St. Louis -- Retired Army Sgt. Angela Peacock once was outgoing, competitive, athletic, a born leader.

These days, she barely functions, trusts no one and suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder so severe, she can't work. She's gained 100 pounds and chain smokes.

Medically retired, she lives alone in north St. Louis County on a military pension and disability.

The story of Peacock's struggle to recover from the trauma of combat and a sexual assault by an officer will premiere in a new online documentary today.

"Angie's Story" is the latest in the online documentary series, "In Their Boots," about the struggles of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans and their families.

The series is a project of the Bravenew Foundation of suburban Los Angeles and headed by filmmaker and political activist Robert Greenwald. His films, including "Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers," "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price" and "Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism" have a distinct left-leaning bent.

But the "In Their Boots" series is apolitical. In fact, that was a condition of the grant from the financial backer, the Iraq Afghanistan Deployment Impact Fund, Greenwald said.

"This is not partisan work," he said. "We were approached to take this on because the stories of patriotic men and women returning home and adjusting to physical and mental problems are stories that traditional media have not been covering."

The series, which uses new media to tell the human story, has explored such topics as traumatic brain injury, the plight of young military widows and a soldier's suicide from the parents' point of view.

In the 20-minute documentary, "Angie's Story," Peacock says she told her platoon leader while deployed in South Korea in 2001, that she'd been raped by a noncommissioned officer.

She recalled her platoon leader saying, "If you tell, they're going to make you look like a whore. They're going to say you were drinking, it's all your fault. You better just keep your mouth shut."

Peacock said she later learned 57 military women had been sexually assaulted that year in South Korea.

Peacock held onto her secret, but when she was sent to Iraq the combined trauma of the sexual assault and combat made her physically and mentally ill. She lost 50 pounds, couldn't eat or sleep, and felt like she was going to die.

In the film, she remembers thinking in Baghdad, "I'm going to die in Iraq -- from this."

She eventually got help, at Fort Lewis, Wash., where she was ordered to see a psychiatrist. She cried uncontrollably in his office.

Peacock recalled thinking, "I can't hold this in another minute, I'm done covering it up."

But there were more bumps. A breakup of her brief marriage to a fellow soldier who also suffered from PTSD, an addiction to painkillers and subsequent efforts to rehabilitate, being booted out of her family's home when she moved back to St. Louis, reliving nightmares of Iraq and the rape.

One day in desperation, she called a veterans hospital in St. Louis and told the stranger on the other line that she was about to kill herself. She was checked in immediately and started the slow crawl out of hell. She says she's not there yet.

"We want our lives back and we need help," Peacock said of female veterans. "We need more support for emotional difficulties."

She went on, "I see two problems. The chain of command doesn't take us seriously, and rape from fellow soldiers is a constant threat. It's way underreported."

Patricia Hayes, the VA's women's health care specialist, said Tuesday that every veteran is screened for military sexual trauma or severe sexual harassment, and that 22 percent of women, and 1 percent of men report having been victimized during their military career.

She said sexual assault therapy is available at every VA clinic. People serving in the military have feared reporting sexual abuse, but the culture is shifting with Department of Defense prevention and response initiatives of the last three years, she said.

Before, Hayes said, "it was stuff it and live with it."

The Defense Department said in a statement that it is committed to eliminating sexual assault through a robust prevention and response policy, removing barriers to reporting and ensuring that care is available to victims.

Last year, the military took action against 600 suspected perpetrators. Another 572 are awaiting action.