WASHINGTON — Thousands of female veterans are struggling to get health-care treatment and compensation from the Department of Veterans Affairs on the grounds they suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder caused by sexual trauma in the military. The veterans and their advocates call it “the second battle” – with a bureaucracy they say is stuck in the past.

Judy Atwood-Bell was a 19-year-old Army private when she says she was locked inside a barracks room at Fort Devens in Massachusetts, forced to the cold floor and raped by a fellow solider.