Suzanne Swift was accustomed to delivering people to jail, not sitting in one herself.
But the specialist with the U.S. Army’s 54th Military Police Company found herself incarcerated in the Lane County Jail after being arrested Sunday night. The Lane County Sheriffs Department, which runs the jail, said she was being held on charges of army desertion after she didn’t report for duty after several weeks.
The Army picked her up at 8 a.m. Tuesday and transferred her north to a base in Fort Lewis, Wash.
It wasn’t just the Iraq war that led Swift to flee, but it was also because of what Swift alleges were repeated instances of sexual harassment from her commanding officers and fellow soldiers, said her mother, Sara Rich.
Lane County Sheriffs Sgt. Chuck Magnus declined to comment, saying he was not familiar with the details of the case.
Rich was not so reticent.
“They treated her like a dog when she was in there,” she said, referring to her daughter’s year-long service in Iraq, which began in early 2005. “And now I fear it will be worse.”
Following her daughter’s arrest, Rich held a rally, which the Community Alliance of Lane County helped organize, outside the jail late Monday afternoon. As a testament to Eugene’s grassroots anti-war movement, some 75 supporters passed through the protest along Fifth Street.
“We need to make some noise,” she said. “Not only for Suzanne but for all the women in Iraq who are trapped.”
Supporters brandished pink signs saying, “We’re all Susan’s Mothers,” “Bring our Troops Home,” and “No VA Budget Cuts.”
Ninety percent of women who serve in the military have been sexually harassed and one-third have been sexually assaulted, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
Larry Hildes, a civil rights attorney from Bellingham, Wash., has been working on behalf of Swift and her mother to arrange Swift’s discharge from the Army in light of the harassment. So far he has found little success.
Hildes said such suits have become commonplace over the course of the war, but they tend to involve a single incident of sexual harassment or assault.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” he said. “But I’m told by people who have that it’s not uncommon.”
Enlisting
The 21-year-old Swift had been working in what her sister, Sonja Swift, called a “dead-end job” at Safeway when recruiters enticed her with seeing the world and attending college to persuade her to enlist. “They basically glamorized it,” Sonja Swift said.
The recruiters assured Swift that serving with the Military Police, more commonly known as MPs, would keep her out of Iraq.
But Rich said as soon as Swift stepped off the bus at boot camp, the drill sergeants began shouting, “Well, all you mother fuckers are going to Iraq and you’re all going to die.
“From then on, she was treated like a dog,” she said.
Still, the harsh conditions of basic training were the same for all recruits, male and female – intense but free from sexual pressure.
“At boot camp she was okay,” Rich said. “It was the minute she got off the plane that it all came down.”
Rich said that only one of Swift’s many superior officers did not make a sexual advance on her daughter. When Swift refused their propositions, they continued to pressure her and took steps to make her service miserable. They referred to her with such epithets as lesbian, bitch and prostitute, Rich said.
But the family was oblivious to the treatment Swift received from her deployment in early 2005 through her return on Feb. 22, 2006 because she was afraid to discuss it, Rich said.
It was not until Swift returned home that the rest of her family discovered the extent of her suffering overseas, which included post-traumatic stress syndrome.
Rich described her daughter as more anxious and quiet than when she left, and when she offered to send Swift to therapy, she refused, telling her mother that “If I open up that can of worms, I will not be able to function as a human being.”
Though Rich said Swift thought she would not be headed back to Iraq for a second tour of duty, her sister insists she was coerced into signing papers that not only ensured her return but also saw her 18-month stabilization leave cut down to 11 months.
“She was told her life would be hell in a shit hole if she refused,” Rich wrote in a statement released by the Community Alliance of Lane County.
Swift returned to Eugene for what was meant to be a brief visit on May 1 before redeployment. With bags packed and “keys in hand,” Swift announced, “I can’t do this, Mom. I can’t go back there,” Rich wrote in the statement.
The family took immediate action to protect Swift, enlisting the help of family, friends and the community to prepare for the inevitable arrival of the police.
“Some people said she had a breakdown,” Rich said. “I think she had a breakthrough.”
Swift’s family had been on edge for weeks; knowing that at any moment the military could come looking for its missing MP, Rich said.
“Things were pretty low key until last night,” Sonja Swift said in an interview during the rally. “We were scared knowing it would happen. Suzanne had just been hiding out.”
Since returning to Eugene, Swift had been spending most of her nights at another house, but she happened to be home Sunday, when a knock came at the door of Rich’s house around 10:30 p.m.
Rich had been sleeping, but the knock woke her, she said. She answered the door in her pajamas, discovering two Eugene police officers on the other side.
After inquiring about Swift’s whereabouts, Rich said the two officers entered the house and caused a commotion, which drew Swift out of her room and into the entryway. Swift was then taken into custody.
Supporting a Troop
Following Swift’s arrest, Rich went into action, enlisting the same support group she had been relying on for weeks. She contacted Michael Carrigan with the Community Alliance of Lane County who helped arrange a press conference at noon Monday as well as the subsequent rally.
“We fight against injustice where ever we see it,” Carrigan said.
Rev. Edgar Peara carried an American flag with an attached sign that read, “Sexual Harassment of U.S. Women Soldier is not an American Value.” During World War Two, he fought in “more campaigns than anyone I’ve ever heard of,” he said.
Wearing his full dress uniform, the retired first lieutenant said all that fighting had made him a staunch pacifist, a position he saw as befitting Swift’s plight.
“The fact that this can happen there just shows there is a lack of discipline in the Army,” he said.
Rich said she’ll fight for her daughter to say in America.
“What I told Suzanne is, if she gets taken in there, we’re going to raise hell,” she said. The crowd responded with cheers and applause.
Rich called upon her supporters to contact public officials and the Army to make sure Swift is represented at Fort Lewis by a Judge Advocate General, the title given military attorneys. She then recounted the family’s recent travails.
“We’ve been living on eggshells” ever since Swift signed on the dotted line, she said.
Sonja Swift said she had done her best to suppress her feelings about her sister’s enlistment – a choice she did not endorse – but she could only hold out so long.
“I shoved it away, blocked it out,” she said. “But last night, when I was confronted by this thing, I lost it. I was pissed.”
The family has vowed to do whatever it takes to have Swift returned to them happy, healthy, and unharmed.
“We’re not going to stop until she gets what she deserves,” Sonja Swift said. “And she deserves to get her life back. We’re going to take this as far as we have to.”