Boston Herald
By Marie Szaniszlo
Three members of Massachusetts’ Congressional delegation went to Fort Hood last weekend to investigate 150 suicides, homicides and disappearances over the last five years at the Texas Army base, including the death of a Brockton soldier who vanished and was later found hanging from a tree last month about 30 miles away.
What Representatives Stephen Lynch, Ayanna Pressley and Katherine Clark said they found was a “lack of seriousness, a lack of attention and a lack of focus,” even though nearly 30 service members there, including Sgt. Elder Fernandes, have died so far this year.
“When these young people put on the uniform, they’re all of our children, and we owe it to them to get to the bottom of this,” Clark said.
Of the 30 deaths so far this year, seven were classified as suicides, Pressley said.
But Fernandes’s aunt last month said his family believes he was abducted and killed to keep him from testifying against a superior he had accused of sexually assaulting him.
Her nephew, 23, had been happy in the Army up until May, when he reported being sexually assaulted and was bullied and hazed when he was transferred to a new unit after the assault, she said.
His mother last heard from him on Aug. 16, the night before he was to be discharged from the psychiatric ward at Carl R. Darnall Army Medical Center, Fernandes’ aunt said. He told her he would call her the next day, but she never heard from him again.
Isabel Fernandes said the Army has not told his family the reason for his stay in the psychiatric ward or whether it was voluntary.
Army officials told the family that a different superior signed his hospital release and dropped him off outside of a house belonging to a former roommate of Fernandes, she said.
“I don’t believe he was dropped off. I believe he was abducted and murdered to shut him up,” his aunt said. “Does the Army really expect us to believe that he walked 30 miles to kill himself when he could have done it in his own apartment?”
Lynch said the day he arrived at Fort Hood, the Army claimed there was no veracity to Fernandes’s complaint, based on a polygraph test that was given to his alleged perpetrator, even though polygraphs are inadmissible in civilian courts because they have been determined to be “a very crude tool.”
The delegation doesn’t know what questions were asked and whether any witnesses were interviewed, Lynch said, so it has requested “a lot of documents” pertaining to the case.
Clark said the delegation found “there is outright fear about reporting sexual harassment or assault by a superior.”
Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Vanessa Guillen bill, named for another Fort Hood soldier who went missing and was found dead.
The bill would allow active-duty members to file harassment and assault claims to a third-party agency instead of through their chain of command.
The delegation said a new general has been assigned to oversee Fort hood, and they plan to return within three to four months.
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