Sometime, on the morning of 31 December, 2020, Private First Class Asia Graham, 19, was found unresponsive in her billet at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas. This Wednesday the MEs report on the cause of death was released.
Fentanyl mixed with synthetic cannabinoids. Not that the mixture mattered; the fentanyl alone would have killed her. It’s what killed my son, so I know a bit about it. Far more potent than morphine, it suppresses pulmonary function to the point of stopping it. The heart stops afterward.
Cardiopulmonary arrest and quick death. Almost impossible to intervene unless another person sees the event and has Narcan ready. Even then, some fentanyl OD survivors never fully recover and it’s heartbreaking to see.
The Army Times article doesn’t say whether she had any drug abuse history. Of course once one enlists, blood and urine test results determine if the recruit will be accepted for training. The tests are repeated and a battery of vaccines are administered upon arrival at the training facility’s reception center. Only then does an enlisted man or woman enter basic training.
But a month out of basic training and advanced training for her choice of job, fresh in the First Armored Division, Graham was raped while unconscious. One year later she was dead, and during that year, despite her reporting the crime to military authorities, her violator struck two more times. Imagine that.
What must it feel like to be in the same unit as your rapist and know that he was free to offend two more times at least?
Well I can’t tell you that, but went through over a decade of rape and other sexual abuse and knew that both parents did it to everyone else in the family of four boys and four girls. Had there been any other siblings they’d have been given the same “education”. Eight wouldn’t be enough.
As for her sad and lonely death, only PFC Graham knew how she really felt. Drugs? I don’t know if she had been a user prior to enlisting, but she was clean long enough to get through some tough training and that’s all I need to know. So whether she self-medicated, or suffered a relapse, it doesn’t matter. She’s dead.
I can tell you one thing in general about being unconscious and raped while you’re out. I can tell you lots of things about being raped while you’re conscious. The feeling of being dirty. Of having been violated. And the guilt that doesn’t belong but is there just the same. There’s no difference in general. Some feel that that one is worse than the other. The victim reacts and is traumatized either way.
A young woman trained to protect us. You and me. A promise of the chance to achieve great success ruined by a sick young man who has nothing to give that this country should ever want and surely never needed. A sick man who just began his first week of court-martial hearings.
And with the Army and the DoD’s track record of total silence on sex crimes and of greasing the skids so men generally get away with such evil crimes and the utter failure of the CID to function properly, it may be a long one. And the two surviving victims may go through the trauma of testifying for nothing.
Because it’s still the same goddamn apparatus engaged in the trial that let PFC Christian Alvarado free to claim two more victims before his first one died.
The Army has vowed to rewire its system for handling sex crimes.
They should not need to.
But women are victimized almost, it seems, with Command approval.
And PFC Asia Graham is dead.
Memoirs of an American Asshole 