A friend of mine who lives on a large Marine Corps base confirmed something that the news has reported: domestic violence is a serious and frequent problem for base families. But my friend also added what the media can’t: chilling personal anecdotes and confirmation of how grossly under-reported the crime is.
“We hear it,” Sarah said as we ate lunch at a taco stand. “It happens all the time . . . Like, one time we could hear the wife screaming from three houses down.”
Over the past year, I had been neck-deep in research and statistics on the subject through my work at The Family Violence Project, a non-profit organization that trains people—teachers, faith leaders, teens, and the military—about how to respond appropriately to different types of abuse. I asked my friend her opinion because I wanted to hear a real-life perspective on the subject. Wow, did I get it! “Everybody on base totally knows this is a huge problem,” Sarah added. “They come back from deployment and beat the crap out of their wives! Or, I know a couple who are both enlisted, and they beat the crap out of each other.”
This is not to say that the military hasn’t been working hard to stop this ugly trend: they have tons of great resources to help families in many ways, and I know several hard-working people on base whose job is to do just that. Plus, there are outside organizations, like the project I worked for, that care so much about the problem and about military families that they raise money and forge community partnerships to help families for free. Together, all of these people and organizations have made some significant progress on a tough issue. But the problem of domestic violence in the military is still a glaring problem despite all of our efforts and the wide-eyed despair (or fed-up resignation, in Sarah’s case) of base families. Why is that?
There are a lot of factors at work here; scientific studies have found that certain factors contribute to abuse and violence rather than cause it. It’s an important distinction that scholars want us to understand in order to learn why people become violent.
With that in mind, I can distill everything I’ve learned on the subject to this: you can’t train someone to kill others in combat and then expect him to be a nurturing, caring, emotionally present husband twenty-four hours later . . . and yet that’s what’s expected of returning vets. Some of the contributing factors include the military culture, a short flight home, the environment enlistees grew up in, and a media-based, violence-drenched society.
If you’re anyone like what I'm about to describe, you may be more likely to commit domestic violence. Basically, picture a guy (most enlistees and perpetrators are male) who grows up watching splatter shows on TV and playing slice ’em and dice ’em video games; whose parents encouraged aggression; who is then trained even more systematically how to kill professionally; and who has spent months in combat seeing people blown to bits right in front of his eyes. He is struggling to deal with the trauma of it alone—because asking for mental help might make him look weak. He is then transported from a combat zone to the demands of marriage and family in just twenty-four jet-propulsed hours when his deployment ends. You have someone who is a pretty good candidate for committing domestic violence.
Then picture a young woman who is living on base 2,000 miles away from her family and friends and who is struggling financially with two little tikes to take care of 24/7. Her husband is gone for months at a time and his job puts his life in danger. This young woman is someone who doesn’t have much support, other than what’s offered through on-base services.
