Posts Tagged ‘spousal abuse’

I was a military brat.  I was a military member.  I was a military spouse.  Frankly, the last one of those was my least favorite.  It was like being a second class citizen.  I was not allowed to do ANYthing without my “sponsor”—the military member, agreeing to it.  Not such a small thing as renewing my military ID card without him present.  And if there was a problem—say with houseing, the hospital or anything, I had to have him handle it.  Spouses are just relegated to “Don’t call us and we probably won’t call you.” status—at least in the Army.

So, in the course of that history,  I saw women in the military supermarket–the commissary, with black eyes, split lips, arms in slings.  I saw other women’s eyes slide over them and drop away, because we all knew the chances were good those injuries were no accident.  I knew and sheltered women beaten by their military husbands, sometimes opening the quarters’ door to the sound of weeping  at one a.m., to take in a neighbor.  She always went back, though.  It did no good to report it, and worse “endangered his career” and marked the woman as not caring about his career.  Worst of all is when the battered woman was married to a Military Policeman.

So, last night, when Katie Couric did a report on the recent over the top levels of abuse and even spousal murder  in the Army, I was very emotionally involved.  Their little director of family affairs couldn’t even tap dance through it….she had no answers for how a man could fill out his end of deployment papers saying that YES, in fact, he DID think he might harm his spouse and yet nothing was done.  No treatment, no intervention—and a year later he killed his wife.  Well, those of us who have been military are not surprised.  Sickened, but not surprised.

What sickens me more?  The kind of camo-green wall built by wives.  I came across a message board, by accident, for military wives.  Without even having seen the advertised news report, they were already talking about how it would probably be negative towards the military.  Excuse me?  More than ninety military wives murdered in less than a decade, more than 25000 battered—-and those are the tip of a very large unreported iceberg, I assure you; and you DARE to worry about the report being negative to the military?

Are you joking?  You sound like the spokesperson for the Vatican on the carpet about pedophiles, decrying “negative” reporting about the Church’s continual habit of sheltering these sick criminals out of concern for their “immortal souls.”  The wives and officials of the military make that same kind of plea, only instead of quoting the value of the immortal soul they plead for the “soldier’s career.”  Both Church and Army simply throw away the women and children locked in chains by this so-called moral equation.

You see, in civilian life, battered women often get the insidious message that “Well, if you STAY with him, you must deserve it.”  In the military it is worse.  They get several implicit messages such as:  “He needs you so he can do his job defending America.  Suck it up, he is under stress.”  and “If you mess up his career he will have nothing and NEITHER will you.” and “Don’t make him look bad, it makes all of us look bad and we are a military FAMILY—dont’ let the civilians have another reason to criticize us.”  Family, is it?  Could be, and a disfunctional one beyond compare.  The primary message of disfunctional families is that the individual is sacrificed for the group and that all secrets WILL be kept.

Couric’s story suggests that it is this bad because of the wars.  What an optimist she is!  This “hidden casualty” angle of the story sounds nice, but these casualties have been accruing for more than the decade she talks about on the video. (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/01/28/eveningnews/main4761199.shtml )

Seriously now, don’t you have to ask yourselves, why a soldier’s “career” as a probable bullet-stopper or IED absorber is more important than a woman living to dance uncrippled at the wedding of her son or daughter?   If you are a woman, especially if you are a military wife, how CAN you make the case for solidarity with the ABUSERS and not with the victims?  How can you protect the system that does NOT protect you?