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SALT LAKE CITY — Each year, the Clothesline Project brings to light sexual abuse. This year, Utah's Department of Veterans' Affair wants to draw attention to a specific emerging problem: military sexual trauma.
In the last few years, thousands of veterans, most of them women, have reported this type of abuse while in the armed services. Using art as healing, these women are drawing their feelings about surviving sexual trauma onto T-shirts.
They refer to it as airing the military's dirty laundry. They have all experienced abuse from colleagues or commanding officers.
Carol Fenoglio spent 11 years in the army. While at Fort Hood in 1991, her commander raped her. She reported it, he was arrested, then someone lost the paperwork.
"Because we were called duty to go to war, you know, you don't have time to cry over it, or get through it, or anything," Fenoglio said.
The numbers are startling: one in four women and one in 100 men in the armed services have experienced sexual trauma. The veterans administration in Utah is now treating more than a thousand Utahns.
"For those individuals who have experienced military sexual trauma, they are actually three to four more times likely to develop post-traumatic stress disorder than those individuals who have experienced combat trauma," said Breeze Hannford, LCSW, Military Sexual Trauma Project Coordinator.
More people are becoming aware of the abuse, and treatment, Fenoglio said, works.
"When I went through this program I realized it's my moment not only to just speak but it's my moment to heal," Fenoglio said.
