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The female veteran had been raped twice in the service. The first time was at the Twentynine Palms Marine training center in Southern California. It happened again in Iraq. “It was extremely difficult,” she said. On top of that, she was stressed from combat and, after her discharge, experienced depression. “For a year, I only woke up to eat and drink whiskey. ... Not till later did I realize it came from sexual trauma.”
Sexual assault is a major reason for the growing number of homeless female vets. In this particular case, the homeless woman was able to rebuild her life. I heard about it when I talked to her and two other female vets recently at a home provided by New Directions, a Los Angeles organization that provides substance abuse and mental health treatment, as well as transitional housing for homeless veterans or those at risk of ending up on the street.
Although the homeless population has declined slightly in some areas, the number of homeless female veterans is rising. These women are among the overlooked toll of a military expansion that grew in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and will continue if the advocates of those failed combat adventures succeed in persuading President Barack Obama to try another one.
Even if that doesn’t happen, the numbers of women in the armed services, homeless female vets and victims of sexual trauma will increase. Concern for the military is not high up on the progressive agenda. But in this case, it should be. The fate of women in the military mirrors what is happening to women in the rest of society, but in an extreme way.
A federal official told me that female vets constitute 15 percent of the military homeless, although figures vary. But everyone familiar with the situation agrees the number is rising. The National Coalition for Homeless Veterans found that the number of homeless female veterans had doubled from 1,380 in 2006 to 3,328 in 2010.
“They are now the fastest growing segment of the homeless population,” Patricia Leigh Brown wrote in The New York Times last year. The number of homeless male vets has dropped 24 percent since 2010 to almost 50,000 as of January, according to federal officials."
The female veteran had been raped twice in the service. The first time was at the Twentynine Palms Marine training center in Southern California. It happened again in Iraq. “It was extremely difficult,” she said. On top of that, she was stressed from combat and, after her discharge, experienced depression. “For a year, I only woke up to eat and drink whiskey. ... Not till later did I realize it came from sexual trauma.”
Sexual assault is a major reason for the growing number of homeless female vets. In this particular case, the homeless woman was able to rebuild her life. I heard about it when I talked to her and two other female vets recently at a home provided by New Directions, a Los Angeles organization that provides substance abuse and mental health treatment, as well as transitional housing for homeless veterans or those at risk of ending up on the street.
Although the homeless population has declined slightly in some areas, the number of homeless female veterans is rising. These women are among the overlooked toll of a military expansion that grew in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and will continue if the advocates of those failed combat adventures succeed in persuading President Barack Obama to try another one.
Even if that doesn’t happen, the numbers of women in the armed services, homeless female vets and victims of sexual trauma will increase. Concern for the military is not high up on the progressive agenda. But in this case, it should be. The fate of women in the military mirrors what is happening to women in the rest of society, but in an extreme way.
A federal official told me that female vets constitute 15 percent of the military homeless, although figures vary. But everyone familiar with the situation agrees the number is rising. The National Coalition for Homeless Veterans found that the number of homeless female veterans had doubled from 1,380 in 2006 to 3,328 in 2010.
“They are now the fastest growing segment of the homeless population,” Patricia Leigh Brown wrote in The New York Times last year. The number of homeless male vets has dropped 24 percent since 2010 to almost 50,000 as of January, according to federal officials."
