FORT SHAFTER, Hawaii –
Standing alone in front of an auditorium filled with male
and female Soldiers, no one is making a sound, no one is playing on their cell
phones and all attention is focused on the female Soldier.
“I was attacked, but I’m not a victim. I’m a survivor,” Spc.
Brittany Leitner, a patient administration specialist with 18th Medical
Command, said during a unit training event April 5 at the Hickam Memorial Theater,
Joint Base Pearl Harbor Hickam, Hawaii.
For nearly an hour, the audience sat in silence as Leitner
shared her story. For many, the story was hard to hear; for others, it was an
opportunity to put a name and face to the Army’s campaign to end sexual assault
and sexual harassment in the military.
Leitner is like most young Soldiers.
A self-proclaimed military brat, Leitner bounced around from
base to base following her mother, a Navy veteran, and her stepfather, a career
Army officer, before graduating from Lewis and Clark High School in Spokane,
Wash.
After graduating high school, Leitner decided to follow her
parents' example and join the military.
After attending Army basic training at Fort Sill, Okla., and
Advanced Individual Training at Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston,
Leitner was sent to Fort Hood, Texas, where she immediately began preparing for
deployment.
Her unit deployed to Kandahar, Afghanistan, in June 2011,
and returned in May 2012.
Like most of her fellow Soldiers, Leitner worked hard to fit
in with her unit, but within three months following the deployment, her life
would change forever.
“After it happened, I really didn’t believe that it had
happened,” Leitner said. “My NCO had to tell me like a million times before it
finally registered.”
“I was more upset about being a statistic. It was knowing
that I was one of a ton of people that this had happened to in a place where
you’re supposed to be the strongest, where you are supposed to be able to take
care of yourself.”
This is where her next struggle began. Leitner was afraid
she would be treated differently if people knew she was sexually assaulted and
she said that was exactly what happened when other members of her unit found
out about the assault.
It wasn’t until Leitner transferred to Hawaii that she was
able to get away from the glances and stares, the well meaning friends asking
her if she was OK and the daily reminders of the assault. But that wasn’t a
cure.
Leitner said she felt like she was walking around with a
giant bubble inside that was waiting to burst when the Soldiers in her new unit
found out her secret.
“I struggled really hard trying to hide it and then I met
someone who was talking about her experience,” Leitner said.
At this point in her life, Leitner was willing to do
anything to help cope with the swarm of emotions that were swelling inside,
even if that meant telling a room full of strangers about the worst day of her
life.
“I so wasn’t ready for it and it went horribly wrong, but I
needed it. Speaking to people became my therapy,” Leitner said.
Talking about her experience wasn’t easy.
“I would come in extremely afraid. I didn’t know what their
reaction would be. I didn’t know if they would be able to look me in the eyes,
but I started getting standing ovations and it was shocking to me at first that
people actually cared enough.”
Leitner says she began to realize the importance of what she
was doing when senior NCOs and officers began taking her aside after her talks
and telling her their own stories of being sexually assaulted as young
Soldiers.
“They couldn’t imagine how I, at 20 something years old,
could stand before a battalion full of people and talk about something that
happened to me like that.
“I started this to help myself, but I realized it was helping
a lot more people than myself,” Leitner said.
Master Sgt. Joseph Collins, 94th Army Air and Missile
Defense Command, said he first met Leitner when she spoke to the
students at a
Sexual Assault Response Coordinator, or SARC, course.
“It kind of made everything feel real. Nothing drives it
home until you have a survivor stand in front of you and tell you what happened
to them and how it affected them and effected their life,” Collins said.
When Collins became the SARC for the 94th AAMDC, he knew he
wanted to share the same lesson with the rest of his unit.
Collins said when Leitner spoke to the unit, “I felt like it
was very effective. You can judge it by the way people ask questions, no one
was falling asleep, they were paying attention, they were focused on Leitner
and her story.”
“Afterwards there were leaders that came forward and said
‘that is what we needed to wake our formations up’ because we’ve never had
anyone come out and do that,” Collins said.
“I think Leitner brings to light a very volatile challenge,
but brings life to it just by her standing in front of the audience and giving
us her thought process,” Col. Ken Revell, 94th AAMDC command chaplain,
said. “But you get to feel how she got
where she was because you’re right inside her story and that story plays out .
. . it forces us to ask ourselves the hard questions as leaders.”
“It just made it very real for us. I remember the Sgt. Major
said ‘thank you for getting that guy out of our formation’ and that’s a
leadership thing that he was saying and at that moment, I think, he was having
a big brother moment,” Revell said.
“It’s hard to measure, but Leitner’s talk has a potentially
transformative effect,” Revell said.
After Leitner talks to a unit, a line usually forms to talk
to her. Most simply want to shake her hand and thank her for her bravery, while
others want to share their personal stories.
“There are people who want me to speak again to other groups
and a few that want my contact information so I can talk to them offline; I
usually have at least one survivor come forward who wants to know how they can
talk to me at a later time,” Leitner said.
“It’s really hard not to feel like this was something that I
could have prevented. There are a million ‘what if’s’ that go through your
mind, but having people accepting me and thanking me for speaking to them has
made it better for me,” Leitner said.
Leitner established an anonymous email address that allows
fellow survivors to contact her. The email address is
survivors4survivors38@yahoo.com.
Revell summed it up when he said that Leitner and the other
survivors who come forward to share their stories are, “some of the most
courageous Soldiers I’ve ever seen in my life.”
To report a sexual assault, call the 24/7 Joint Base San
Antonio Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Hotline at 808-7272.