Members of Congress are pushing to make the DoD accountable in stopping sexual assaults in the military and in ending retaliation against those who report it. Because of recent legislation, more military personnel and veterans are coming forward. In this story, Mary McLeod Parmenter, USMC 1960-61, shares her story of survival, empowerment, and advocacy.
By RICHARD WALKER
Veterans Life
BREMERTON — Mary McLeod Parmenter was traumatized after only seven months of service as a Marine. She found hell not on the battlefield, but on base.
Parmenter is a survivor of sexual assault, diagnosed with PTSD and deemed by VA to be 50 percent disabled.
She’s proud to have been a Marine. And she’s committed today to ensuring Marines — women and men — are able to serve in uniform without fear of sexual assault or reprisals.
Her story of her stint in the Marines sounds more like an episode from “Mad Men” — male-dominant, promiscuous and boozy — than a recruiting film.
Born in 1940, she grew up in Michigan on a farm, where she listened to Edward R. Murrow, read Life magazine and dreamed of being the next Margaret Bourke White, the first female war correspondent and the first woman allowed to work in combat zones during World War II.
On Sept. 8, 1960, Parmenter enlisted in the Marines against her father’s wishes and went to Parris Island for boot camp. She had to be fished out of the pool during the must-pass swim test, but a training sergeant whispered in her ear that he would pass her if she dated him.
After 16 weeks of secretarial training, she was assigned to the base newspaper at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, North Carolina. She showed early promise as a journalist; for her first assignment, she produced a two-page story on a child-care center. Then, she landed an interview with Mercury astronaut Scott Carpenter.
In preparing to fly backseat in a military jet, she learned to eject from the plane and earned her “Oh my ass” card. However, when she was advised by other female Marines that she’d have to “put out” for the pilot in exchange for the flight, she gave up her dream of experiencing jet flight.
Soon after a female staff sergeant convinced Parmenter that in order to have a successful career she would have to have the support of officers and should get to know some. The sergeant suggested a double date and offered to make the introductions. Parmenter said her date raped her that night.
She went to her staff sergeant the next day to report what happened and was told she had violated the UCMJ by fraternizing with an officer. The veiled threat of an NJP compelled her to back off. But she sought safety the way many women did at the time: She married.
She and her husband, a Marine MP, had known each other since Parmenter reported for duty at Cherry Point. He was kind — “a nice guy,” she said — and he was a police officer. “I thought, if I marry him, I’ll be safe,” she recalled. They married in March 1961.
When her birth control failed, Parmenter reported to her commanding officer — a female captain — that she was pregnant, and the officer told her she was “a disgrace” to the Corps. On April 14, 1961, Pvt. Parmenter was discharged for “convenience of the government” — honorably, but mustered out nonetheless.
“The shame was really strong,” she said. “My parents were strict. I wasn’t allowed to date till I was a senior in high school, and then I only had one date.” She felt deeply shamed and internalized the sense of disgrace to the Corps. She never told her family about the come-ons and the rape.
She began drinking. Then, her husband decided he wasn’t ready for marriage and fatherhood, moved out of their off-base apartment and asked for a divorce. Based on the law at the time, Parmenter had to go to Kentucky, her husband’s home state, to file for divorce.
‘THE LOOK IN MY SONS’ EYES HIT ME’
Parmenter worked at the base cafeteria — she was fired for giving black customers seconds on coffee — and then managed a bar in town. She married again, in 1964, to a career Marine who later became a warrant officer. They were stationed at Long Island, New York; Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii; and El Toro, California, and had a second son.
Her experience during her stint in the Marines still haunted her and she continued to self-medicate — drink. She filed for divorce from her second husband in 1971 because of his alcoholism — and because “I wanted to control my own [drinking] and go to school,” she said.
She lived in Santa Ana, raised her children, attended college, worked at a post office, then returned to Michigan in 1973 where she met her brother’s friend. He became her common-law husband.
“Alcohol played a major part in our relationship,” Parmenter said, but one day “the look in my sons’ eyes hit me and I decided to stop drinking.” The relationship ended and she returned to Hawaii with her sons.
Living in Hawaii with her two young sons, she was assaulted two more times. She escaped a rape attempt, and in another instance was grabbed in her room by an intruder as she slept. Each incident contributed to her growing paranoia.
Then, one day, she saw a sign for a National Organization of Women meeting and decided to attend. She remembers standing up to speak — she doesn’t remember what she said — but after the meeting she was stopped by three women from NOW. She had been drinking and the women told her she needed help. They offered to take her to therapy and to watch her children for her.
“They saved my life,” Parmenter said. “They mirrored to me that I had value.”
A new life began. She founded Women Against Rape, a rape crisis center, in Honolulu, Hawaii, and directed it from April 1975 to December 1976.
She returned to the States, working alternately as a chef, a restaurant manager, and a real estate agent. Then, two events pushed her over the edge: Her second son died of cancer in 1991. Then, while watching TV coverage of the Tailhook sexual assault case, the questioning of the veracity of the victims’ testimony brought her own experience to the fore. (In one famous brush-off of allegations, a rear admiral commented that “a lot of female navy pilots are go-go dancers, topless dancers or hookers.”)
“I knew they weren’t lying because it had happened to me,” Parmenter said of the women’s testimony.
Her experience came up during a visit to her doctor, who was concerned about her rise in blood pressure. Thirty years after her assault in the Marines, she was diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and began therapy.
‘I WAS OUTRAGED BY THE STORIES I HEARD’
She returned to school, earned a bachelor’s degree at Metropolitan State University in Minnesota and a master’s at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities. She worked for the Family Violence Network in Lake Elmo, Minnesota and conducted background investigations for a Nuclear Regulatory Agency contractor.
She worked as a veterans representative with the Minnesota Department of Employment from 1998-2006.
“It had been more than 30 years since I was assaulted [in the Marines]. I thought, surely that doesn’t happen anymore,” Parmenter said. “But every woman veteran I saw in those years had been sexually assaulted.”
She met one female veteran who had been threatened with demotion because she didn’t open the door to her quarters to a senior NCO who was making advances.
“I was so outraged by the stories I heard,” she said.
She focused her energies on ensuring women victims received therapy — and empowerment.
“After I had that job as a vet rep, I could be blunt [about therapy] – ‘You’re going to have to deal with it, so you can do the things you need to do.’
“Therapy is a wonderful thing. It helps you to become who you were meant to be, to reach your potential. That’s the purpose of life — to actualize your potential and contribute to the universe.”
She moved in 2006 to Bremerton, where she founded and commanded the Puget Sound chapter of Women Veterans of America. She served as a guest minister in a Unitarian Universalist congregation. She couldn’t participate because of health reasons, but she sent a delegation of Women Veterans of America chapter members to join other women veterans marching in a King County Veterans Day Parade, carrying a banner on behalf of military sexual assault survivors. The banner declared, “I Am Not Ashamed.”
She lobbies regularly for improved accessibility to VA health care; she once called the White House and talked to an aide about the need to allow veterans to get care closer to home, even if the health care facility is not VA. (She has been waiting since August for a diagnosis related to pain in her right leg).
When she’s not lobbying or advising survivors of sexual trauma, she reads the New York Times and walks Sheila, her 75-pound female Doberman, a rescue dog she adopted. She has a son in Houston, Texas; a son in San Francisco; a daughter in Raleigh, North Carolina; and a grandson.
She wants survivors of sexual trauma — women and men — to know this:
You didn’t do anything wrong.
You are not responsible for the assault on you, the perpetrator is.
And you deserve help.
The trauma doesn’t go away, but you can learn how to live with it, Parmenter said. “It doesn’t take much to trigger my anger. It doesn’t take much to trigger my fear.”
Now 74, there’s a part of Parmenter that is still Marine tough.
“I still believe I can do whatever I want to do,” she said.
POSTSCRIPT: According to a recent report in the New York Times, an estimated 26,000 rapes and sexual assaults took place in the armed forces in 2012, but only one in seven victims reported the attack and only one in 10 of those cases went to trial.
The Service Women’s Action Network, or S.W.A.N., is a good resource for information regarding advocacy, assistance, legislation and policy. Go to www.servicewomen.org.
The Invisible War website is another good resource for information: www.notinvisible.org.
