Raped and Silenced in the Barracks

When military sexual assault survivors call Susan Avila-Smith, she advises them to keep their mouths shut while she works on getting them home.

“It breaks my heart to do that,” she says, “but I want to get them out alive and that’s my main goal.”

Since she left the Army in 1995, Avila-Smith estimates that she has helped about 1,200 rape survivors separate from the U.S. Armed Forces and claim their Veterans Affairs (VA) benefits. As founder of Women Organizing Women, an online support group for survivors of military sexual trauma (MST), Avila-Smith has heard it all. But lately, she’s been more sensitive than usual.

“Maria’s case has triggered something in me,” she says. “I imagine the VAs are filling up right now with women who never even stepped foot in there before.”

“Maria” is 20-year-old Marine Lance Cpl. Maria Lauterbach, who disappeared from Camp Lejeune, outside of Jacksonville, N.C., on Dec. 14, 2007, one month before she was expected to give birth. As the local police enlisted the press to help reach out to Lauterbach and solicit information from the local community, it was soon reported that she had recently accused a superior at Camp Lejeune of rape.

Naval Criminal Investigative Service agent Paul Ciccarelli attempted to quell suspicions that the two might be linked, assuring the Associated Press that the “sexual encounter” was “not criminal.” On Jan. 10, the Marine Corps Times, a weekly newspaper serving military personnel, bolstered this claim, speculating that she may have fled to avoid charges for “making false statements.”

That same day, Lauterbach’s accused assailant, Marine Cpl. Cesar Laurean, was scheduled to appear at the Onslow County Sheriff’s office for questioning. He never showed up. On Jan. 11, Laurean, who had reported for duty for a full month after Lauterbach’s disappearance, failed to do so. His wife told investigators that she believed he had left for Mexico and gave investigators a note written by Laurean that said Lauterbach had slit her own throat with a knife, and he then buried her. Detectives have rejected that claim, and an autopsy found that Lauterbach died of a blunt force trauma to the head.

Later that day, her charred body was uncovered in a shallow grave behind the Laurean home. The horrific discovery took place only weeks before she was to testify against Laurean.

The drama set off a media frenzy, with updates on the cross-border manhunt constantly flashing across CNN tickers. Radio and talk show hosts, meanwhile, dissected Lauterbach’s character and credibility and questioned the delayed military response.

But Avila-Smith wasn’t surprised. “Unfortunately, the way her case was handled is the norm,” she says.

The Lauterbach case, according to Avila-Smith and many others, exemplifies the “criminal failure” of all branches of the military to address sexual assault for what it is—a violent crime. It is a “broken system” that she says puts victims on the defense, grants immunity to assailants and, in the end, puts rape survivors who have the courage to speak out, in even greater danger than if they had just accepted the abuse as collateral damage in their military careers.

Missing the mark

In 2003, a firestorm of media reports and investigations, prompted by an anonymous whistle-blower at the Air Force Academy, exposed the prevalence of sexual assault in the armed forces and its training centers. That same year, the results of a study conducted by Dr. Anne Sadler of the Iowa City VA Medical Center found 28 percent of female veterans having suffered MST while on active duty.