Tag Archive for: domestic

In the early evening of December 20, 2020, neighbours watched helplessly as Keith Lewis threatened his wife Sarah Lewis in a driveway near their home in Fayetteville, North Carolina.

WARNING: This story contains graphic content that some readers may find upsetting.

In one arm, Keith carried the couple’s three-year-old daughter, Callie.

In the other, he held an assault rifle.

Sarah called 911 for help.

“He was cursing and screaming … and holding the little girl,” one of the neighbours told a 911 operator in a separate call.

The neighbour then described seeing Keith shoot his wife as she tried to hide behind a car.

When police arrived, Keith, a 31-year-old combat medic stationed at the nearby Fort Bragg army base, disappeared inside the couple’s weatherboard duplex.

After a 15-minute stand-off, he relinquished the toddler and took his own life. Sarah later died in hospital from multiple gunshot wounds, along with the couple’s unborn daughter, Isabella.

“[Sarah] was vivacious,” said Tammy De Mirza, her aunt, who hadn’t seen the couple since they moved to Fayetteville a few years previously.

“She was only 34. She had a lot of living to do.”

Ms De Mirza had planned to visit over the holidays: the new baby was due on Christmas Day.

The Lewises told family they were excited about the pregnancy, but their five-year marriage had long ago stopped being safe for Sarah, who served in the US Air Force before having two children in a previous marriage.

In October 2016, Keith was arrested for threatening her with a handgun, according to police.

After returning to the United States from Afghanistan, he had continually struggled with his mental health and substance abuse but had kept working, rising through the ranks to the 1st Special Forces Command.

Nine days before her death, Sarah had contacted the unit for help, despite previously being met with scepticism and accused of “trying to ruin her husband’s career”, her aunt said.

The 1st Special Forces Command has no formal record of the call but a spokesperson for the unit said he hoped to clarify the course of events when Fayetteville Police release Sarah’s phone.

“Upon learning of the allegations, we immediately looked into the matter,” said Major Dan Lessard, the unit’s director of public affairs.

“Should any details come to light that demonstrate a leader was unresponsive … we will absolutely take appropriate action.”

“It doesn’t make any sense,” Ms De Mirza said.

“Why would you promote a guy that almost killed his wife?”

‘Command climate is critical’

There are factors endemic to life in the military that can increase the risk of domestic abuse, such as social isolation, mental health and substance-abuse issues, and the normalisation of violence within the ranks.

“The culture of the military is very hierarchical and it’s very masculine,” said Jessica Strong, the co-director of applied research at Blue Star Families, the country’s largest military support organisation.

There is currently no federal program to track the rate of intimate-partner violence in military families compared to the civilian population, but any comparison would likely be muddied by a reluctance to report abuse among military spouses, according to Ms Strong.

In 2017, a large-scale, biennial survey of military families by Blue Star Families found that among active-duty spouses who experienced physical abuse that year, the overwhelming majority — some 87 per cent — chose not to report it.

The top two reasons given were that they felt “it was not a big deal” or they “did not want to hurt their spouse or partner’s career”.

“They’re vulnerable and they’re dependent on their service member financially,” Ms Strong said.

“So, if they impact their service member’s career, they’re really hurting themselves.”

According to the Pentagon, more than 40,000 incidents of domestic abuse involving service members were reported between 2015 and 2019, nearly three-quarters of which included physical violence — an offence under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), the legal code that governs US military services.

Eleven intimate partner violence fatalities were recorded in 2020.

Yet the Department of Defence’s (DOD) reporting on the problem is inconsistent, according to a recent investigation by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which found a patchwork of data, despite a 1999 statutory requirement for all services to keep comprehensive records of alleged abuse.

“It appeared at that time that DOD was putting a framework in place to have the data necessary for oversight, along with taking care of the victims and making sure their needs were being…