Talking with

Richard Strozzi Heckler

by
D. Patrick Miller

In late July 2002, the Fort Bragg Army base in North Carolina announced that it would re-evaluate its family counseling programs after the disclosure that four Army wives had been killed by their husbands in the previous six weeks. Two of the killings were part of murder-suicides; three of the suspects were Special Operations solders who had returned from recent duty in Afghanistan. In a fifth homicide involving base personnel, the wife of an Army officer was charged with his murder.

While an Army spokesman said it would be “a reach” to connect all the recent domestic violence to the war in Afghanistan, the tragic news nonetheless raised questions about the stress that soldiers and their families face as an inevitable part of the military lifestyle. NEWSWEEK reported that the occurrence of domestic violence in the military is twice that of civilians, and noted that critics say the armed forces are slow to report and confront the full dimension of the problem — in part because federal convictions of abusers would mean the loss of their right to carry guns, making them useless as soldiers.