with a small reserve unit, the 15th Psychological Operations Battalion, in Bond Hill. She has reported for mandatory drill weekends and is preparing for another operation on her back. She is taking business classes at Indiana Wesleyan.
"I love the military," Wells said. "I didn't want somebody else to have the power to determine my future."
Wells stayed strong. But the emotional façade was crumbling from the inside.
The physical and emotional traumas collided in December 2007 when she had an exam at the VA. Her pap smear revealed a bacterial STD that could be treated with an antibiotic.
"I broke down, I was a mess," Wells said. "I had managed to control it. I had been able to tell my mom, and even though she broke down and cried like a baby, I could keep it together. When it came full circle (with the positive test results), it really upset me. It made the (post traumatic stress disorder) flare up. I was out of control. I was extremely angry. I had panic attacks where I thought my heart was going to stop.
"I wanted to crawl in a hole and never come out. How do I go on from here? Even though it was something that could be treated, it was awful."
Her physician referred her to the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) program.
"It has changed a lot of things for me," Wells said. "I think I wouldn't be engaged now. I would probably just be depressed."
Wells is determined to turn her negative experiences into positives for other women - military or not - who've been sexually assaulted.
"I would want (women) to know you can only benefit from something like this," she said of her psychotherapy. "You don't realize how much you push people away when you are hurting so bad. It actually makes you stronger in the end if you are willing to say 'I am vulnerable, I need help.'
"Then you are able to help people on the other side."
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