Jennifer and Lee

I lost all respect for Congress, the military, and the media after witnessing how they handled the missing and murder case of Vanessa Guillen at Fort Hood in Texas. What a bunch of fake a$$holes. I cannot even believe I use to affiliate with anyone in the U.S. military after what I have learned over the last decade researching military crime and non combat deaths. I know there are good people in the military. I was one of them; my husband is another… and the majority of our military members are awesome but military leadership is weak and corrupt. The more they hide; the worse they look. And they have done a fantastic job at hiding their toxic since the country witnessed the dead bodies pile up at this base in 2020.

What the f*ck is going on here? If all these soldiers who are dying on Fort Hood were all women would the country give a f*ck? Or is everyone so f*cking scared of the military and losing ad revenue that they cater to them and hide the truth on their behalf? I spoke to hundreds of media in 2020 because of the research I conducted at Fort Hood and not one mother f*cker ever followed up on it despite a very clear pattern of blowing off missing cases, unsolved murder cases, and labeling suspicious deaths as suicides no matter how much compelling evidence there is. But wait, there’s more… military leadership blows off Congress, the media, and the family who is living with unbearable grief after losing their loved one. I watched this happen time after time and it ripped my soul out.

The Army is disgusting. I am very disappointed with the Air Force as well but I wouldn’t let my enemy join the Army after what I learned while researching all branches of service. The Army is definitely the most problematic with Marines being a close second. The Air Force and Navy are both f*cked as well but they get minimized because who gives a f*ck about a bunch of p*ssies. Meanwhile, the USAF and Navy are getting away with murder too because everyone took their eye off the ball. And the entire military is one public affairs officer away from making it all sound like the “authorities” have everything under control and then it’s a waiting game… just wait until the media gets tired of the story. And they do, they always do. As a matter of a fact, they rarely follow up on the cause of death of a service member.

I am a practical and logical person. I made a decision to join the military based on what appeared to be a successful past but what I realized is they are experts in creating perception that makes you think they got it all together when in fact they live in emergency and crisis mode with their sh*t planning and implementation. For example, apparently congress decided they wanted women in the military in some capacity along the way and as they “proved themselves” and congress wore the military down, women eventually started wearing the same uniform and getting the same pay, they went from administration and medical jobs to combat support roles. And then congress and the military fought over the final step: implementing women in ALL combat roles. We weren’t equal until 2013.

I realized after my retirement in 2010 that I served when women weren’t considered equal. -Jennifer Norris, USAF Retired

I f*cked up when I signed the dotted line. This is not what I wanted to do with my life. I was planning on doing my six years with the National Guard, getting my student loans paid off, and geting a master’s degree as well. I started going to school in 1999 while I was serving as a “weekend warrior” with the Maine Air National Guard. First I would learn, the National Guard is not only a state position but it’s a federal position and then I would learn the critical career field I volunteered for in the National Guard while I was enlisted came with strings attached. What they really meant to tell me is the critical career specialties come with extra benefits because if the federal government decides they need you to support any declarations of war, they will stop loss you. And sure as sh*t that’s exactly what happened to me after 9/11 despite the sexual assaults, retaliation, and a suicide in the family.

I realized while paying attention to Fort Hood for five years that people were going missing and dying for the same reasons I wanted to die. I was a victim of crime, I experienced retaliation from leadership after reporting, I was offered no healthcare, I was trapped with my offenders, and they pounded me into the ground. When I say “I am Vanessa Guillen,” I f*cking meant it. My circumstances were exactly hers if we believe the version the Army gave us. The only difference between me and her was my ability to transfer from one National Guard unit in one state to another National Guard unit in another state. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the second chance I hoped for but nonetheless it got me away from offenders who physically attacked me because I reported crime. I am alive to talk about it. Vanessa Guillen was active duty and didn’t have the same abilities I had when it came to an escape plan.

The reason I focused on active duty issues for over a decade despite my affiliation with the National Guard is because I saw what happens on active duty and on active duty orders with the feds. I watched an 18 year old girl get annihilated at Keesler Air Force Base because she had the audacity to complain about sexual harassment while she was active duty. They completely controlled her; whereas I was National Guard and anything these f*cks did to me had to go through my National Guard Commander. I also had a National Guard liaison I could turn to and did turn to for help dealing with a situation with an active duty instructor who sexually assaulted me in a satellite communications van. I didn’t tell them he assaulted me because I didn’t want to get stuck on the base with him during an investigation when my graduation date was only two weeks away. He scared me. My Air Force friend was kicked out.

If you are active duty, trapped on a federal base, trapped overseas, or trapped in some remote location, you are f*cked. There is nowhere to turn if your toxic chain of command fails you. Things are different for a National Guardsman or citizen soldier depending on where the crime occurs and in what capacity you are working. For example, National Guard weekends are state funded therefore crime would most likely be handled by the civilians and most orders are federal active duty orders so most likely any incidents would be handled by the Commander. My point is that if you are active duty regardless of where you live or where the crime occurs, the military still has control over you. If your military leadership refuses to assist, you have nowhere to turn… which is the position Vanessa Guillen found herself in. After I experienced crime and abuse on the job, I went back to being a weekend warrior (until 9/11).

What I learned researching and tracking the deaths at Fort Hood from 2015 to 2020 when Vanessa Guillen went missing and was found murdered is that Vanessa couldn’t escape her situation. This was the common denominator with me, with the other soldiers at Fort Hood who died, and with the other cases I studied at other bases in the U.S. and overseas. As a matter of fact, I have been working with a family member of Army soldier Kamisha Block, who died in Iraq of a non combat death. The Army told the family she died in a “friendly fire” incident when in fact she was murdered by her supervisor. She had briefly dated him, broke up with him, and had a restraining order out against him. What did the Army do? They sent him to Iraq where Kamisha was. She tried to keep her distance but that was impossible given he was her supervisor. She had nowhere to run, nowhere to hide and no one to turn to in Iraq.

Why should our service members die because their toxic chain of command fails them? -Jen Norris, USAF Ret.

While all these congressional members and advocates were hyper focused on passing a law introduced in 2013 to address a problem not even related, everyone missed the most important part: how could we have saved Vanessa’s life? This wasn’t about the fact that had she been able to report to a JAG instead of a Commander, she might still be here with us. First of all, there is no guarantee that the JAG is going to do the right thing. The Fort Hood Report admitted to f*cking up the investigations which sabotages the cases. And if Vanessa reports an offender, there is no guarantee that she will get transferred to safety and far, far away from Fort Hood. These f*cking a$$holes think it’s entirely okay to simply transfer someone to another section on base. What do they not f*cking get? We know the eyes of evil. Everyone is isolated at Fort Hood. They are completely at the mercy of whoever their chain of command is.

And that is what I want to change. For my younger self, for Vanessa, for other soldiers at Fort Hood who would still be alive today if they could have put Fort Hood in their rear view mirror, and for all our other service members who are trapped. It’s a sad system when you are better off and more safe remaining silent and taking the hits than reporting felony crime to the “authorities.” It was the authorities who made my life a living hell because I did report and the offenders ultimately lost their positions. I said lost their positions; not lose their retirements. The authorities believed I was the f*cking problem, not the rapist and would be rapists who forced themselves on me or the individuals who orchestrated a physical attack on me in retaliation for reporting. I couldn’t believe what was going on.

The retaliation by military leadership cemented the trauma response and PTSD because I didn’t feel safe and supported. They themselves hated my guts, traumatized me further, and tried to push me to suicide. And you don’t think our active duty at Fort Hood aren’t going through the same. They are. Time after time after time, our soldiers had mental health breakdowns due to bullying and retaliation if they spoke up about crime or if they needed mental health support. If they ran to save their lives, the Army treated them like slaves who ran from the plantation and charged them with AWOL until they returned back to the base. One case we came across at Fort Hood, once we returned him back to Army military leadership safely, they ignored his mental health needs and sent him to Korea where he died by suicide.

When Vanessa Guillen went missing, we had dealt with this same scenario multiple times over the course of four years. Her missing case was just like everyone else’s: the family couldn’t get any cooperation from the Army whatsoever. They didn’t even appear to give a f*ck. And that’s not how things role when it comes to someone we love. Unlike the Army, we don’t just write people off on some form they are never held accountable for. We actually care about the soldiers, what happens to them, and respect them for volunteering to serve their country in one of the most stressful jobs in America. If they go missing, as a citizen of the United States of America, I demand the military look for the individuals or hand over jurisdiction of the case to the civilians. Unfortunately, these toxic leaders are more worried about their careers.

Natalie Khawam came out of nowhere and she didn’t stay in her own f*cking lane. She went to one of the Gold Star families and asked for the Guillen’s contact information. We didn’t know who she was and we didn’t think anything of it. And then we witnessed what she did to us. Not only did she run off into the sunset with the Guillen family (who had no idea of her ill intentions) but she purposefully shut down the missing and murder pattern conversation at Fort Hood and turned it into a sexual assault issue only. The only fix she cared about was sexual assault legislation that they repeated over and over to the detriment of the thousands of Gold Star families waiting for answers. The way she swooped in and preyed on the family, took over the enlisted soldier conversation (despite the fact that she is a civilian and so are the Guillens), and conveniently made the whole issue about one case when in fact what happened to Vanessa was a pattern at Fort Hood, including labeling the missing as AWOL.

Unfortunately in 2020, my health took a turn for the worst and I would eventually learn that I have Lyme disease and chronic lead poisoning from an EPA superfund site military base in Massachusetts (in addition to complex PTSD). My health didn’t turn around until I started the lead poisoning treatment. I couldn’t advocate for Fort Hood the way I wanted to and until now I lost my voice too. The lead poisoning gave me brain inflammation that lead to problems with speech, memory, comprehension, emotion, fatigue, and everything you could imagine. You better believe if I didn’t have lead poisoning the year that Natalie Khawam took over speaking on behalf of the enlisted that I would have blasted her a$$ all along the way. Well Natalie, you thought you got away with all this but you didn’t. And neither did Protect Our Defenders or Kirsten Gillibrand. They too will go down in history as the biggest frauds ever for presenting a sexual assault only bill as the fix to missing and unsolved deaths in the U.S. military.

You clearly didn’t read the Fort Hood report.