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Broken trust on the front lines

Mar-12-2004 » Filed Under: 3/2 SBCT

[Link to Full Article]
By ELISA HAHN / KING 5 News

SEATTLE – A Fort Lewis Stryker Brigade soldier broke her silence. Sgt. Audra Wood talked to Dateline NBC about her alleged rape by another soldier and how the Army responded to the attack.

The entire story is posted below.

Before heading off to war, Sgt. Audra Wood knew many things were possible: injury, capture, even torture. But she never imagined that her enemy would be another American soldier.

"I've lost trust in everybody. If I couldn't trust them, who could I trust?" she said.

Sgt. Wood was one of 300 women in the Stryker Brigade, consisting of 5,000 soldiers.

It was in November at Camp Udairi in Kuwait just a few weeks into their deployment.

Sgt. Wood told Dateline she was near the showers when she was attacked.

"I was hit over the back of my head by something very hard, very sharp and I lost consciousness," she described.

Wood said she drifted in and out of consciousness but remembers the brutal assault.

"When I woke up there was somebody on top of me and I felt these burning pains all over my body, which later turned out to be the soldier was cutting off my clothing," she said.

"I woke up and he was gone and I started running to the tent area. My hands were still tied and I was still gagged. And it felt like an eternity," she continued.

The nightmare did not end there.

Sgt. Wood claims the Army denied her a rape counselor, asked to her take a polygraph and told her the best therapy was to get back in line with the rest of the troops.

"I felt abandoned. They acted like they didn't even care," she said.

Shortly after Wood's attack, the Army issued a contradictory statement saying, "The soldier is being provided with medical care and emotional support. The incident is under investigation."

There have been more than a hundred complaints of sexual assault by American servicewomen in the Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan theaters.

Wood said she is coming forward to help them.

Dateline NBC will air more of the interview with Sgt. Wood and take an in-depth look at sexual assaults in the military on Friday, March 12, at 8 p.m. on KING 5.

UPDATE: The Seattle P-I also has an article about Sgt. Wood.


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