And she gets to go to the Oscars on Sunday as “The Invisible War” is up for Best Feature Documentary.
A native of Wilmington, Cioca said that she gave college a try after high school, but didn’t find it challenging enough for her.
“I’m the kind of person that wants to go-go-go,” she said in a phone interview during a break in shopping for her Oscars dress.
“I loved the Coast Guard very much,” she said. “They are the life-saving branch of service, so I was proud to be a part of that.”
She was 20 years old when she enlisted in 2005, and loved her time at boot camp in Cape May, N.J.
She was only a couple of months into her first duty assignment at Saginaw River, Mich. — where she was the only woman assigned to the station — when the trouble started.
She was assigned a sponsor, a man one rank above her, to help her acclimate.
“He had been at the station a long time and was the Officer of the Day, which gave him the responsibility of the station when the captain was away,” Cioca said.
He came to her one day and said that he and a bunch of the guys were going out to a sports bar and that she should join them. And in the spirit of camaraderie, she went.
“But no one else was there,” she said. “He said they all ditched us.”
The next day, when she confronted her mates about it, they all said they knew nothing about it and started teasing her.
“I tried to keep my distance,” she said, “and I would go to other officers to sign off on my qualifications when I completed them, but then he would get in their faces, that he was the only one who could sign my ‘quals,’ which wasn’t true.
“He began to harass me continually, telling me that females didn’t belong in the service.”
At one point, when Cioca forgot how to tie a double-becket bend during a knot-tying drill, he got in her face screaming.
“He got himself so hopped up that he was out of control,” she said, “and he spit in my face.
“It was very embarrassing,” she said. “But that was the environment, and once he knew he could get away with it, it just escalated.”
She said she would hear her door unlock at night, and while she clutched the knife she kept at her side, she could see him “touching himself” while he watched her, apparently thinking she was asleep.”
Cioca said she tried to get a different assignment, but was told that they couldn’t reassign her just because she didn’t like somebody.
“I feel stupid now because I was so faithful that I believed they would help me,” she said, “but they didn’t.”
It finally escalated to a violent rape and assault that left her with a broken jaw that she still receives treatment for.
The overwhelming feeling, she said, was powerlessness.
“You’re supposed to be safe and strong in a military unit because the person next to you is the last person you’d expect to rape you,” she said. “You’re not a shipmate anymore, but the enemy.
“The treatment I received after that was even worse than the rape,” she said. “The people who were on my side had to go against me so they could keep their jobs.”
Her attacker was finally punished for hitting her, receiving 30-days restriction to base.
She was discharged in 2007, honorably, but because she had “a history of sexually inappropriate relationships with individuals in the Coast Guard.”
Her involvement in “The Invisible War” came about when she joined a class-action lawsuit against the Department of Defense with other victims of sexual assault.
“I thought it was going to be one interview, but they ended up filming us for two years,” she said. “I was afraid it would be an attack against the military, but it wasn’t.”
She credits the producers for being “actual supporters of the troops, not just putting a bumper sticker on their car.”
The film received accolades from critics, won awards at its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival and appeared on the best films of the year list in the New York Times and Time magazine.
“I’m proud that it was nominated for the Oscars,” she said, “but I still can’t get my head around it.”
She’ll be wearing “a simple, long black dress,” she said. “I’m not really a dress person.”
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