In the seven years since she was raped by a fellow sailor, Navy veteran Tia Christopher hasn't gone a single night without a sleeping aid.
She battles a drinking problem. Her panic attacks are so intense she bears scars from digging her nails into her fingers to try to calm herself.
On Tuesday, Christopher came to the Capitol to convince lawmakers that California government and its 58 counties must play a role in addressing post- traumatic stress of increasing numbers of female soldiers, sailors and Marines.
She stirred a hearing by California Legislative Women's Caucus with her account of getting raped and feeling so fearful for her Navy career that she "destroyed the evidence and bleached the sheets as I cried in the shower."
Although The Bee normally does not identify victims of rape, Christopher has become a public advocate for the cause of women veterans.
The caucus, chaired by Sen. Gloria Negrete-McLeod, D-Chino, invited California National Guard and county mental health officials to plot potential strategies for helping women who have been victims of sexual assault in the military or who face psychological trauma from exposure to war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The panel's vice chair, Assemblywoman Lori Saldaña, D-San Diego, said county and state mental health professionals are often first responders for increasing numbers of female veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress.
Although the responsibility for treating their emotional wounds falls to the U.S. Veterans Administration, Saldaña said California must have its own strategy to react to the problem.
She noted that women serving in non-combat roles in Iraq are increasingly being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorders from combat "in a war where there is no front line."
She said many of the women live long distances from VA treatment centers and their mental health symptoms can be harder to diagnose than those of men.
More than 100 women have been killed serving in Iraq, nearly two-thirds in hostile incidents including firefights, mortar attacks, roadside explosions and suicide bombings.
In 2007, the Department of Defense reported more than 2,600 military sexual assaults, including more than 170 among troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait.
Women accounted for 3,800 of 27,000 new veterans treated for stress disorders in 2006.
"We don't want women veterans to face a similar situation of the Vietnam veterans who went undiagnosed and untreated," Saldaña said.
The state's voter-approved Proposition 63 allows local communities to identify mental health needs – such as a high concentration of returning veterans, male and female – for priority in state funding.
The author of the 2004 mental health tax increase, incoming Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, said he will make mental health needs of women who served in war zones or were victims of sexual assault in the military "a major policy agenda."
Call Peter Hecht, Bee Capitol Bureau, (916) 326-5539.
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