[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 63 (Thursday, May 19, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[Congressional Record: May 19, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
THE LIVING ROOM WAR
Mr. COHEN. Mr. President, those of us from States with major military
installations that have closed or are scheduled to close are painfully
aware of the economic devastation that the downsizing of the U.S.
military is having on our States and communities.
Downsizing defense and closing bases are also wreaking havoc on the
lives of thousands of servicemen and servicewomen as they face
uncertainty over the future of their military careers and the financial
security of their families. As a recent article in Time magazine noted,
``Soldiers and sailors who once dreamed of a secure, 20-year career and
a handsome pension now find themselves facing a truncated career, no
pension and bleak employment prospects in the civilian world.''
These pressures may be contributing to a staggering increase in the
number of reported cases of domestic violence within military families,
which have risen from 27,783 in 1986 to 46,287 last year. The Pentagon
program for tracking and preventing domestic violence began in 1986 and
some of the increase may be due to better reporting.
A recent survey conducted for the Department of the Army revealed,
according to Time magazine, that each week a family member dies at the
hands of a relative in uniform, and that spousal abuse is occurring in
one in every three Army families. Regrettably, members of military
families are well represented among the thousands of individuals in
this Nation who are being held hostage in their own homes, plagued by
physical and emotional abuse.
The tragedy of domestic abuse is not, of course, new to the military.
Military families are no more immune to domestic battering than
civilian families, and they are just as in need of prevention and
intervention services.
As communities struggle to deal with the rising tide of crime and
violence that is sweeping this country, domestic abuse is one aspect of
this plague that has received and continues to receive too little
attention. It has only been in the last 20 years that police,
prosecutors, courts, and society in general have been forced to
confront an issue that has too long been considered a private family
matter.
The Department of Defense has recognized the seriousness of domestic
abuse and is very much aware that it may be growing within the
military. More importantly, the Pentagon is attempting to confront the
problem. The Army's Family Advocacy Program, for example, provides
community education, prevention services, crisis intervention,
emergency shelter, and counseling for troubled families.
As the Defense Department implements reductions in force and oversees
the closure of hundreds of military installations, it must do
everything within its power to ease the difficult transitions facing
service members and their families. To the extent this situation is
exacerbating the problem of domestic violence, DOD must redouble its
efforts to prevent battering and, when it occurs, effectively help
those in need.
Today, I am writing to the heads of each of the military services to
request an assessment of the scope of the problem and what measures are
being taken to address it. Specifically, I have asked each to report on
the following:
The extent to which the incidence of reported domestic violence has
increased overall since 1988 and, specifically, at installations being
closed;
The extent to which the incidence of domestic violence is related to
disruptions caused by defense cutbacks and reductions in force;
The steps being taken to ensure that family support services are
maintained at closing facilities through closure;
The level and adequacy of resources currently allocated to prevent
and respond to domestic violence; and
The measures in place to ensure confidentiality for victims seeking
assistance.
According to press reports, at least some military officials are
failing to comply with a requirement to notify victims of the impending
release of their batterers from military prisons, in some cases with
tragic results. I am, therefore, also asking the services to survey all
military prisons on the extent to which such notifications are being
made and to report their findings to the Senate Armed Services
Committee. In addition, the letters urge that they take all appropriate
steps to ensure compliance with the notification requirement.
It is my intention to vigorously pursue these questions with the
Defense Department in an effort to ensure, first, that effective
measures are being taken to prevent and reduce the incidence of
domestic violence among military families; second, that services such
as counseling and shelter are available to those families in need; and
third, that military personnel who are committing abuse receive
appropriate counseling and are subject to appropriate disciplinary
measures.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the full text of the Time
magazine article on this issue be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
The Living Room War
(By Mark Thompson)
Jeromy Willis, an Air Force enlisted man and ex-Army
marksman, had been trained to kill the enemy. But when the
cold war ended and his base faced closure and his career
began looking less secure and his marriage came under strain,
the enemy started looking a lot like his wife Marie. First he
tried to kill her with a flaming propane torch. Weeks later
he tried to strangle her. She fled to her mother's home in
Rhode Island, and the Air Force confined Jeromy to his base
in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. But when Marie returned
there to press charges against her husband, he had somehow
learned of her supposedly secret appointment. Outraged that
she was ruining his career, Jeromy confronted Marie inside
the waiting room of the base legal office early last year. He
fired a pawnshop pistol into her chest. As horrified
witnesses watched her yellow dress turn crimson, she
screamed, ``Jeromy, no!'' And then he fired a second round
into her brain.
Marie Willis became another victim of an alarming increase
in domestic violence on America's military bases. The rise in
abuse of spouses and children, researchers and the Pentagon
believe, may be connected to the painful reduction in U.S.
fighting forces following the end of the cold war. In 1986
there were 27,783 reported cases of violence in military
families; last year there were 46,287. Now, a confidential--
and unprecedented--Army survey obtained by Time suggests that
spousal abuse is occurring in one of every three Army
families each year--double the civilian rate. Each week
someone dies at the hands of a relative in uniform, and
nearly 1,000 formal complaints of injury are lodged against
family members in the service. Untold thousands may suffer in
silence.
Over the past year there has been gory evidence of the
home-front carnage. A soldier in Washington state killed his
wife, packed her body into a suitcase and threw it off a
bridge. In Southern California a Marine who was a hero in the
Persian Gulf War shot and killed his newly divorced wife and
their five-year-old daughter. In North Carolina an airman
hacked his wife to pieces, wrapped her remains in plastic
garbage bags and stored them in the refrigerator. In Hawaii a
sailor killed his baby daughter, stuffing her into a duffel
bag and tossing her into Pearl Harbor. A soldier in Germany,
angered at his wayward spouse, decapitated her G.I. lover and
placed the severed head atop his wife's nightstand.
The new Army survey offers an unvarnished and quantifiable
look at the problem. ``The rates of marital aggression are
considerably higher than anticipated,'' declared the
researchers, who have questioned more than 55,000 soldiers at
47 bases since 1989, and continue to do so. The growing
number of victims seeking help ``is soon likely to exceed
treatment resources.'' And the problem isn't restricted to
low-level or poorly performing soldiers. ``Often those in the
most responsible and stressful positions,'' the report says
referring to noncommissioned officers, ``appear to be more
likely to be involved in abusive episodes.'' The violence
ranges from kicking, biting and punching to attacks with
knives and guns.
The Army's efforts to curb such violence--through
counseling and other help--are rarely mandatory. That, says
the study, leads to two critical failings: few soldiers take
advantage of the help, and the worst abusers don't
participate. Researcher Peter Neidig, whose company,
Behavioral Science Associates in Stony Brook, New York, is
conducting the Army survey, believes similar levels of
domestic abuse exist in the other services. While Neidig
believes the Army is ahead of the civilian world in
confronting the issue, Army officials admit they are only
starting to understand the extent of the problem. ``We were
being very reactionary,'' explains Delores Johnson, who heads
the service's program to combat such abuse. Rather than
trying to prevent it, the Army emphasized medical and legal
help after the violence occurred. ``We're just beginning to
take a look at what prevention means,'' says Johnson. The
Army study, which is designed to identify groups at high risk
of domestic violence, found evidence that abuse tends to
escalate at bases scheduled to shut down. ``We're very
interested in that,'' Johnson says, ``because we're in the
middle of downsizing.'' Pentagon officials also say their
efforts to encourage military families to report such abuse
has played a role in the rising number of reported cases.
But the military is spending only $80 million of the $120
million it says it needs this year to fight domestic abuse.
That $40 million gap is less than the price of one of the
three dozen F/A-18 fighters the Navy is buying in 1994. The
shortfall, officials concede, means most of the money will
still go toward the medical and legal bills of those already
ensnared in domestic terror, instead of focusing on
prevention.
Gail McGinn, a top Pentagon personnel official, says the
military family's nomadic existence contributes to the
problem. Most move every three years, ripping the military
family from the support network of relatives and friends that
civilian families count on when times get tough. The long
absences of the breadwinner--on lengthy cruises, battlefield
exercises or peacekeeping missions-add to familial stress.
The military drawdown, from 2.2 million troops in 1987 to 1.5
million in 1997, compounds the problem. Soldiers and sailors
who once dreamed of a secure, 20-year career and a handsome
pension now find themselves facing a truncated career, no
pension and bleak employment prospects in the civilian world.
``Everybody is wondering about what their own careers and
their own finances will be, and of course, financial issues
are major contributors to family violence,'' McGinn says
``There's lot of tension.'' Outside experts point to other
factors. Compared with civilian society, the military
population is younger and drawn from lower socioeconomic
ranks, and consequently more violence prone. Alcohol abuse in
relatively high, pay tends to be poor and the military
attracts men who have authoritarian tendencies.
Also boosting the opportunity for such violence is the fact
that nearly 58% of the military are married, perhaps the
highest proportion in history. According to Pentagon figures,
abuse is largely confined to midlevel enlisted personnel like
Air Force, Army and Marine sergeants and Navy petty officers.
They're old enough to be married and have children--and the
resulting debts--but often earn less than $20,000 a year.
Some military training contributes to a misogynist
attitude, says Joan Zorza, director of the National Battered
Women's Law Project in New York City. ``A man is criticized
by being told he's acting like a woman--a ------ --to
humiliate him and make him tougher.'' she says. ``That often
translates into seeing women as not being important and
therefore easier to oppress.''
An earlier study had already found a correlation between
combat jobs and domestic violence. Troops trained to fight
are more likely to batter children than their uniformed
colleagues in noncombat jobs, according to a 1979 study of
985 cases of child abuse among Air Force personnel by the
University of New Hampshire. ``There's a spillover from what
one does in one sphere of life in one role to what one does
in other roles,'' says Murray Straus, A University of New
Hampshire family-violence expert who worked on the study.
``If you're in a occupation whose business is killing, it
legitimizes violence.''
The inherent lack of autonomy in a military job also sets
the stage for abuse. ``It's all about control,'' says Cindy
Zamora, the wife of an Army tanker. She now lives in a
shelter for battered women in Killeen, Texas, just outside
huge Fort Hood. She moved there after her husband bit her,
beat her and threatened her with a knife. ``There's a lot of
women in here married to soldiers whose sergeants protect
them if they're good soldiers,'' she says. ``They can't
control their superiors on the job, so they control us.''
Although her husband admitted under oath last month in a
Texas courtroom that he is married to two women, he remains
in the Army. ``He was under a lot of stress and was nervous
about being kicked out,'' she says. ``He said if he didn't
get his sergeant's stripes, I was going to get hurt.'' She's
angered that he remains in the Army in good standing even as
it investigates his bigamy. ``The military knows he has two
wives, but he's still in the Army,'' she says. ``They just
sweep it under the rug.''
Katherine Coleman was married to an Army major and
psychologist. ``It's a myth that domestic violence doesn't
happen in officers' families,'' says Coleman, now divorced
and living in San Antonio, Texas. Her husband went so far as
to draft a prenuptial pact detailing sexual obligations and
rules governing outside friendships. She recalls him
cornering her in the kitchen or bathroom and not letting her
leave until she gave in to his demands. ``We argued once for
four hours in the kitchen, and he wouldn't let me out,'' she
says. ``I had to urinate on the kitchen floor.'' But she had
power over him too. ``He hit me a couple of times until I
told him his career would be over if he did it again,''
Coleman says. He remains in the Army, training its mental-
health workers.
The men involved in such episodes aren't eager to discuss
them. But some acknowledge that the prospect of watching
lifelong dreams shatter as the military shrinks can make them
lash out in rage and frustration. ``It stresses you out, but
you can't hit the officers,'' an Army man says. ``So you wait
till you get home and take it out on her and the kids.''
Another soldier will only say of his wife that ``we abused
each other.'' In fact, the Army survey suggests that spousal
abuse usually involves violence by both partners. But women,
it notes, are far more likely than men to be injured.
The military has reacted to the problem by creating
counseling programs and discipline boards. Military families
are told to report any instances of domestic violence they
witness, even if it occurs outside their family. But few
abused spouses are willing to risk their family's financial
future by seeking help through Army channels, because such
complaints often end up on the desk of the abuser's
commander. ``The military needs to do something to ensure the
confidentiality of spouses so the wife can go and get help
without hurting his career,'' says Phyllis Lonneman, a
Kentucky attorney representing a woman charged with the
slaying of her Army husband in August after years of alleged
abuse. ``It doesn't matter how good or bad the military's
programs are if the spouses are afraid to use them.''
And the abuser's commander often isn't sympathetic to the
battered spouse, according to Sadonna Polhill, who is the top
caseworker at the Killeen shelter. ``They'll tell the wife,
`This is a bunch of bull--quit making these accusations
because you're ruining your husband's career,''' she says.
``They try to make the one who's being battered at fault.''
Anxiety over their husbands' careers has led to a sharp drop
in the number of women--from 85% to 50% over the past two
years--who permit the shelter's staff to alert military
officials to the women's visits. ``A lot of that has to do
with the pressures on the soldiers and their families,''
Polhill says. ``And many are deathly afraid of their
husbands.''
While many civilian domestic-violence experts praise the
strides the military has made in dealing with the problem,
they say follow-through is often lacking. A Pentagon
investigation last year surveyed 13 Pentagon prisons to see
how many were complying with a 1982 federal law obligating
them to alert crime victims, including abused spouses, when
perpetrators are released. Not a single one was. In a 1990
case, a Kentucky woman, Andrea Turner, was murdered by her
husband three days after his release from a military prison.
The killer, who had been locked up for abusing her, said he
shot her five times in the back because she ruined his Army
career. She had made plans to move secretly to a new home
before his official release date, but the military neglected
to tell her that he was getting out two months early because
of accumulated military leave. ``It was a nightmare,'' one
Army official involved in the case says. ``Nobody told her.''
The problem isn't limited to spouses. Child abuse is also
on the rise, leading the Pentagon to create a child death-
review task force that will eventually probe all child deaths
in the U.S. military to determine if abuse is to blame.
``After a child dies, people say it was an accident,'' says
Army Colonel Will Hatcher, who is helping to launch the
program. ``But we want to go back and check.'' For several
months the task force has been examining child deaths at the
Fitzsimons Army Medical Center in Colorado and at hospitals
at the Bremerton naval base in Washington and Travis Air
Force Base in California.
Despite the Pentagon's intentions, its sometimes haphazard
efforts offer little comfort to victims and their families.
Jeromy Willis, for example, was sentenced to life
imprisonment for the murder of his wife and is now serving
time at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Yet Marie Willis' family
remains bitter, because the military ignored so many warnings
that a tragedy was afoot. Her family says Jeromy was confined
to base twice because he tried to kill Marie, but he was
allowed to roam freely on the base when the Air Force invited
and paid for her to return there and testify against him.
``Abused people should not rely on the military for
protection,'' says her father, Eugene Mello, himself an Air
Force veteran. Her mother, Marie Mello, puts it more simply:
``The Air Force was an accomplice in my daughter's death.''
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