Military officers are held to a higher standard of behavior than the general public. Military law criminalizes “conduct unbecoming of an officer” such as adultery — that is, if the law is enforced.
One woman thought she was in a genuine romantic relationship with a lieutenant colonel in the Air National Guard — also a doctor — until three years later when she learned that she was just one of many. She says the lieutenant colonel used “military assignments” as excuses to juggle the women. She says he even rotated the women at Air National Guard events, and none of his fellow officers called him out.
Read her story here:
Part 1: Nina’s Story — A charismatic doctor and lieutenant colonel who violates HIPAA and military core values to seduce women? Yes, on lovelifeom.com.
Part 2: An unlikely sisterhood and laughing in the faced of absurdity, on lovelifeom.com.
Part 3: “Courage is fire, and bullying is smoke.” — Benjamin Disraeli
The survivors of this man’s alleged betrayal went through proper channels to request a military investigation — nothing happened. So now they’ve launched a petition on Change.org. Here it is:
Conduct Unbecoming at change.org.
The sway sociopaths hold over their “minions” is hard to fathom
Thank you for sharing, Donna. The officer’s lawyer has been in touch with me threatening to file a defamation suit against me as an accomplice in slandering and destroying the doc’s reputation, as if a story, in and of itself, has that type of power.
People like this will stop at nothing to avoid accountability, even abusing the legal system and courts to threaten and instill fear in those of us who are looking out for the greater good of all who are at risk of be directly and negatively impacted by violations of public trust.
Truth is a complete defense to a charge of defamation. If you have proof, any legal action will not stand.
I was in a similar situation with an ex-Iraqi vet in 2008. Fortunately, his commanding officer not only believed me about the adultery, but sought my help to prove that he was also faking symptoms to get an honorable discharge. They call it “malingering” and it is a form of fraud. My friends and I gave sworn statements about the sociopath, which were the main evidence that got him convicted. It took the help of my congressman to find out what ever became of him, and the army was very close-lipped about it. They told me he was charged with fraud and adultery and “appropriately punished,” whatever that means.
I would encourage the woman to go to her state senate’s office and ask them to get involved. This advice was given to me by a poster here named Matt who happened to be a fraud attorney. It was in summer/fall 2008, so I’m now sure how to find these original posts but they were very helpful.
I was very lucky in that the army believed me. The platoon sergeant knew what a sociopath was, and she herself had been victimized by one once, so she was quite supportive to me. The commanding officer believed me, too, because they had been trying to build a case against him for fraud for 2 years!
One thing I like about this site is that it often leads me to learn all kinds of things: not necessarily from material posted on the site, but from further research prompted by things people have said here. In this context I was curious about the military’s treatment of “adultery,” a common enough human problem. It led me to this discussion, which made for an informative read:
Adultery in the Military
To summarize a few points the writer made in his long article:
“Adultery” is not automatically punished in every instance.
The commanding officer responsible has a great deal of discretion about whether or not to act on allegations of adultery.
Some commanders are more “liberal” than others about whether they think particular instances of adultery are worth punishing.
The main concern with adultery does not seem to be whether it’s “wrong” in some broader moral sense, or its impact on people or society at large, but its effect on the operational effectiveness of the military itself. This takes two forms:
1. When an adulterous liaison causes tensions, rumors, or other dissension within a unit that could impact the morale, cohesiveness and effectiveness of the unit itself. So if this officer’s philandering activities aren’t affecting anyone in his unit, maybe his superiors don’t see it as a problem.
2. When an adulterous liaison brings the reputation of the military as a whole into public disrepute, undermining public support. This naturally depends among other things on the rank of the officers involved. If a four-star general has a flagrant affair that makes headline news, that’s a problem. If a buck private is slipping into bed with his or her neighbor, nobody’s going to take any notice in the world at large. So higher ranking officers are held to higher standards than lower ranks. I guess a lieutenant-colonel is somewhere in the middle. Of course, if his activities threaten to bring the military into disrepute, his superiors may do their best, as so many institutions do, to “cover it up.”
In addition, time is a factor. If the adultery in question occurred in the past and is no longer having any effect on the military or its operation, there’s less reason to take action than there would be if it’s ongoing and continues to present a threat of some kind.
Another point that goes without saying is that “adultery” requires one or both of the parties concerned to be married to someone else. I realize this lieutenant-colonel was married at the time, but I don’t know if he still is. Also I have no idea what happens if some guy (or female for that matter) is a plain old philanderer who took the precaution of remaining single! That may mean he can never be accused of “adultery,” as long as he confines his amorous attentions to other single women outside the military. Sailors, after all, are traditionally said to have “a girl in every port,” and were never punished for it.
Finally, commanding officers have discretion to punish those under their command in various ways: with reprimands, denial of promotion or reduction in rank, without ever making this public. They’re not allowed to make it public either.
So on the one hand this lieutenant-colonel’s superiors have plenty of leeway, not to mention plenty of motivation, to ignore what he’s doing and cover it up. On the other hand, they could well be giving him private warnings about his conduct, backed up with sanctions and punishment that affect his career—but outsiders would never be permitted to know about it.
I don’t suppose this is much help, but at least I’m more educated on the topic than I used to be!
Redwald – commanding officers are actually responsible for dealing with their subordinates in these situations. The issue is how seriously the chain of command takes this responsibility. Some commanders enforce regulations, and others don’t. This becomes an issue when service members actively work to cut their spouses out of the military benefits to which they are entitled.
Thanks for sharing; I was wondering about this topic, too. It leads me to consider that in cases that are not adultery – when the parties are not married to someone else – the responsibility for the decision to commit fornication rests on both parties.
I believe the reason the commanding officer in my ex’s case took his adultery seriously was because it was part of a larger deception. He had apparently been faking medical symptoms for two years, including inability to walk, having no feelings from the waist down, and constant headaches – none of these were true. He even faked a facial tic! In order to date me, he had to drive for an hour and a half each way, something he told the army he was unable to do. He also did some hard labor helping one of my friends remodel, something he also claimed he couldn’t do. When I turned him in for adultery, I was unaware of his medical deception. He seemed completely able-bodied around me. It was the commanding officer who asked me how he was able to drive, walk, and perform labor with his “limp” and whether he had any kinds of facial tics of speech impediments around me (he didn’t). I was shocked that he had been carrying on this deception for two years!!! He told me he was seeking a medical discharge due to headaches. That was the only symptom he told me he had.
There was another side to it that I didn’t know until much later – that his wife had divorced him once for pathological lying but then remarried him (!) I believe the army suspected she was marrying him for his pending lifetime disability pension, and that they were both defrauding the army. The whole case reeked of fraud. I think the adultery was just a small part of it, but it was the part that got him caught, because my friends’ and my sworn statements were the main pieces of evidence used to convict him. It would have been impossible to ignore that adultery was part of the whole sordid scene. I believed he was separated when I started dating him and divorced within a few months. This was all a lie, of course. He was married and living with his wife the entire time. I was crying and devastated while I was giving my sworn statement. I did mention the word “sociopath” to the commanding officer, not expecting him to understand. However, I think he did understand because the platoon sergeant – a woman – shared with me that she had once been involved with one. I really lucked out in my situation that the army was totally supportive and understanding – at least until after they got what they needed from me. Then they dropped me faster than a hot potato, failing to respond to my inquiries. I only found out what happened with my ex when I got my state Senator’s office involved. They wrote a letter to the commanding officer and relayed to me that my ex was “found guilty of fraud and adultery and appropriately punished” whatever that means.
One of the army officials I spoke with – though sympathetic to my situation – didn’t think he would receive a harsh sentence because of how it would have looked to the public to send an ex-Iraqi vet proclaiming his innocence to prison.
Here’s Part 2 of Nina’s story:
An unlikely sisterhood and laughing in the face of absurdity.
https://lovelifeom.com/part-2-ninas-story/
Part 3 of Nina’s story has been posted. It seems like people are coming out of the woodwork to make allegations against the predator.
https://lovelifeom.com/part-3-ninas-story/