Military Divorce Attorney

Military Divorce Attorney - Example: First, calculate Retired pay based upon years of creditable service as if no disability (this is the military spouse's Gross pay). Second, multiply active duty base pay by the service member's disability rating. Then compare the two results.

Of the two figures, the service member is entitled to the higher amount as his or her disability Retired pay. Under the USFSPA, the only portion divisible in divorce as property is the difference between Gross pay and disability pay based upon disability rating.

Military Divorce Attorney

For some civilian spouses, half of the community portion will not amount to much. Negotiating other alternatives, such as increased spousal maintenance, could make up the difference.

Contact Wilson Brown Pllc – Experts In Military Divorces

"32" height="32" /> No matter the circumstances, dissolving a marriage is a significant life event that could impact your family and your finances for the rest of your life.

That's why you need to hire military divorce attorneys to oversee the proceedings. The Disability Issue in the Distribution of Military Retirement Benefits Given the current status of the law, there are several remedies that can be used to protect a former spouse from a reduction in his or her share of the marital portion due to the member receiving disability.

There is one more military retirement asset to consider – the Thrift Savings Plan. Voluntarily contributing a portion of his or her military bonus, special, or incentive pay to a TSP is another retirement option for service members.

Paralleling the civilian's 401k, the community portion of a tax-deferred TSP is also subject to division in divorce in most states. American Bar Association ® The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017, or NDAA 17, updated the USFSPA with a frozen benefit division rule.

Thrift Savings Plan

Pub. Law 114-328 Dec. 23, 2016. Service members and their spouses need to understand how the frozen benefit division rule applies to military Retired pay division in divorce, legal separation, or annulment. The service member's pension is either Longevity Retired pay based upon their length of service or military disability Retired pay because he or she was either determined unfit for continued service or later became disabled for reasons of service.

The first three formulas described above are used to calculate Longevity Retired pay. Determining the date of initial entry into military service is essential to accurately assess the marital portion of a military pension. There is a reason why military retired pay is divisible marital property in a divorce.

In 1982, the Uniformed Services Former Spouses Protection Act (USFSPA) made it so. 10 USC § 1408. The USFSPA, which controls the military pension division, makes the service member's "disposable retired pay" a potentially divisible marital asset in divorce proceedings.

This is important! Only the marital component of the service member's disposable retired pay is a divisible asset in divorce law. FindLaw's detailed California law firm profiles have information like the firm's areas of law, office locations, office hours, and payment options.

Uniform Frozen Benefit Division Rule

Attorney profiles include the biography, law school education and training, and client recommendations of an attorney to help you decide who to hire. A garnishment order should be entered by the court and provided to the appropriate office.

For the Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force, the DFAS is responsible for administering retired pay and garnishment. The U.S. Coast Guard, a component of the Department of Homeland Security, administers Retired pay for the commissioned Corps of the Public Health Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (both of which are considered "uniform services" under federal law), as well as its

own retirees, through its Pay and Personnel Center in Topeka, Kansas. Garnishment orders can be complex and create difficulty for even a seasoned practitioner. It may be advisable to find a "wingman" to draft the garnishment orders and handle submission to the pay center.

Federal law sets out which moneys are subject to garnishment and which are not. The most common elements of one's pay and allowances that are exempt from garnishment are the Basic Allowance for Housing (BAH) and the Basic Allowance for Subsistence (BAS).

Military Retired Pay Longevity Retired Pay Or Disability Retired Pay

Whether earned while in the military or as a civilian employee, any deferred compensation Categorized as community property is subject to division in the parties' divorce. Calculating military Retired pay in advance of division, though, is not always as straightforward as civilian retirement plans or pensions.

Generally, with divorces filed in Arizona, for example, the accumulation of months of marital pension service stops on the date the case begins. That is when the petition for dissolution of marriage is filed and served on the other spouse if it results in dissolution of marriage.

ARS § 25-211. Recall, too, that with pensions for those in the National Guard and Reserve, the community fraction is determined using retirement points, not months of service. In other words, the federal government will not honor any court order attempting to divide military retired pay unless it is accurate and absolutely spot-on.

Only a qualified order dividing retired pay will result in military pension division upon divorce. The pension division Retired pay center at the Defense Finance and Accounting Services (DFAS) rejects any submitted order that is non-compliant with the applicable DoD Financial Management Regulation.

I Asked My Ex’s Commanding Officer For A Garnishment And I Got Nowhere What Can I Do?

Guess-work and ambiguity in the order, even when signed by the judge in the case, will likely result in its rejection by the DFAS. The order simply won't get processed. As they say in baseball, "Close only counts in Horseshoes and hand grenades."

If you represent military families, then you should be dedicated to staying abreast of changes in the law. You will also want to closely follow legal trends that could potentially impact your military retirement & divorce cases.

The Servicemembers Civil Relief Act may provide some protection. The service member should first request a stay of the proceedings, and he or she may make additional stay requests later on. An application for an additional stay may be made at the time of the original request or later.

If the court refuses to grant an additional stay, then the court must appoint Counsel to represent the service member in the action or proceeding. The service member should confer with appointed counsel (or retain counsel) to discuss additional options.

Nothing Less Than Accuracy Will Do

Another aspect of divorce proceedings unique to military marriages is military benefits, such as military retirement, base privileges, and other benefits. Therefore, your divorce lawyers must understand the legal rights of the military spouse, which does not come up in a civilian divorce.

Use FindLaw to hire a local military divorce lawyer to work with you on issues like community property division, debt allocation, military retirement plan divisions, military benefit divisions, child custody and support, alimony, and tax considerations.

The military card and its associated privileges are granted by the U.S. government, not the servicemember spouse. The service member does not have the right to take the ID card away because only the U.S. government has that authority.

In some circumstances, the base personnel office may issue an ID card without the service member's direct consent. The so-called "hypothetical clause" refers to the factual details the court must include in the written order for it to serve as a qualified pension division order acceptable to the federal government.

I Am A Military Member On Active Duty And Have Been Served With Divorce Papers I Have No Time To Attend To The Matter Because Of My Military Duties What Can I Do?

If incorrect, ambiguous, or missing information, then the military pension division order will not be in compliance with the USFSPA's “hypothetical clause” requirement in 10 USC § 1408. The order must also state that the amount to be divided is “disposable Retired pay

” as set forth in the NDAA 17's § 641 and as codified in the USFSPA's § 1408(a)(4). Be mindful that it is the Attorneys who draft the proposed court order for the judge's signature. Therefore, the responsibility of getting the language of the hypothetical clause absolutely correct lies with the attorneys.

Trial experience matters. We understand how painful divorce can be under any circumstances. But divorce, where one or both parties are active military members, can be painful and complicated. So whether you are a military member or a military spouse, reach out to Wilson Brown, PLLC.

Our team features an experienced military divorce attorney, a specific branch of family law. Military pensions are a type of deferred compensation. This simply means a portion of the service member's pay is set aside to be paid at a future date by the service member's employer, the federal government.

Military Benefits

In addition to military Retired pay and Thrift Savings Plan, both of which are qualified plans, a spouse might also have non-military deferred compensation from other employment in the form of 401(k) or 403(b) plans, IRAs, bonus plans

, stock options, and profit-sharing plans. The frozen benefit division rule requires asserting a hypothetical retirement date before determining how much of the service member's pension the other spouse is entitled to in the property division.

Under federal rules, the military spouse's so-called retirement date is the day of the divorce. That's legal fiction in almost every case. The active-duty service member's actual retirement date (or final retirement pay grade) is not considered when determining disposable Retired pay as defined in § 1408(a)(4) of the USFSPA.

Remember: Only the marital portion of the service member's disposable Retired pay must be divided by law in divorce. The former spouse can only be paid a share of the military spouse's total monthly retired pay as determined on the hypothetical retirement date.

I Have Filed For Divorce And My Spouse Is In The Military Can He Or She Take Away My Military Id Card While The Case Is Pending?

That would be the date of the final decree (whether divorce, annulment, or legal separation). If the service member is unable to obtain military disability retired pay, then he or she can look to the VA for disability compensation.

There is much to consider with disability pay, such as disability Severance pay, combat-related special compensation, and concurrent retirement and disability pay. All of these possibilities should be discussed with your attorney. " alt="military divorce rate" width="600" height="399" srcset="https://www.wilsonbrownlaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/military-divorce-process-200x133.jpeg 200w, https://www.wilsonbrownlaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/military-divorce-process-300x199.jpeg 300w, https://www.wilsonbrownlaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2022 /03/military-divorce-process-400x266.jpeg 400w, https://www.wilsonbrownlaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/military-divorce-process-600x399.jpeg 600w, https://www .wilsonbrownlaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/military-divorce-process-768x511.jpeg 768w, https://www.wilsonbrownlaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/military-divorce- process-800x532.jpeg 800w, https://www.wilsonbrownlaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/military-divorce-process-1024x681.jpeg 1024w, https://www.wilsonbrownlaw.com/wp- content/uploads/2022/ 03/military-divorce-process-1200x798.jpeg 1200w, https://www.wilsonbrownlaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/military-divorce-process.jpeg 1256w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px" /> Although the divisible marital portion of the military pension is determined as a fraction, that's not the only option for the order.

The parties could set the former spouse's share as a fixed dollar amount, percentage, formula, or hypothetical with contrived rank with manufactured years of service. Example: To calculate the amount of Retired pay using the final pay formula take 2.5% times years of creditable service times final basic pay at the time of retirement.

Hypothetical Clause In A Qualified Order Dividing Retired Pay

A cost of living adjustment (COLA) is applied to Retired pay each year to protect the retiree against inflation. [*DIEMS is the Date of Initial Entry to Military Service.] Members of the Armed Forces benefit from a unified retirement system.

All things being equal, the plan participant's rank and years of creditable service determine retired pay, but their branch of service does not. Typically, military members become eligible for retirement after a minimum of 20 years of active duty service.

For members of the National Guard and Reserves, active duty means annual training and actual mobilization. (For retirement purposes, weekend drills are inactive duty training and not creditable service.) This rule applies uniformly to all states, the District of Columbia, and U.S.

territories. No longer is the method of dividing an active duty service member's retired pay left to the individual states to decide independently. Since its December 23, 2016, effective date, all states must apply the federal rule uniformly.

Military Pensions As Divisible Community Property

While individual states have various methods of determining terms for separation agreements that settle the division of community assets and debts, including pensions, but the frozen benefit division rule must still apply. Spouses in military divorce cannot reach any agreement or settlement that deviates from the federal rule's requirements.

Military divorce sometimes features unique circumstances, primarily if one spouse is serving away from home or in a foreign country. This is one reason the federal government enacted the Servicemember Civil Relief Act. This piece of federal legislation protects active-duty military members from being divorced by their spouses without their knowledge.

Property division is

handled differently when the military spouse's retirement is based upon disability. A service member's disability pay could come in two forms: A garnishment is based on a court order. The only way to stop a garnishment is to obtain a court order that terminates it.

Military Retirement Divorce Calculating Disposable Retired Pay

State law determines whether this is possible and under what circumstances a court may step in and stop the garnishment. This is compensation for service-connected illnesses that may reduce the military spouse's earning capacity. Disability status could be determined before or after retirement.

Or the disability might not be such that the service member will qualify for military disability Retired pay. The USFSPA limits pension division awards to fifty percent of the member's disposable retired pay, but the maximum may be as high as sixty-five percent if there are alimony and/or child support orders against the member as well.

There are also certain exceptions in the event of multiple court orders involving different spouses.

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Military Neck

Military Neck - Most manipulative authors have had between good and great success restoring the lordotic curve in people whose military neck developed from injury or postural habit. All of these professionals concur that restoring the curve can be a long process if losing the curve was a long time coming.

Sudden injury-caused military neck is likely caused by muscle spasm or protective muscle guarding and can thus be resolved by first resolving the soft tissue aspects of the injury. Trauma can also cause military neck. Different types of injuries can cause the trauma, including a car accident, a fall, or a sports injury.

Military Neck

If the ligaments fracture or tear, the spine can curve forward and the spinal cavity might narrow. Military neck is an abnormal curve of the cervical spine that causes you to look like you’re “standing at attention.”

Can The Cervical Curve Be Restored?

The condition, called cervical kyphosis, doesn’t have anything to do with serving in the military. It can be caused by: Physical therapy, a neck brace, and mild pain medications are generally prescribed for treatment, unless the curve of the neck is pressing on the spinal cord, in which case the doctor will likely recommend surgery.

The most common surgery for cervical kyphosis is spinal fusion. This assumes, of course, that the spasm or guarding is not protecting the skeleton or central nervous system (CNS) from impending damage if muscles are relaxed.

Minor fractures in or injurious displacement of the vertebral bones can easily cause muscle guarding and relaxing those muscles could endanger the bones. The brain will do whatever it can to protect the bones and CNS.

A healthy neck has a “C” curve (lordosis) when you see it from the side and the curve rolls forward from the bottom of the cervical spine and curves back again halfway up to the head.

How Is Military Neck Treated?

There is approximately 30 to 40 degrees of curve in the healthy neck. Taking its name from the idea that military people stand perfectly straight and tall, “military neck” is a slang term for the loss of the “C” curve in the neck.

Military neck is also known as cervical kyphosis or straight neck. In rarer forms, a backwards curve develops in the neck. Removing the lamina creates more space for nerves, but it can also cause the facet joints between the vertebrae to be unstable.

This complication is seen most often in children who undergo the procedure, as opposed to adults. Iatrogenic disorder can also arise from an unsuccessful cervical spine fusion, in which the fusion is too short. A congenital disorder is one that occurs from birth, otherwise known as a birth defect.

Those whose cervical kyphosis is congenital usually have complications in other parts of the body as well, such as urinary or kidney defects. To diagnose military neck, the doctor will observe the person to see if there are visible signs of deformity or abnormality in their posture.

Congenital Disorder

They will also take a full medical history to determine the cause of the abnormal spine alignment. Congenital kyphosis. Some babies are born with disabilities or have unusual spine development. The spine might not be fully formed, or the bones might grow in a triangle shape.

When this happens, the bones aren't stacked correctly, which can cause the neck to curve forward. Cervical spondylosis. This condition is a type of arthritis of the neck. As your discs wear down with age, your bones begin to rub against each other and break down.

This causes the spine to collapse, your head to tilt forward, and your neck to curve. Degenerating discs can cause arthritis. Once spinal joints begin to break down and degenerate, other soft tissue in the joints become affected.

Inflammation can affect the spinal nerves and cause further shifting of neighboring vertebrae, forcing discs to bulge to one side. The inflammation affecting nerves may cause pain wherever the nerves go or compress them, reducing sensation in the arms, neck, and head.

Why Do I Need A Curved Neck?

Doctors call it peripheral or cervical neuropathy. The biggest problem seems to be the earlier onset of degeneration in spinal discs. Much like any slow degenerating process of organ systems, you probably won't see it coming for awhile.

For people who have a loss of neck curve from functional causes, degeneration and pain may not appear for several years. If you were born with a straight neck, on the other hand, you may not see problems stemming from loss of cervical lordosis until your older years when disc degeneration becomes part of the ordinary aging process.

The most common cause of military neck is poor posture, either when awake or when sleeping. Poor posture can result from staring at the computer, occupational conditions, or repetitive movements. However, the condition can develop from other factors as well, such as:

Cervical traction. Your doctor might use cervical traction, which is a method of applying counterforce to your neck. Cervical traction with a halo ring uses gravity to help move the spine and relieve pressure on the cord.

Problems Related To Military Neck

This is especially helpful for children who have severe cervical kyphosis and is usually done before surgery. Local Storage seems to be disabled in your browser. For the best experience on our site, be sure to turn on Local Storage in your browser.

Military neck, straight neck, or cervical kyphosis is a loss of curvature in the neck. There may be a functional or structural loss of curvature. Having a straight neck isn't necessarily a bad thing, but the structure of the neck tends to degenerate more quickly in people who have lost the natural neck curve.

Functional military neck is usually fixable with manual therapy. However, results tend to take longer in people who lost their curve a longer time ago. The main cause of functional loss of cervical lordosis is a traumatic shock to the cervical spine, usually whiplash.

In some people, straight neck is complicated by posture of the neck atop the thorax. The normal curve bends the cervical spine forward from the junction where the cervical spine meets the thoracic spine. In some people, the cervical spine continues straight upward.

What Causes Military Neck?

In others, the entire cervical spine leans forward from the junction, giving the “leaning tower of Pisa” appearance to the cervical portion of the spine. The degree to which the straight neck leans forward is where the complication appears.

Because the head is no longer in a direct line over the thorax, muscles in the back of the neck and upper back must strain in order to pull the entire cervical and cranial structure back, like guy-wires (see Upper Crossed Syndrome elsewhere on this website).

Physical therapy, which is prescribed either as a standalone treatment or after surgery, may include specific neck exercises to strengthen the muscles, such as cervical lateral flexion, cervical flexion and extension, and cervical rotation. The physical therapist may also perform neck traction, in which the neck is slightly extended.

Iatrogenic kyphosis. This type of neck problem is caused by medical procedures. Laminectomy surgery is the most common cause. This is a surgery in which part of the vertebrae bone is removed to ease pressure on your spinal cord.

What Is The Outlook For Military Neck?

Normally your neck has a slight backward C bend. If you have military neck, also called cervical kyphosis, your neck has lost some of its normal curvature. This makes your neck abnormally straight, which can cause your head to tilt forward.

When military neck is a result of a congenital disorder, such as the spine not forming completely, the spine grows abnormally and the vertebrae create a triangle shape as they grow. This places an unnatural curve on the neck and stacked vertebrae.

While many conventional medical doctors may be forwardthinkers and refer military neck patients to a manipulative doctor or therapist, most will more likely get x-rays to make sure there is no evidence of structural damage, then prescribe NSAIDs (or stronger drugs) and muscle relaxers .

They go with what they know — addressing the symptoms, not the cause. The compression might cause the body of the vertebrae to heal in the shape of a wedge, creating an imbalance. In serious cases, you might experience neurological problems from the narrowing of the spinal canal, called spinal stenosis.

Compressed pressure can cause numbness, pain, and muscle weakness. The overall outlook for those with military neck is quite good. People usually respond well to physical therapy, lifestyle changes, and surgery when needed. After surgery, people are generally able to resume normal activities upon recovery, though they may need to wear a brace for up to three months.

Clinical trials are currently being conducted to improve surgical fusion, in an attempt to make the procedure and recovery even more efficient. Degenerative disc disease. In degenerative disc disease, the discs in your spine wear down over time.

This causes them to collapse and get thinner. As that happens, your head tilts forward and your neck curves forward or straightens. Surgery. Surgery is the main treatment, but it is usually only performed if your neck is getting worse.

Your doctor might add a metal plate and rods to give your neck stability or might fuse your bones together.

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Jeffrey Dahmer Military

Jeffrey Dahmer Military - Although Capshaw reported Dahmer and took a rape test, the results were ignored, and Dahmer continued his assaults for another 17 months, The Cinemaholic reported. Now, Davis and Capshaw have connected over their shared experience with the serial killer, via Distractify.

The Netflix series Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story has thrown the serial killer back into the spotlight. While it has always been suspected that Dahmer killed during service, an investigation into unsolved murder cases during his enlistment has proved fruitless.

Jeffrey Dahmer Military

The suicide attempts are only part of it. Capshaw, who was 17 when he was assigned to a room with Dahmer at Baumholder garrison in Germany in 1980, spent five years locked in his bedroom when he got back home to Arkansas, unable to speak of his experiences or socialize in any way.

How Long Was Jeffrey Dahmer In The Military?

"I could not say I was raped, I could not do that to my Daddy. He fought in the Pacific," he recalls now. That was followed by 26 years in therapy. "They told me they were the wages of my lifestyle, that I was a fucking fagot," Williams, 65, recalls now.

He finally sought protection after the third rape by his drill instructor soon after arriving at Lackland Air Force Base near San Antonio, Texas. "A piece of me died and it's been like that the rest of my life," he says of that final assault.

"I went to the showers, tied some towels together and tried to hang myself, I couldn't handle being raped any more. But there was no way to get help. They called me a pansy, a mama's boy."

It's hard to fathom the damage done to the thousands of young Americans who chose to serve their country only to find not just discipline and physical challenges once in uniform but also pitiless predators. Their tormentors came at them as if out of nowhere, and afterwards, commanding officers either didn't believe their stories of rape, forced fondling and beatings, or warned them to keep silent or face other punitive consequences.

Some Of His Interests Foreshadowed His Killings

On March 24, 1981, Dahmer had a debriefing in Fort Jackson, South Carolina, and was given a plane ticket wherever he wanted to go. He flew to Miami Beach for a couple of months and got a job at a delicatessen, but was evicted by the hotel he was staying in because he wasn't paying rent, per Newsweek.

"They just don't want to talk about this as a man's issue," said Williams, who, with the other five men, spoke while visiting Albuquerque to attend the premiere of a documentary. Called Justice Denied, all appear in it.

The film follows The Invisible Enemy, released last year, which also examined rape in the services (and won an Oscar nomination) but focused on female victims. "They can't stop us making this movie and they can't stop us from taking it all around the country," he says.

But the biggest problem may be that under the military code, victims can only report assaults to their superior officers. It is up to unit commanders to decide whether to prosecute or even to listen. They are often loath to do so if incidents of sexual assault among their men risk hindering their own careers.

Why Was Jeffrey Dahmer Kicked Out Of The Military?

Not expected were the references made by not one but two of the men to Jeffrey Dahmer, the "Milwaukee Cannibal" who had raped, murdered and dismembered 17 men and boys before he was convicted and sent to prison in 1992. Two years later he was

beaten to death by another inmate at the Columbia Correctional facility in Portage, Wisconsin. He had killed once before he enlisted and was shipped to Germany in 1979. He was assigned to work in a medic unit with Preston Davis.

Today, Davis, 54, believes he was drugged by Dahmer inside an armored personnel vehicle. And then it happened. "I was raped by Jeffrey. I am just thankful to be alive to tell the story.” Capshaw said that Dahmer was nice when sober, but violent while drunk.

"He was tying me to the bunk with motor-pool rope," Capshaw said of some of the incidents. "He took all my clothing from me. He would either beat me before he raped me, or he would beat me after.”

How Long Did He Serve In The Army?

Other people allegedly knew about Jeffrey's abuse but would return Capshaw to him after his many attempts to escape, per The Sun. At that point, Davis says he was alone with Dahmer: "Somewhere in that time frame, I was sexually assaulted, which included penetration.

I believe that I was drugged because I lost time and have memory gaps...I had very little recollection of the event," he wrote. Davis worked with Dahmer between October 5 and October 25, 1979, according to his survivor story published on Protect Our Defenders, a national human rights organization aiming to end sexual violence and racism in the military.

The two were training together when their vehicle broke down and had to be wheeled to the train station for the last three or four days of the exercise. After the experience, Davis left to work in a different unit, but his career began to go downhill from the trauma, per The Cinemaholic.

Davis wrote that he "still blames himself for all the terrible things that Jeffrey Dahmer did to another victim," on Protect Our Defenders. Having graduated from school, Dahmer was unsure of what to do next. His father, Lionel Dahmer, enrolled him at Ohio State University, where Dahmer had hoped to major in business.

What Did Dahmer Do In The Military?

However, he never showed much sincerity about college and his grades had been abysmal. Even though his father had already paid for the second term, Dahmer dropped out of OSU after three months. With his increasing drinking problem and no sure path for the future, Lionel urged him to join the army.

In January 1979, Dahmer enlisted and trained as a medical specialist at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas. He was deployed to Baumholder, West Germany in July 1979. There he served as a combat medic in the 2nd Battalion, 68th Armored Regiment, 8th Infantry Division.

He served there until 1981 when he was honorably discharged from the military service. Dahmer reportedly decorated his room in Germany with a poster of Iron Maiden and spent hours invested in a picture book, "The Three Billy Goats Gruff," a children's Norwegian fairy tale, according to The New York Times, per Military Times.

Billy Joe, Jeremiah, Preston - all these men agree: the only way to end this scourge is to take the handling of sexual assault in the military out of the chain of command, either by giving cases to an independent panel of military prosecutors or even

Did Dahmer Kill Anyone While He Was In The Army?

to civilian outsiders. With so much publicity about the issue this summer, is it possible that - at last - Congress will pass a law to make this happen? Capshaw believes so. The others are less sure.

"We are watching Washington and anything that is making it out of committee does not take the investigations or the prosecutions out of the chain of command," laments Williams. "When this drops out of the headlines, they will all go back to the same ways.

We have to keep the spotlight on this. It's the only way it's going to change." What bothers Matthews, who has dedicated most of the past two years to raising awareness about the issue, is that it has taken this long for Washington to wake up.

Even now, he says, there is a host of misconceptions, including the common assumption that sex-assault victims are always female. Of the presumed 26,000 victims in 2012, more than half were men. In most cases their aggressors were also men, although female-on-male sexual assault is not unheard of.

Jeffrey Dahmer Sexually Assaulted Two Men While In The Military

Of the total, only 3,374 incidents were actually reported and, dismally, only 302 of those resulted in prosecutions being pursued under the military code of justice. Six weeks after his first murder (Steven Hicks, an 18-year-old), in June of 1978, he began college at Ohio State University where he majored in business, according to Newsweek.

Dahmer's father, Lionel, wanted him to go to college, but he dropped out just three months into his first semester. After that, Lionel encouraged his son to enroll in the army, via The Cinemaholic. Many people don't know, however, that Dahmer actually served in the military over the course of his long killing spree.

The topic is discussed in episode four of the limited series, and Dahmer even bragged about some of his killings while being deployed. On that, at least, some relief may be coming. Late on Thursday the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a first-time "whistleblower" law that would require the armed services inspector general to investigate whenever a person claims to have faced reprisals for reporting having been a victim of sexual assault.

"Before we can truly understand the scope of sexual assault in the military and how best to confront it, we have to find a way to encourage more victims to come forward," said its sponsor - and Indiana Republican - Jackie Walorski.

The men blame ignorance and resistance to change, pointing as an example to comments made during one recent hearing by Senator Saxby Chambliss, a Republican. The crisis, the senator intimated, stems from natural friskiness. "The young folks coming in to each of your services are anywhere from 17 to 22 or 23," he offered.

"Gee-whiz, the hormone level created by nature sets in place the possibility for these types of things to occur." It also has to do with victims, especially men, being unwilling to report rapes, because of feelings of shame.

And then there is that fear of being punished for speaking out. Jack Williams was violated by his drill instructor three times, always at three in the morning. For Billy Joe Capshaw it was different; he was raped so many times over so many months it became one long brutal blur.

He is, at least, alive. His assailant's house was Jeffrey Dahmer. Dahmer served for almost two years, from 1979 until March of 1981. At that time, he was honorably discharged (a.k.a., "formally released after serving a period of honest and faithful service," according to Newsweek) from the military through Chapter 9 of

the Code of Military Justice, via The Cinemaholic. When Capshaw reported Dahmer, he was taken to the dispensary for a test with a rape kit, but nothing happened after that. No action was taken against Dahmer, who continued his assaults for another seventeen months.

About his superiors, Capshaw said that "they threw me to the dogs", especially when he discovered much later that the results of the test had been discarded. Both Davis and Capshaw appeared in Oxygen's 'Dahmer on Dahmer' to talk about their experiences.

They are now friends and help other survivors of military sexual assault. Public disgust was fueled further last month when it emerged that the officer in charge of the Air Force's Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office had been arrested for allegedly groping a woman in a car park.

Days later, a US Army sexual assault coordinator at the Fort Hood base in Texas was relieved of his duties under suspicion of running an on-base prostitution ring. The rot appears to run deep. In 1991, when Dahmer's killings were made public, the Army decided to look into the duration of his service and see if any of the unsolved cases from that time were attached to him.

Similarly, the police in Germany also reopened the cases around the time that Dahmer had been in the country to see if any crimes fit the pattern and could be connected to him. They didn't find anything.

In July 1991, Dahmer told the police that "fantasies of killing people that he had when he was 17 or 18 recurred after he left the Army and moved to Milwaukee," according to The New York Times, adding that he "did not kill again

until late 1984 or early 1985, when he 'discovered the gay bars.'" Jeffrey got the most violent after he drank, Capshaw said, according to The New York Times: "You could tell in his face that he wasn't joking. It was for real. That's why it bothered me. It was a whole different side

. His face was blank. It was kind of like he was cross-eyed-like. An expression like he just wasn't there. I've never seen it on anyone else's face." Monster is a fictionalized retelling of Dahmer's 17 known murders that occurred without detection for over a decade.

His victims ranged in age from just 14 years old to 33, and his killings often involved necrophilia, dismemberment, and cannibalism. Once Davis left, 17-year-old Billy J. Capshaw became Dahmer's bunkmate and next victim of sexual assault.

Unlike Davis, Capshaw suffered at the hands of the serial killer for a longer period of time. He said that while Dahmer had been a nice guy when he was sober, he'd become a menacing and violent person when he got drunk.

"I had probably been raped eight to 10 times, I don't know. He was tying me to the bunk with motor-pool rope. He took all my clothes from me. He would either beat me before he raped me, or he would beat me after," he said.

Dahmer first enlisted to serve with the military police, per The New York Times, but he ended up being transferred to a six-week medical specialist training at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, according to The Cinemaholic.

Jeffrey was working as the military version of a nurse's aide, screening patients. He was then stationed in Baumholder, West Germany, in July of 1979, where he helped as a combat medic in the 2nd Battalion, 68th Armored Regiment, 8th Infantry Division, per The Cinemaholic.

"The reason he didn't kill me — he said after I left, 'I should've killed that n----- when I had the chance' — but that was the reason he couldn't kill me: We were out in the middle of Belgium.

Dahmer then moved back to Ohio with his father, Lionel, and stepmother, Shari, but was arrested just two weeks later for drunk and disorderly conduct, for which he had to pay a $60 fine and received a suspended 10-day jail sentence, according

that Newsweek. Two months after coming home, Dahmer went to live with his grandmother, Catherine Dahmer, in West Allis, Wisconsin. He became a phlebotomist at the Milwaukee Blood Plasma Center, drawing blood from patients. Dahmer was laid off ten months later, and began working at the Milwaukee Ambrosia Chocolate Factory in 1985, during HITC.

While no unsolved murders or disappearances could be connected to him, it was later revealed that Dahmer had sexually abused two men while he was serving in the Army. In Germany, he was teamed up in a medical unit with 20-year-old Preston Davis, who claimed that he was drugged and raped by Dahmer.

He couldn't remember what exactly happened, but felt thankful "to be alive to tell the story". Following the incident, Preston left to serve in a different unit, but the trauma followed him and affected his personal and professional life.

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