Divorce and Abuse in the Military
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New account to protect the guilty party and new to reddit either way, but I got a situation and I need as much advice as you can give.
Long story short my wife is both abusive and active duty. The family advocacy program worked together with the navy and marine corps relief society to send me back to my hone state to get away from her, but her chain of command protected her because she was the CO’s personal chef (one of two).
I’m former active duty myself (honorable discharge), and I was told to report to the hospital in the closest base to me in my home state, where I was immediately sent to a local VA and declared to be in critical psychiatric condition and immediately interred for a week in the mental healthcare inpatient program and sent to a year of therapy 5 days a week with an abuse counselor, VA MOVE, an on-base psychologist, a VA psychiatrist, and the VA “Interpersonal Skills” program.
I was diagnosed with major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, high cholesterol and adult attention deficit hyperactivity disorder when previously I had no diagnosed illnesses. I was prescribed high dose sertraline, strattera, a statin, and daily hydroxizine at low doses for sleep. I was on suicide watch for all the time I was in treatment, and was required to attend all sessions at the closest facilities to me, a two hour drive from my grandparents farm. I was on the road a minimum of 5 hours a day total for an entire year and tried my best to do farmhand and construction while finishing my bachelors degree.
Now I’ve finally gathered my medical records from the VA, the outside organization that provided my abuse counseling, and both the mental healthcare ward and the family advocacy records from my local base for every time I had to put in a financial abuse claim when she withdrew all the BAS/BAH from our joint bank account, which was quite often. Now that I finally have all the records, I need to make copies at Kinkos and send them off, but that’s where the question lies.
There seems to be no consensus on where I should send the records or how. I’ve been told a blanket statement about how I should lodge a complaint with her chain of command but not really told how. Speaking to fellow divorcees the consensus is that I should lodge a complaint outside her chain of command so they can’t protect her, but no information on where to go or even how to go about doing that. The JAGs at the local base won’t touch divorce at all and the local family advocacy program says that they can’t do anything because she’s navy and they’re Air Force. The closest navy base to me is a 6 hour drive away and I wouldn’t know where to go once I got there nor the business hours of the offices I’d need to report to.
From what I’ve gathered, I need to do a write up contextualizing the records so they don’t have to dig through all the paperwork to see what she did and when, and the medical sign off on the damage those actions caused psychologically. That gives me a lot to do and not much to go on, and doesn’t answer the question of where to go to turn it all in. Her chain of command was contacted every time I sent in a financial abuse claim but she’s somehow dodged all consequences for her actions. Local lawyers can help me with the divorce part but I was told if I file correctly, I can get transitional compensation for abused spouses, which would really help me finish pre-Med requirements for USUHS.
If I’ve posted this in the wrong place or the wrong way, I’ll keep it as a copy and paste word document for me to edit and post in the correct area. Any help would be greatly appreciated, this has obviously been quite the ordeal.
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