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The death of soldier Vanessa Guillén brings to the US Congress the scourge of sexual harassment in the Army

2020-10-19T18:49:07.656Z


The young military woman had said that she suffered sexual harassment in Fort Hood (Texas). After two months missing, her body was found burned. At least nine people have died in strange circumstances in that same barracks so far this year


Vanessa Guillén told her mother in February that a man sexually harassed her at work.

Guillén, 20, was a soldier who inspected and cleaned weapons at the Fort Hood (Texas) military base.

There she was last seen in April, when her workday ended.

His disappearance set off all the alarms in the United States Army and began a frantic search.

The soldier was found dead two months later near the military installation and next to a river.

His body was partially burned and mangled.

"I insisted that she report it but she didn't want to, she told me: 'Mommy, I'm going to talk when I leave the Army in June,' but they killed her before," her mother, Gloria Guillén, tells EL PAÍS through tears.

The case has been taken to Congress to propose a law that allows the creation of an agency to report sexual harassment and abuse in the Armed Forces.

The decision to enlist in the Army materialized in 2018, when Vanessa began her training at a military installation in South Carolina.

His restless family had accepted his wish to become a soldier.

A few months later it was transferred to the State of Virginia and later to Texas.

Her sister Mayra says that the soldier called home to tell of her exploits during training, but that when she arrived in Texas her excitement simply faded.

“I no longer had the same enthusiasm as in the first year,” he recalls.

Since her arrival at Fort Hood, the soldier visited her family in Houston on weekends and each time they noticed her grief more.

“I looked at her strangely, she was not well, she was skinny and she hardly ate.

I began to ask him what he had and after about eight months he told me 'Mommy, I'm not comfortable at the base,' "says his mother.

The signs that something was wrong weren't enough.

On April 22, she was seen alive for the last time by her companions in the parking lot of the military base.

He was smoking a cigar.

A couple of days later the search began.

Authorities found his car keys and his wallet at his workplace.

His fate was a mystery until on June 30 a search party found his body burned, lacerated and in pieces.

The first investigations pointed to her partner Aaron Robinson, 20, as he had been the last person the soldier had contacted by phone.

Authorities questioned him after Guillén's disappearance and said that he had spoken with her on the day of her disappearance to finalize the paperwork for a number of weapons, but that she had later left.

Two witnesses claimed that Robinson left his work area carrying a large box that afternoon.

After the discovery of Guillén's body, the investigators went to look for the soldier again and he committed suicide by shooting himself in the head before being arrested.

On the list of suspects was Robinson's girlfriend, Cecily Aguilar, who after her arrest revealed that the soldier had called her that night to tell her that he had murdered Guillén.

According to her account, Robinson hit her on the head with a mallet until she died, then removed the body in a box and carried it to the outskirts of the city.

Aguilar has acknowledged that he helped dispose of the body, for which he will face murder charges that could cost him up to 20 years in prison.

Despite the fact that some details of the disappearance and murder of the soldier are known, there are still several unknowns.

The Guillén family points out that the Army has refused to hand over the images from various security cameras that would explain the journey of the soldier on the day of her disappearance.

It is also unclear why Robinson murdered her and whether other soldiers at the military base were aware of the sexual harassment to which Guillén was subjected.

Robinson was not her superior and did not belong to her chain of command, but the soldier had assured her mother that if she denounced the harassment it would affect the future of her military career and she embraced a popular phrase in the US Armed Forces: what happens in the Army it stays in it.

The case of the soldier Guillén has revived a long-standing demand to prevent cases of sexual harassment and abuse in the Armed Forces from not being reported and going unpunished.

A group of Republican and Democratic congressmen have brought to Congress a proposal to create an independent agency to receive complaints and investigate them.

According to the Pentagon, in 2019, there were 7,825 reports of sexual abuse - 3% more than in the previous year - and some 2,126 complainants gave up starting an official investigation of their cases, 17% more than in 2018. The same figures indicate 1,021 military officers reported sexual harassment, 10% more than in the previous year.

The soldier's death has also raised some questions about the work environment at the Fort Hood base.

So far this year, at least nine military personnel have died in strange circumstances.

The last of them was the soldier Elder Fernandes who disappeared last August and was also found dead.

Fernandes had formally reported that he had been sexually harassed by a superior.

Following his case, General Scott Efflandt, leader of the military installation - with more than 80,000 personnel and one of the largest in the United States - has been removed from his post.

The Hispanic Caucus in the United States Congress estimates that a third of the women at Fort Hood have been sexually harassed and have launched an investigation into conditions on the base.

Democratic congresswoman Jackie Speier has explained that if the law is approved, it would begin the design of a body external to the military institutions where independent investigations would be carried out and with a confidential system that would avoid fear of reprisals.

“This is the Me Too moment of the Army,” he commented.

According to the non-governmental organization Protect our defenders, 59% of the victims of sexual harassment and abuse in the Armed Forces indicate that they occurred by someone of higher rank who abused their authority, while 24% of the cases the attacker is a member of the military's chain of command.

"Nothing is going to give my daughter back to me anymore, but she is already history because what happened is going to save the lives of other soldiers," says Vanessa Guillén's mother about the legislative proposal.

Source: elparis

All news articles on 2020-10-19

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