Oregon veteran among troops suffering sexual trauma

by Julie Sullivan and Charles Pope
The Oregonian

 Jeff Elizalde’s patriotism is as plain as the U.S. flags in his Salem condo, rescued after parades or blown from car lots. Elizalde has cleaned, pressed and hung them across his windows and walls, next to framed tributes to a World War II radioman — his dad.

But beyond the stacks of Marine Corps Times and the “USMC” tattoos on each biceps, Elizalde’s own military career is nothing to celebrate. He was discharged under conditions “other than honorable” after an incident he says “set me into a pattern of drinking and ruined my life.”

Elizalde says he was an 18-year-old Marine playing spades on an Okinawa, Japan, base in November 1977 when he followed a staff sergeant to look for another party. As they walked through an empty Quonset hut, he says, the sergeant overpowered and raped him.

“I didn’t tell anybody,” Elizalde, 49, said. “I didn’t know how. How do you tell someone in the Marine Corps you’ve been raped?”

As the nation grapples with the aftershocks of two long wars, the Department of Veterans Affairs is confronting a quiet wave of veterans with mental health problems linked to sexual misconduct. New research has uncovered hundreds of cases among those serving in Afghanistan and Iraq, and found that those combat vets are two to three times likelier to suffer depression, post-traumatic stress syndrome, and alcohol and drug abuse.

Read Kelly’s remarks here…

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