I’m still piecing this story together, but from what I am able to gather, Pte Bethany Smith, a lesbian soldier stationed at Fort Campbell in Kentucky, has gone AWOL because of the abuse she says she suffered at the hands of other soldiers after her sexual orientation became known:
. . . she claimed that she was then treated as “less than human”, with one colleague throwing her to the ground on a daily basis. Smith, who was 19 at the time, also claimed she received hate mail every night, with one letter threatening to kill her.
As gay soldiers are usually discharged after admitting their sexuality, she went to her first sergeant expecting to be allowed to leave. However, she was told the paperwork would be dealt with after the unit returned from a posting to Afghanistan.Her lawyer Jamie Liew has suggested the army ignored its own policies because it was short of personnel for the Afghanistan deployment. When she was denied a discharge, Smith decided to desert and drove to the Ontario border with another soldier.
Liew believes that although many other deserters are now serving prison terms, Smith, who fears for her life inside the U.S., “is coming with an extremely different story. She’s coming because of the way her life was threatened because of her sexual orientation.”
I’ll update as more information comes in.
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