Right now, we’re in the middle of a military investigation about domestic violence. It couldn’t have come at a worse time, but is the result of the report I made back in December 2008. Why did it take so long for the report to make it to the Army? I may have an answer for that, but until this investigation is over (probably around the middle of April), I cannot update you on the happenings.
I will share pieces of it with you because I’m getting a lot of important information so far as how the Army deals with domestic violence. But the personal stuff will have to hold until we’re out of the hot seat.
It’s nice to have such a short post for a change. Maybe I write too much?
Hang in there – I am!
What I couldn’t tell you in this post is that I reignited the investigation. Will deployed, I got brave, and I went to the Department of Social Services in the Army to find out why they did nothing about the report in December 2008.
However, I felt I needed to protect myself from Will. I pretended not to know what had happened. Secretly, I felt the Army would force him into counseling or a group for abusive men or something that would help us.
None of that happened. They labeled the report “unsubstantiated” because, after so many months, none of my bruises remained. The counselor told me, “It isn’t that we don’t believe you, we just cannot prove it.”
Suck.
But I learned from it, and the next time Will put his hands on me I went to the police and then directly to the Army’s DSS. That report was “substantiated”.
This is a quasi-excerpt from My Abusive Marriage … and what i’m doing in it. I include this story in the book but wrote it up differently.