By LARRISSA HUGGARD
WARNING: This post features explicit details of sexual assault that could be distressing for some readers.
Looking at Neryl Joyce’s smiling photograph as she hugs her sweet, blonde-haired son Kane, you’d never guess she was anything other than an ordinary, suburban mum.
But the truth is, the 41-year-old Perth woman has a very complicated past – she is a former Australian Army officer and former private security contractor who’s toured Iraq — and her 13-year military career has now inspired her to share some explosive allegations of drug abuse, sexual assault and alcohol-fuelled parties.
In her newly-released book Mercenary Mum, Joyce details her journey from joining the army at the age of 18, to eventually leaving young Kane (whose name means “son of the warrior”) in Australia to work in Baghdad for a powerful security company.
But as she quickly learned after being deployed to Iraq with her all-male team, it wasn’t easy being a woman in a man’s world.
Both subtle and not-so-subtle forms of sexism were prevalent, she claims in the book.
“As a chick in the Army, one of my priorities when deploying is always to locate a toilet,” she writes. “Men tend to forget about issues like that, as it’s so easy for them to find a wall and just go for it.”
Joyce also describes how as a woman, she had to be “above average in all areas of the job in order to be thought of as equal to my male counterparts”.
Neryl during Close Personal Protection training in 2003.Source- Supplied
“The Army was filled with fit, strong, testosterone-fuelled men, and I needed to be ‘special’ in order to be accepted into their realm,” she writes. “It wasn’t a rule or obligation; it was just something that you did to gain credibility as a leader in a male-dominated workplace.”
She left the Army to become a bodyguard for a private security contractor, a lucrative but dangerous job that saw her return to Iraq.