Terry Neal will never, and can never, forget that one summer night in 1976. The physical scars are lasting—and the same is true for the emotional trauma.
Neal was in the U.S. Navy at the time, working the third shift as a hospital corpsman. He left the hospital after his shift and, several hours later, was making his way back to the hospital. He was walking, taking a shortcut.
"I was jumped by three men. I heard three different voices, and actually recognized one of the voices," Neal said. "I was raped multiple times and they [made me] perform oral sex [on them]. It was pretty nasty."
Neal said he was repeatedly kicked and beaten, and he passed out.
Among his injuries, Neal suffered a fractured jaw, an injured right eye and a broken nose.
"I was in a lot of pain," Neal said about the attack. "When a nurse [at the hospital] first saw me and asked what happened, I said that I had fallen down and hit some rocks.
"I was so afraid [to tell the truth. That was my] first sexual experience—and it was so violent, so awful. I was in shock, scared to death."
Weeks later, Neal went to an emergency room, but still wasn't able to come out about the attack. Instead, he said he was homesick—and was given medication for depression.
Soon thereafter, he snapped.
"I shuttered my room and tried to start a fire because I just wanted to die. I lost it; I had a nervous breakdown. I couldn't handle the emotional pain anymore," said Neal, who ultimately was interrogated for three hours by military police, looking for the names of gay military members on base.
Neal, even today, still feels the pain—physical and emotional—from 1976.
"I'm not the only one [from] the military who has lived decades with MST, which was a military sexual trauma," he said. "You don't trust people; you have trouble with intimacy, and it just gets worse and worse and worse."
Now 57, Neal is retired, disabled and living in Hendersonville, N.C. His stint in the Navy, from 1975-77, still haunts him.
Neal, now single, had a domestic partner for 31 years, but said he was not attacked because he was gay. In fact, he said he "didn't even know what gay was," back then, having grown up in a church-going family.
"I didn't think of myself as gay at the time," he said. "Maybe some people saw me as gay, but I didn't think of myself as gay."
So why was Neal attacked?
He doesn't know, but speculates it had something to do with something he saw about a week before the attack.
Neal was returning to his barracks from work in the early morning hours. He went to his room to get his goods for a shower, and he had just walked past the shower area and knew that there was another person in there.
When Neal went to the shower, he saw the same man lying against the wall, bleeding. The man couldn't talk, so Neal got the police and medical assistance.
"The only thing I can think of is, he was attacked in the shower and because I made a statement," he said. "These people thought that I had seen them [attack the man in the shower]."
Or maybe Neal's attack was just a "random act of violence," he said. Maybe he just happened to be me in the wrong place at the wrong time.
"I can't make sense of [the attack], but have to accept it," he said. "I was too scared to confront anyone about the attack," even the person whose voice he recognized. In fact, he said confronting an attacker has never crossed his mind.
But the lasting injuries are daily reminders.
"I left [the Navy] because I tried to get psychological treatment for my injuries and some of the physical injuries in 1976 and 1977, but the Navy pretty much just said, 'Get over it; it's not that big of a deal,'" Neal said. "The events of that night really created a lot of problems for me in my life."
In fact, over the past few months, Neal has endured jaw problems directly related to the attack, "so I am having horrible pain 24 hours/day," he said.
Neal said he attempted suicide multiple times due to the attack.
"To this day, I still find it difficult to talk about the assault," Neal said. "When I do try, I become overwhelmed with emotion, worthlessness, sadness. I begin to relive the assault, even today. Losing a sense of self-worth and consequently self-love has probably been the most devastating emotion toll I've endured. I've found myself always apologizing for who I am. No matter what I accomplish, I never feel it's good enough and am beating myself up for being so inferior. I also am always trying to prove that I am worthy. It's only been recently, after 30 years and finally getting PTSD treatment the past three years that I've figured out the only person I need to convince is myself.
"What I'd like to emphasize is that nearly everyone who I have encountered in groups and other places has felt the same way. And if I've encountered hundreds, then there must be tens or hundreds of thousands, men and women—all suffering in silence, living their life in a hyper-vigilant mode and not enjoying their existence at all.
"No wonder we question why we have to keep on living, in such pain and so little understanding or help."
Neal went to his first gay bar in the fall of 1976, in Chicago. In fact, that was his first exposure to any gay life, he said, and he quickly discovered that he "liked" gay life.
Neal also likes singing, although it has been impacted by the attack's after-effects as well. He's taken voice lessons, "and it's been very therapeutic, very helpful to me." Neal will sing May 18 at The Altamont Theatre in Asheville, N.C. The event is called "Composition—The Music of George & Ira Gershwin."
"Singing has always given me a lot of pleasure; it's helped a lot in trying to recover from this horrible attack," Neal said.
Neal would have had options if the attack happened today. For instance, the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN) is a non-profit legal services, watchdog, and policy organization founded in 1993. The SLDN works to end discrimination and harassment of gay and lesbian U.S. military personnel negatively affected by "Don't ask, don't tell."
Last summer, SLDN announced that it was merging with OutServe, an organization of active gay and lesbian military personnel.
