Many people don’t understand how rape victims process their experiences, including acknowledging the rape, reporting the crime, handling a resulting pregnancy and how we love our children despite the way they were conceived. I’ve been silent for a long time due to the way the military handled everything after I reported the rape, and I’m finally ready to tell my story and to fight to protect my child.
In March 2013, I switched over from the National Guard to the Army Reserves. I was assigned to the 919th Inland Cargo Transportation Company in Saginaw, Michigan. It was a wonderful new chapter, or so I thought. I was excited to show off my culinary talent and my commander seemed to cater to my requests to be able to deliver an exceptional experience to my new unit. Around May 2013, my commander initiated personal conversations with me. I thought it was strange that my commander would ask me to call him outside of work. We began to text back and forth and he started complimenting me. I was highly flattered, but I was also young, naive, a single mother, and wholly unaware that I was walking into a pit of manipulation.
At this point, I knew this was considered to be fraternization, and both of us could be penalized for this, which could potentially lead to a dishonorable discharge. But typically, it’s the higher ranked superior who is punished. And I certainly understand why. With him being my superior officer, I instinctively wanted a good rapport with him. On top of it, I was still hurting from a recent breakup with my child’s father, and I really was hoping to be reconciled.
He began asking me to come over and spend more time together. He said he enjoyed being with me, that dating me was the most fun he had ever had and that he had never fallen for anyone like this before. Despite my reservations, we became a couple. How stupid I was. I didn’t have a high tolerance for alcohol, but he assured me that I was in good hands and safe to drink around him, and so I drank the majority of the time that we got together.
Around December 2013, I found out that he was cheating massively with too many women to count, so I confronted him. That particular night it was a snowstorm and I was unable to drive me and my child home from his apartment. Through all the commotion, he said he would leave. I was sad and upset, so I continued to drink by myself. He returned because of the bad snowstorm, said he would not bother me and that he would sleep in the living room.
The next morning the argument continued, and when I was sitting on the toilet, it became evident to me that he had intercourse with me after I had passed out from drinking and emotional exhaustion — he had violated me. I asked him about it, and his response to me was “Oh, you don’t remember we became intimate last night?” I immediately protested, “Why would I have sex with you after you cheated?! What would make you think I would want to have sex with you after that?!” He just shrugged his shoulders and didn’t respond. He left and went outside and I started packing my things. When he came back in, he told me he had called 911 – his preemptive strike because he knew he was in trouble.
When the sheriff deputies arrived, they couldn’t figure out why he had called as there was no confrontation and I was already leaving with my child. When I got all of my things outside of the house, the female officer asked me to tell her what happened. When I got to the part about him having intercourse with me while I was passed out, she exclaimed, “He did what?!” She asked me to go down to the substation to talk to her and that I had to leave his property in order for them to leave, and so I did. When we got there and began to talk, she told me that in the state of Michigan, what he did was a crime. I told her that I was afraid to report it because I already knew how the military would respond. I had previously been raped by a soldier back in 2009 on Dobbins Airforce base. This soldier self-reported to security forces, and although he did, I was punished by my command and forbidden by my command to talk to the Navy Officer who tried to help me. The officer assured me that she wouldn’t file a report if I didn’t want her to, but she lied. She had me go down to a women’s center to get checked out and it was very invasive. So I just didn’t want to go through anything more invasive and stressful as this was traumatic enough for me.
Meanwhile, again acting preemptively, my rapist had told my First Sergeant about the fraternization, and this First Sergeant called me and asked me to keep quiet, to not let anyone know, and that we were all return to our jobs and act as if nothing had happened. However, when I returned to the unit, I was written up and taken off a scheduled training in Washington, then given a terrible evaluation. The rumors of false accusation which my rapist / commander spread preceded me.
An investigation was launched on my commander, but he convinced me that it was against me, and told me that he had gone into my file and removed the paperwork as my punishment. Nevertheless, my commander was “relieved from command” as unit commander, but essentially promoted to a higher level of battalion, and a protective order was issued against him. Before I was questioned by the investigating officer, my commander gave me a story to tell on record stating “his side, my side, and the truth”. He told me that he was sorry and deserved to be punished for what he had done. I was reluctant to tell about the rape because of my prior experience, and the whole process is even more dehumanizing and really perpetuates the rape. However, the Army’s investigating officer found out about the Sherriff’s call on the case, and the sexual assault spread throughout the command.
I requested a JAG attorney. I was removed from my unit and assigned a sexual assault advocate. During our initial meeting, we met at a restaurant. She tried to convince me that it was a bad break up gone wrong and later divulged that my commander who did this to me was her friend and had written her letters of recommendation. I was told I would never win the case if I decided to press charges. She happened to be replaced after moving to a different unit. While all this was going on, I was being shamed by everyone in the unit and word continued to spread throughout the command. He even stalked me for quite a while, then stopped.
But eventually, he reached back out to me saying that he was changed in Christ, but this was not the case. I was hurting and stressed from being ostracized, and I knew that going back to him would simply end that part of the nightmare. I sickened myself, but I didn’t know what else to do. I wanted my life to be normal. A therapist I later saw told me that this is sadly not uncommon behavior for rape victims.
So in May 2014, I was called to active duty to train for another job. I was fired by Consumers Energy because of this and he said he would help me to get my job back at the utility company. However, while away, I told him I needed space and he called me day in and day out. He even had the Bishop of his Church call me and tell me I needed to forgive as what I was doing wasn’t Christ-like, and so I tried.
While I was away at training, I began a relationship with a male soldier. When I was returning to Michigan, because my family would not pick me up from the airport, I had to call my former commander because I had no one else to call — I’d been so isolated due to the way I’d been treated after the authorities became involved. And he came. He wined and dined me that night. When he tried to have sex with me, I refused, because I knew I had become intimate with someone else and I couldn’t even begin to contemplate having sex with him. I really just wanted to show him that I was forgiving and giving him a chance to make things right by just being a friend to me.
I returned to my job at Consumers Energy and while reading meters I felt faint and went to the ER. There I discovered I was pregnant and I was instantly terrified that he had somehow raped me again. Given my cycle, I knew there was no possibility that it was the soldier I was seeing while away at training, but I called him immediately to tell him the situation, and he was willing to be there for me.
After I was discharged from the hospital, I sent my former commander a photo of the doctor’s report showing I was pregnant, and he went silent. I even had to contact his friend to get a hold of him. I wanted an explanation, but instead, he just gave me money to have an abortion, saying the money was a birthday gift, and then refused to answer my calls or texts. What a coward! I’m curious as to what his pastor would have said about him trying to pay for my child to be killed. He told people that I left, that he didn’t know I was pregnant and that the child wasn’t his. I couldn’t take it anymore and moved to Tennessee where I gave birth to my baby girl.
Giving birth to my daughter was a gift. I cannot imagine not having her. Many people would say it’s a curse, and I understand their assumption because I can never forget what that man did to me, and it is true that my daughter was brought forth from something really evil. However, she’s my princess – the most beautiful creation I have. She’s smart, she’s funny, and she’s magnificent. Sometimes I’ll have difficulty getting over what’s happened and what’s happening in the courts with him, but she’ll sense it and come hold my hand. She’s my strength and my nurturer. It’s kind of funny to think of a five year old being like this, but she really is.
After I had my daughter, I suffered from severe postpartum depression – again, it’s no reflection upon her, just my hormones, and a doctor telling me that I was suffering PTSD from the rapes and aftermath.
My family convinced me that I needed to tell him that the baby was born. He came down to Tennessee, and when he showed up, she was in her car seat, and he wouldn’t even look at her. You would think that his first response would be to look at the baby and even just examine if she looks like him, because he was telling people she wasn’t his. I’ll never forget that and I exclaimed, “You won’t even look at her?!” He just kind of stammered, like, “Oh, oh, I didn’t know.”
He wouldn’t provide any solid help until paternity testing was done, and he disappeared. When the results came back, he still didn’t help.
15 months after my daughter was born, I had another baby and I had my family telling me that my life was too unstable as a single mother of three and that since my former commander has money, I should just marry him. It’s crazy to think about your family treating you like that, and it got me really depressed, so I finally got into counseling and I was so relieved to hear my therapist say that what they’re doing isn’t right. I also got housing at a domestic violence shelter.
Because I received state aid, a case was filed against him to establish child support and that’s when he finally began paying something. However, he also sought parenting time, and he got court ordered supervised visits at a facility which specializes in this. But he even harassed me there and didn’t follow the rules for allowing me to leave first so I could be safe. Months went by where he didn’t visit, and I was relieved.
However, the judge subsequently gave him unsupervised visits, despite having been informed that I was raped. But my lawyer told me that the judge said that there was no conviction, and that it was merely an allegation. Feeling hopeless, in mediation, I consented to a parenting time order where he has every other weekend, Skype calls every Friday, and two weeks with her in the summer. But I’ve since learned that Michigan law does not require a conviction to suspend the parental rights of a rapist when the child was conceived as a result of “nonconsensual sexual intercourse,” so I will be seeking to file a motion under the Rape Survivor Child Custody Act.
As terrible and traumatic as this experience was, I learned that when it seems you don’t have anything else to hang onto during the storm, hang onto God! I have partnered with several organizations in the community which heard my story, including Habitat for Humanity, The Noon Exchange Club of Midland, and the Diaper Alliance, who were all an answered prayer for me as well.
There is always good in the bad, and surely God gave me my daughter – my beauty from ashes. And there is no greater gift in the world than the unconditional love of my baby girl, and I wouldn’t trade her for the world! Her becoming has inspired me to transmute the pain into a tool to be a light to others and show that we can all overcome adversities. I have made this a personal mission to continue to help others by pursuing my Master’s degree in social work through Spring Arbor University.
BIO: Tye Ahmad is single mother of 4, a disabled veteran having served in the Army Reserves and National Guard for 13 years. She’s a volunteer in the community, a member of Save The 1’s support group for rape victim moms and another Save The 1 group for moms who’ve fought their rapists over parental rights, and she’s now a blogger for Save The 1!
