AUGUSTA, Maine — Nonprofit organizations that help support Maine veterans who've experienced sexual assault while on duty are looking to the Maine Legislature's Committee of Appropriations and Financial Affairs to pass a new bill that would provide organizations with continuous state funding to hire veteran sexual trauma counselors.
LD 2263 has passed in Maine's House of Representatives and has been tabled in the Senate as it waits for the appropriations committee to decide whether the requested $140,000 of continuous annual state funding will be allocated.
Sisters in Arms is one of a few organizations in the state that specifically provide assistance, housing, and support to Maine women veterans who struggle to overcome trauma onset by sexual assault.
Women like Rebecca Cornell du Houx, president of Sisters in Arms, who serves in the U.S. National Guard, are tasked with protecting their country and their people.
"I saw a pamphlet, and I think it was a helicopter with people helping during a flood," she said of why she decided to serve more than 21 years ago. "And I thought that that was just a really neat thing to do. I was always interested in service."
But now, soldiers like Cornell du Houx and her sisters in arms are asking who will safeguard them.
"I was with someone who taught me how to weld and we were done welding and we hopped in the truck, and he just reached over and grabbed my chest," she said.
Cornell du Houx is one of many women veterans who said they have experienced sexual trauma and assault on the job.
According to the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs, approximately 33 percent of all women experience some version of military sexual trauma during their active-duty service, compared to 2 percent of men.
"There are survivors who have experienced some of the most brutal, sometimes repetitive, and sometimes gang assaults," Cornell du Houx said.
That's why she is pushing for Maine legislature to pass LD 2263, which she said would help her nonprofit and other organizations like it hire sexual trauma counselors who can help veterans recover.
Powerful voices like Maeghan Maloney, district attorney for Kennebec and Somerset counties, are standing in support.
"They are often taught to be tough, to kind of hide pain, to not acknowledge being harmed," Maloney said.
This isn't the first time Maloney and others have asked the Maine Legislature for funding to secure sexual trauma counselors.
Last year, LD1783 was passed to support survivors of sexual assault in the military, but the part the bill that fell through was the requested funding for military sexual trauma liaisons.
"It makes me feel awful, because they put everything on the line," Maloney said.
Now as the new bill sits on the appropriations committee's desk, supporters of the bill wait to discover whether veteran women will receive the protection they hope for.
Rep. Morgan Rielly, D-Westbrook, who sponsored the bill, said he is unsure why the funding from the previous bill was cut.
"If it is not funded this time around, if I'm re-elected this year, I will be putting that bill back right in," Rielly said. "And I'll be working again to get those military sexual trauma liaisons funded."
NEWS CENTER Maine reached out to the appropriations committee to ask why the previous bill did not receive embedded funding for sexual trauma liaisons but did not receive an immediate response.
The appropriations committee will decide sometime this week whether to provide funding for veteran trauma liaisons.