THE
VALUE
OF
VETS
IS EUGENE CARING FOR ITS
FEMALE VETERAN POPULATION?
BY ALEXANDRA NOTMAN
ALEXANDRA NOTMAN
R
WWW.EUGENEWEEKLY.COM • BLOGS.EUGENEWEEKLY.COM
ape. Shame. SOS. Black Hole. Self Blame.
Abnormal Terror. Faceless.
Hundreds of T-shirts howl with the painful
memories of veterans who were sexually
assaulted while serving. One shirt bleeds
crimson paint from a red splatter over the heart
and is emblazoned: “Attempted rape by my
Commanding Offi cer.” Another T-shirt’s slogan
wails, “Sexual Assault Scars for Life.” Sonja
Fry, a licensed clinical social worker with the Department of Veterans
Affairs (VA) in Eugene, pulls shirt after shirt out of a bin in her offi ce.
She lingers on one and smiles. “Hope lets you live among the scars. I
know that now,” it says. The T-shirts are part of an art therapy project she
is working on with her clients at the VA Mental Health Clinic downtown.
Fry, who works mostly with female veterans, is chipping away at
several projects to improve veterans’ postwar health care. In the past six
months she has cultivated a waiting area for female veterans separate from
the general waiting area, complete with a gurgling fountain, stacks of
magazines, a large buffalo tapestry and a dream catcher hanging from her
offi ce nameplate.
“They don’t want to sit out there with the guys,” Fry says, waving her
hand to the other side of the clinic. “Those were the perpetrators. When
you’re in the military, and you’re a woman, and you’re around men, they
are all staring at you. You are always on watch.”
EUGENE WEEKLY JUNE 9, 2011
13