The Oprah Winfrey Show
(c) Copyright 2002, Harpo Productions. All Rights Reserved.

Wednesday, September 25, 2002

Interview: Murders at Fort Bragg; panelists discuss what could have caused four
soldiers at Ft. Bragg to kill their wives in a six-week period

HOST: Oprah Winfrey EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Dianne Atkinson Hudson

MURDERS AT FORT BRAGG

OPRAH WINFREY: Today Army wives, elite soldiers, all-American marriages that ended in tragedy.

Ms. PENNY FLITCRAFT (Daughter Was Murdered At Fort Bragg): No one recognized that this young family were sitting on a ticking bomb.

WINFREY: Ft. Bragg military base, four young mothers killed in six weeks. What pushed their husbands over the edge?

Ms. AMANDA NOBLES (Sister Was Murdered At Fort Bragg): He was able to grab ahold of this woman who took care of him and put a bullet in her head.

WINFREY: Soldiers trained for combat, but are they fit for duty at home?

Ms. FLITCRAFT: One day, they are on whatever mission, and the very next day, they're back in the heart of their families.

Unidentified Woman #1: They make it very clear, 'We didn't issue you a wife and we didn't issue you a family.'

WINFREY: What warning signs did we miss? Did you see this coming?

Ms. NOBLES: You could see it in their eyes.

WINFREY: What is behind the Ft. Bragg murders? Next.

Hello. Hello. Hello.

Unidentified Woman #2: Hi, Oprah.

WINFREY: Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. Good to see you. Good to see you. Have a seat. Four wives murdered by their husbands in one town on an Army base in one summer. Now everybody from local police all the way to the Pentagon wants to know why. What made four husbands snap? Look at this.

(Excerpt from videotape)

WINFREY: Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, one of the Army's largest bases with 45,000 troops, home of the famed 82nd Airborne and the elite Special Forces Command. The Army Times voted it best place to live in 2001. But this summer, the nation was shocked when these four young attractive mothers were allegedly murdered by their soldier husbands in a period of just six weeks.

It started June 11th. Thirty-two-year-old Green Beret Rigoberto Nieves had been home from Afghanistan for just two days to resolve personal issues when he reportedly argued with his wife Teresa, shot her in the head and shot himself.

June 29th, Master Sergeant William Wright, 36 years old, also requested to come home from Afghanistan early to work out personal problems. He allegedly strangled his wife Jennifer while their three children slept. Three weeks after reporting her missing, Wright confessed to the crime and led police to where he had buried his wife, wrapped in his parachute bag. He has been charged with first-degree murder.

July 9th, 28-year-old Sergeant Cedric Griffin allegedly stabbed his estranged wife Marilyn more than 50 times, then set her home on fire. He, too, has been charged with first-degree murder.

Ten days after that, July 19th, 30-year-old Sergeant First Class Brandon Floyd, a member of the elite Delta Force, shot his wife Andrea and then himself. She had recently asked for a divorce.

At the end, nine children had lost their mothers. Four of them had lost both parents. Now the world was asking why this string of wife killings? Why were the murders clustered at Ft. Bragg? Is there some kind of connection between the cases?

Unidentified Man #1: We are shocked and st--and extremely surprised with the recent occurrences, tragic as they may be.

WINFREY: Three of the four soldiers were members of the Elite Special Forces Command and had recently returned from Afghanistan. All of the marriages appear to have been troubled. All of the women were reportedly taking steps to split from their husbands. All the women were killed in their bedrooms.

Unidentified Man #2: We have a good community. It's just one of these situations we can't explain that took place in the month of July.

WINFREY: Some fingers pointed to Lariam, an anti-malaria drug reportedly given to all soldiers deployed to Afghanistan. Among the side effects listed on its label are psychotic or paranoid reaction, anxiety, agitation and aggression. While the military is investigating Lariam, they've indicated they don't believe there is a connection. If not Lariam, then what is it about these four soldiers that made them all snap?

(End of excerpt)

WINFREY: This is Penny Flitcraft, who is trying to get answers to that question. Her daughter was Andrea Floyd, the last of the wives killed this summer at Ft. Bragg. Penny is here with her other daughter, Amanda. A few days before Andrea was killed, her husband, Del--Delta Force soldier Brandon Floyd, had returned home from a secret training mission, and it was clear that their once picture-perfect marriage was showing real signs of trouble. Take a look at how Andrea
went from a girl full of potential to a woman whose life was cut short at the hands of her husband.

(Excerpt from videotape)

Ms. FLITCRAFT: Andrea was an incredible baby and an incredible child and an incredible woman. She lived her life beautifully, and she always wanted us to be proud of her. She could not wait to go into the Army. She really wanted to serve America. It was during a ski trip that she met Brandon, and I believe that they fell very much in love
very quickly. Andrea became pregnant, and they were married in 1995. The neighborhood called them the Barbie and Ken couple, the two beautiful adults and their three beautiful children, and they were living really an American dream.

Ms. NOBLES: Brandon was very double-sided. He could be the friendliest, most personable person that you would ever meet, but I think that there was always a dark side.

Ms. FLITCRAFT: No one recognized that basically this young family were sitting on a ticking bomb that would just absolutely tragically change all of our lives.

Brandon began moving up very quickly through Special Ops, and I would characterize the marriage then as becoming more and more unkind.

Ms. NOBLES: He was always down on her. She was never good enough. She was never pretty enough, never skinny enough, never there enough, didn't cook well enough. It was always something.

Ms. FLITCRAFT: I believe that the marriage very rapidly began to disintegrate this past year. In March of this year, she called me and she was sobbing on the phone, and she says, 'We're just at each other. It's not good for the kids. I'm--I'm not going to be able to do this anymore.' And June 30th, they brought the children up, and that was
the last day that I ever saw my daughter.

We want to know what happened in those final moments.

Ms. NOBLES: We know that she came home, and they argued loudly, from the neighbors. He went and got the gun. And I think that she stood up and faced him and said, 'I am done. The marriage is over,' and I think that's what put him over the edge. I think a part of him was just missing, that he was able to grab ahold of this woman who, for eight years, took care of him and his children and put a bullet in her head.

Ms. FLITCRAFT: And I believe at that moment that that was not my son-in-law, that was not my daughter's husband any longer. He went somewhere where he had never been before, and he took her life and--and I know that he could never have lived with that, and he took his own life. And two incredibly wonderful, beautiful people were lost in that moment.

I've learned a lot of what the training involves, and I believe that the pressure of that training is such that these men are not equipped to walk back into their home one day after coming out of a mission.

Ms. NOBLES: I think that his military training did make it easier for him to kill her. I think it desensitized him to life. I don't hate Brandon Floyd at all. I can't. I've tried. But I cannot find room to hate him. I miss Andrea so much every day that there's no room to hate him.

Ms. FLITCRAFT: There are times when I just have to absolutely sit and weep. I went outside and I sobbed, and I talked to her and I felt devastated and sad and angry and just wished it hadn't happened.

(End of excerpt)

WINFREY: Four wives murdered in one summer in this small community. Coming up, we'll talk to Penny and Amanda. And something that may surprise you, the wife killings at Ft. Bragg actually started before June. Next, find out why friends and family of this beautiful mother say they knew she was going to die at the hands of her military husband.

But first, women who say they were abused by military men at Ft. Bragg tell us what they were thinking after they heard about the killings over the summer.

(Excerpt from videotape)

Unidentified Woman #1: When I heard about all of these women dying at the hands of the people that promised to love and cherish them, I was glad I got out, because I know for a fact it could have been me.

Unidentified Woman #3: When I heard about the women being killed, I thanked God for the wisdom to leave.

Unidentified Woman #4: My thoughts were that that almost was me, literally just by a few seconds.

Unidentified Woman #1: It really hurts me, and it--it bothers me a great deal that people had to die in order for society to be paying attention to domestic violence.

(End of excerpt)

(Announcements)

(Excerpt from videotape)

Unidentified Woman #3: My husband was in the Army, and I lived on Ft. Bragg. What I did for the most part is not provoke his anger, because he had a formidable temper. In the year 2000, he dragged me around the yard. I hit the back of my head.

Unidentified Woman #4: He put his arms around me in a choke hold--an Army choke hold. Then he began to whisper in my ear, 'Just let go. Don't fight it. Don't--it won't hurt anymore. The kids will be better off.' When I saw his face, I knew it was for real and I knew I was going to die.

Unidentified Woman #5: The first day my husband ever laid his hands on me, I was about eight months pregnant. And the next thing I know, I'm being slapped, I'm being thrown. I'm in a choke hold. He has his boot on my chest.

Unidentified Woman #1: The last time that my husband ever beat me, I found myself thinking I was going to die. If this is the last time that I'm going to be alive, did I make enough impact on my children that they would remember me for a lifetime? I didn't want to die.

(End of excerpt)

WINFREY: Those four women say they were all abused by their military husbands at Ft. Bragg. We are talking today about what is behind--we don't know--the recent murders of four military wives at that same base. There is an important point I wanted to make. You know, milin--many military husbands are not violent or abusive. We've heard from many military wives who want to make sure that people don't jump to that conclusion.

With us is Penny Flitcraft, whose daughter we just saw in the previous segment, Andrea, was killed just two months ago by her Green Beret husband. So you can imagine the family is still grieving, and looking at those pictures is very hard for them because it was just two months ago she was murdered. Penny's other daughter, Amanda, is with us, too. Andrea and Brandon's three children now live with Penny...

Ms. FLITCRAFT: Yes.

WINFREY: ...and her husband. What have you told them about how their parents died? How old are the kids?

Ms. FLITCRAFT: They are eight, B.J. just turned six last week, and four.

WINFREY: Wow.

Ms. FLITCRAFT: And they are incredible children. They're smart and funny, and they're military children. They understood what their father did for a living and probably have a more recognizable understanding of this maybe than civilian children would. We've been very honest with them.

WINFREY: You told them their father killed their mother?

Ms. FLITCRAFT: Yes, we did. I'm a--I firmly believe that if you tell children the truth, that they will trust you.

WINFREY: Yeah, I believe that, too. But I--I--who--who made that call to tell them?

Ms. FLITCRAFT: I made that call.

WINFREY: And you told them.

Ms. FLITCRAFT: Yes, I did.

WINFREY: That must have been very hard. Did the children get it? Did y--when you say, 'Your father killed your mother and now--and your father killed him'--did they--could they comprehend at eight and six and...

Ms. FLITCRAFT: I think, especially my eight-year-old granddaughter, she definitely gets it. The boys are somewhere between getting it and denial and it may be being made up.

WINFREY: Did you see this coming? Did you see this coming?

Ms. FLITCRAFT: No, I did not.

WINFREY: You did not.

Ms. FLITCRAFT: No, I did not.

WINFREY: Yeah.

Ms. FLITCRAFT: If I would have had any inkling that it possibly could have happened like this...

WINFREY: But she called you in the--earlier in the summer and said...

Ms. FLITCRAFT: Yes.

WINFREY: ...that it w--that it couldn't last or wasn't going to work out or whatever.

Ms. FLITCRAFT: I--I never would have believed that Brandon would have--would have killed Andrea...

WINFREY: Was there...

Ms. FLITCRAFT: ...or himself.

WINFREY: ...any evidence of abuse whatsoever?

Ms. FLITCRAFT: Just verbal...

WINFREY: Verbal abuse.

Ms. FLITCRAFT: ...verbal abuse.

WINFREY: Verbal abuse.

Ms. FLITCRAFT: And the children are very indicative that there was no ver--physical abuse. They've never explained--or told me anything about that.

WINFREY: But when you say 'just verbal'...

Ms. FLITCRAFT: Well, it is not just verbal. I have been through verbal abuse in my own life, and it is debilitating, and it's...

WINFREY: Yeah.

Ms. FLITCRAFT: ...degrading, and it's painful.

WINFREY: Right. So when somebody tries to weaken you, really, I--I--it's like being picked to death by a duck. You--take little pieces of you verbally, pieces of yourself, your spirit, on a regular basis. You said in the tape that he was constantly putting her down, trying to make her--ma--nothing she did was good enough. She wasn't thin enough. She wouldn't cook well enough. She wasn't mother enough. Wh...

Ms. NOBLES: Absolutely. I think it was constant, absolutely constant.

WINFREY: Yeah, that's its own death, you know.

Ms. NOBLES: Oh, absolutely. Yeah, we could see her slowly getting
tired.

WINFREY: Yeah. So when you say 'just verbal,' that's...

Ms. FLITCRAFT: No, it's not just.

Ms. NOBLES: No, it's...

WINFREY: ...it's not just verbal.

Ms. FLITCRAFT: I guess in lieu of so many people just are absolutely adamant that there had to have been physical abuse, that this was going on, and there was no indication of that, and I don't want to make it appear that Brandon was like that, because he wasn't physically abusive to her.

WINFREY: He was just...

Ms. FLITCRAFT: Just.

WINFREY: ...just verbal, yeah, emotionally abusive and destructive. And you saw that.

Ms. NOBLES: Absolutely.

WINFREY: And you could see the change in her after what he...

Ms. NOBLES: Oh, yes.

WINFREY: ...after what time?

Ms. NOBLES: She was continu--she--she started looking tired all the time, like she was just being just beat down mentally. You could see it in her eyes. She looked tired all the time. She was looking older than she was towards the end. He was--he was exhausting her.

WINFREY: And she was going to get out of the marriage.

Ms. FLITCRAFT: Yes.

WINFREY: Yes.

Ms. FLITCRAFT: She had indicated she definitely was going to...

WINFREY: And she told him she was going to get out of the marriage.

Ms. FLITCRAFT: I definitely believe that it--she had told him that but--the day of her death that she told him definitely she was doing that.

WINFREY: The children were brought to your house because she was telling him?

Ms. FLITCRAFT: No. I normally get them in the summertime with--being military families, they're always away, so I try to get the children in the summertime, and it was my summer visit.

WINFREY: And that's--you never saw her again after that.

Ms. FLITCRAFT: No.

WINFREY: Never. And so you're here today because you want answers, because you want to validate your daughter's death, her life?

Ms. FLITCRAFT: Abs--absolutely.

WINFREY: You're here today because?

Ms. FLITCRAFT: Absolutely, I don't want my daughter's or any of these other women's lives to be in vain. I feel that it's necessary that someone go--come out and say, 'No more. Not one--one more wife, not one more orphaned child,' that it's time for the military to step up to the plate...

WINFREY: Yeah. You were saying...

Ms. FLITCRAFT: ...and serve them.

WINFREY: ...you were saying that based upon what you know about the training, it's almost like you need to come back and be decompressed. It's like going out of space--that kind of training, going out of space, you need to come back and have some kind of re-entry into normal life. Is that what you were saying?

Ms. FLITCRAFT: I've absolutely said that. In fact, I've kind of made the silly analogy that we send people to go and explore space and they get to drink Tang, but they come back and they are decompressed, they are kept apart from their families and friends until--you know, debriefed, so to speak, and this doesn't happen with these Special Operations soldiers. One day, they are on whatever mission they are responsible for, and the very next day, they're back in the heart of their families.

WINFREY: Do you think there's some kind of connection between all of the four, or do you think it's coincidence?

Ms. FLITCRAFT: I don't think it's coincidence. I definitely don't feel it's a coincidence. I don't believe it's Lariam. I believe it's a lack of assisting these families in what they're going through.

WINFREY: You feel the same, Amanda?

Ms. NOBLES: Absolutely. Absolutely.

WINFREY: OK. Stay right here because we're going to take a break. And coming up, she says she got out of her abusive military marriage just in time. This woman explains why it's so difficult for Army wives to report their husbands to authorities. We'll be back.

(Announcements)

(Excerpt from videotape)

Unidentified Woman #4: When I was dealing with my husband's chain of command, I was told to my face that if I bugged him to do the dishes after he came home from the field, he would have smacked me, too.

Unidentified Woman #1: They're not meant to facilitate the dependent. That's not their goal. I mean, they make it very clear to the soldier, 'We didn't issue you a wife, and we didn't issue you a family.'

Unidentified Woman #5: Since we've been here at Bragg, he has stayed in trouble as far as domestic violence is concerned. And even though it's on his military record, recently, he just got a good conduct award.

Unidentified Woman #4: He said to me, 'Well, if you report it and have him arrested again, that he's going to get kicked out and you'll be out on your butt, too, and your--your kids will have no support.'

Unidentified Woman #3: If you have problems with a wife, it's not our problem to solve.

Unidentified Woman #4: I don't hold the Army as a whole responsible for what my ex-husband did to me, but I think that there could have been more preventative measures.

(End of excerpt)

WINFREY: That was a group of women who say that they were abused by their military husbands at Ft. Bragg. Back in 1994, Time magazine obtained a confidential Army survey that found domestic abuse was occurring in one of every three Army families. One thing we learned is that the murders at Ft. Bragg did not begin in June. Back in January of this year, a young mother named Shalamar was stabbed to death in broad daylight, police say, by her Army husband. What makes this story so sad--and I know that there are many of you watching who have lost loved ones in a case like that--is that authorities had been notified that Shalamar's life was in jeopardy. Take a look.

(Excerpt from videotape)

WINFREY: Shalamar Franceschi, a 6'1" beauty, was a star athlete, married a handsome soldier from the Army's 82nd Airborne, had a new baby boy and loved her job. You certainly wouldn't know by looking at her what was going on at home. According to Shalamar's mother, Maria, her daughter's marriage to Damien Franceschi was troubled from the start.

MARIA (Shalamar's Mother): My daughter and him had--had started having domestic problems when my daughter conceived my grandson. He wanted her to have an abortion. She refused to have an abortion.

WINFREY: For two years, Shalamar said she was physically and mentally abused at the hands of her soldier husband, and she said more than once he threatened to kill her. In May 2001, Shalamar went to court and reported Damien had slapped and choked her. A month later, he pleaded guilty to assault and was sentenced to 12 months' probation and ordered to enroll in a counseling program. But Shalamar continued to be abused and again reported it to police. Her mother was so worried, she says she called officials at Ft. Bragg herself.

MARIA: I told them that I felt my daughter's life was being threatened by this individual, and I wanted something done before he got out of the military.

WINFREY: In December of 2001, Damien allegedly kidnapped Shalamar. She said he tied and taped her to a chair. She reportedly told friends he choked her, he raped her, beat her in front of her son. He made her kiss the toddler goodbye, saying she would never see him again. Shalamar managed to escape and Damien went to jail. Within a month, charged with nine felonies, including first-degree kidnapping and rape, he was out on bail and, by his own request, was discharged from the Army.

Three days after his release, on January 13th of this year, Shalamar had plans to meet Damien's brother for lunch and to talk. When she arrived, his brother wasn't there, but Damien was. Outside the restaurant, in broad daylight, Damien allegedly sliced Shalamar across her neck and stabbed her multiple times in her chest and abdomen. At 24, Shalamar Franceschi was dead.

(End of excerpt)

WINFREY: Damien Franceschi is being held without bond awaiting trial in October. He has been charged with first-degree murder and could face the death penalty. This is Tyniesse, who was Shalamar's boss and also one of her closest friends. She believes that Shalamar would be alive today if the military had locked Damien up and kept him there, correct?

Ms. TYNIESSE HARRISON (Shalamar's Friend And Co-worker): Correct. The military has access to the brig. When he beat her, raped her and sodomized her and held her mother hostage for six hours, at gunpoint, at--then the military should have taken over, because it happened on federal property, Ft. Bragg--taken over and put him in the military brig. Instead, they allowed him to go to our civilian authorities in our county and get out on bond. Three days after he got out on bond, he murdered her.

WINFREY: So was this a situation--and I know lots of people--because many people have dealt with domestic violence in their own families and--or know their daughters or aunts or sisters who have, and lots of times, everybody is aware of it, everybody feels it, everybody knows it, you've told the police, you know it's going to happen, even the--even the person themselves knows it's going to happen, and nobody does anything.

Ms. HARRISON: In Shalamar's case, she knew, but in Shalamar's case, he told. He said, 'I'm going to kill you,' not just to her, to her mother. Her mother knew. I knew. The authorities knew. The military commanders knew. They are--there's no denying they knew. The system just failed her.

WINFREY: Yo--and the system failed her, because he was let out on bond. This is Delores Johnson, who is the director of Family Programs for the United States Army, and Delores is in charge of domestic violence services for the Army and says they're very concerned about these clusters of murders. What do you believe caused them?

Ms. DELORES JOHNSON (Director, Family Programs, US Army): Well, Oprah, first I want to say I am really sorry for the loss of both Angela and...

WINFREY: Andrea.

Ms. JOHNSON: ...for Francesca. And I--and I also want to say that this is an opportunity for us to talk about domestic violence. Because being in the military doesn't cause domestic violence. Stress doesn't cause domestic violence. It is about someone who uses physical force and intimidation to control someone else. And because it works for them, they use it again and again and again. And it is not unique to the military for domestic violence to occur. At Ft. Bragg, what we're trying to figure out is why that clustering occurred.

WINFREY: What about what Penny said earlier about de--we don't--What is the word?--decompressing or having some kind of debriefing or transitional time? Has the Army looked into that? Ji--I mean, if--if you're in special services tra--Special Forces training and you are trained to be in control, you are trained where other people are in control of you, where you are under ki--the kind of pressure I think that most of us can't even imagine what that is like, and then suddenly you are home in the neighborhood, going to the Kroger store, you know, I think that's--that would be very difficult for most people.

Ms. JOHNSON: Oprah, we deploy tens of thousands of soldiers. Fif--Special Operations has soldiers in 50 countries around this world. And when they return, we've had successful reunions. Again, we're trying to figure out what happened. I can--I can tell you, because I've worked as a social worker in both the civilian and the military community, that it's not about the military and it's not about stress and it's not about the kinds...

WINFREY: OK. But let me ask you this, though.

Ms. JOHNSON: ...of things that the press is reporting.

WINFREY: You said--you know, many of--we don't know what's going on behind people's closed doors. So when you say when people return and they've had successful reunions, just because somebody doesn't end up dead does not mean that is--that it is successful. Just because they come back into the home and we don't hear about what's going on behind those closed doors does not necessarily mean that it's--that it's successful.

Ms. JOHNSON: I--well, that may be true, Oprah. But I also think that this is such a tragic event, and I--and I think we cannot discuss this by trying to put it on something else, by saying that, it--'Oh, it's the military.' We have men in this country who abuse women every day.

WINFREY: Absolutely. And we just did a show on--two days ago, on Monday, with Don McPherson, who's trying to start a movement, you know, with a--with football players and other athletes trying to train--retrain the way men think about control and violence issues, because, you know, we have a society where men believe that they have to be in control. On that show, we had a man, non-military, who said he so wanted to be control of his--in--in control of his wife that when she left him, he thought of killing his own children and himself so that he would a--be--be able to have the final word--the final word.

Ms. JOHNSON: Correct.

WINFREY: So I am in no way saying that this is just going on in the military. I've done hundreds of shows over the years about domestic violence. I think this is--what has happened in Ft. Bragg allows us to open up the issue to look at what is going on in this country with women i--at--at Ft. Bragg, on other bases and in our overall society.

Ms. JOHNSON: And--and we really applaud that effort. We've looked at the stories that you've done about domestic violence and--and tried to raise the consciousness of the American public about this issue.

WINFREY: You know, wh--it's very interesting. I said this to Penny during a commercial break. You all noted in the very first segment when Penny said--I asked, 'Was she abused?' and she said, 'Just verbally.' I think that is really the crux of the problem; that women do not understand that when somebody just verbally abuses you and doesn't leave you with a physical bruise, when somebody just verbally kills your spirit, you are still dying.

Ms. JOHNSON: And the definition of domestic...

WINFREY: You are still dying. And so we--we--you know, throughout society, women sort of take that for granted. When somebody calls--you know, it's in music, it's in media. It's in--when somebody just calls you a 'bitch' or a 'ho' or whatever, when somebody just degrades you, when somebody just makes you feel awful about yourself and makes you
feel like you're not good enough on a constant basis, that is killing your spirit, and you are--you are dying a slow death.

Ms. FLITCRAFT: Absolutely.

WINFREY: And you said that you know that's what happened to your daughter.

Ms. FLITCRAFT: Yes.

WINFREY: Yeah. Well, coming up, this veteran of three wars says the military does not have a good system to help soldiers turn off the battlefield mentality once they come home. Next, we'll talk to him about why he thinks domestic abuse is so common in the military.

(Announcements)

WINFREY: Tracy joins us. She's a Gulf War veteran who says she got out of her abusive military marriage just in time. Take a look at why she says it's so difficult for Army wives to report their husbands.

(Excerpt from videotape)

TRACY: Eric and I were both soldiers in the military. Shortly after we were married, the violence began. Our first big fight resulted in me calling the police, and he was arrested. While my husband was away on deployment, he thought that I was having affairs, but that was absolutely incorrect. He would hit me in the face. He would hit me on my head. He would kick me.

I was not at all surprised to hear about the murders at Ft. Bragg. The military trains soldiers to fight on battlefields, so when you come home after taking orders all day, the only thing that you can truly control is your family. And, unfortunately, some people take too much control. Violence in military homes is definitely a common problem. I had a circle of friends, and in every one of those relationships, there was some form of abuse.

It is a very serious thing when you pick up that phone and call your husband's commanding officer. Your husband can be reduced in rank, which means a reduction in pay, and I had kids that I had to raise and support and buy food for. So, in essence, you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't.

My husband returned from the field, and my daughter would hear any knock at our door, she would run and cringe in a corner and hide because she thought it was her father and that we would start arguing and fighting. I was afraid for my life and the safety of my children, and that's when I decided to leave. Shortly after our divorce, my ex-husband was put in prison for abusing his girlfriend. He received a 65-year prison term. I feel grateful that I got out of that marriage
just in time. I feel that the military has failed me and I truly believe that it has failed other families, too.

(End of excerpt)

WINFREY: One of the things you said that was interesting I thought was 'You're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't,' because in a lot of cases, we did--and the gentleman who was just on here a couple days ago--I was just talking about--ended up going to some kind of counseling service. You know, you go to a counseling service. I--I--I don't know. Does the military frown upon--if you're in Special Forces, for example, and you're going to counseling, I wouldn't think that that would get you any kind of higher rank because you're a Special Forces guy who needs some counseling.

Unidentified Panelist: Well...

Ms. JOHNSON: And you think it's not the manly thing to do. I...

WINFREY: Not even not the manly thing to do. If you're in Special Forces and you need counseling?

Ms. JOHNSON: I think--I think it's difficult, Oprah, for men to ask for help in this country at any time. And--and I certainly think that we ha--we have--if a--if a soldier wants to get help, he can get help. He can go see a chaplain. He can go to--to off-post agencies. It's--but--but he cannot ask the military if he sees a military agency, at least not as our system is currently configured.

WINFREY: Right. That's what I'm saying. If you're a mili--if you're in Special Forces or you're a soldier and you're saying, 'Look, I'm having some problems, I think I need some counseling,' which is what we're advised to do in...

Ms. JOHNSON: Right.

WINFREY: ...you know, regular society. I'm saying wouldn't that be frowned upon?

Ms. JOHNSON: Not--not always. It's not always frowned upon. If you say, 'Do I have commanders who don't get that?,' yes, we have some folks who don't get that.

Ms. FLITCRAFT: That's bull. That's bull.

WINFREY: OK.

Ms. FLITCRAFT: And...

WINFREY: Penny, what do you say? Penny--Penny just said, 'That's bull.' Penny, that's bu--what? You're saying that's bull because?

Ms. FLITCRAFT: I'm saying that's bull because I've spoken with Brandon's friends.

WINFREY: Yeah.

Ms. FLITCRAFT: I know some of Brandon's friends have snuck off and got counseling and are paying for it themselves. That's bull. They are not being served. They are overtraining, overprocessing these soldiers, and they are underserving them.

WINFREY: What does that mean, overtraining? What does that mean, over...

Ms. FLITCRAFT: They are so highly trained that they need to be right now, and we need these men and women...

WINFREY: Right.

Ms. FLITCRAFT: ...but they are underserved. Military isn't taking care of their own. No way.

Ms. JOHNSON: I would have to respectfully disagree with that.

WINFREY: OK.

Ms. JOHNSON: I--I really believe that the services that we provide are there. Now we cannot make people avail themselves of those services. But there's a whole range of services that's available. And--and--and I don't know what to say to f--to people to really make them understand that it is beneficial to them to get help.

WINFREY: Well, I'm just saying, is there still like a stigma attached to it? I mean, I think in...

Ms. JOHNSON: Oh, absolutely. Oh.

WINFREY: ...regular society, men have a stigma about going to counseling.

Ms. JOHNSON: Abso...

WINFREY: So I would think if you were a guy in special services and you go to your commanding officer and say, 'Officer, I'm having some problems with my spouse,' like one of the women on the tapes say, 'You know, we didn't, you know, order your wife or your family, so...'

Ms. JOHNSON: It's very difficult now...

WINFREY: That's your business.

Ms. JOHNSON: It's very difficult now against this backdrop of--of some of the more extreme representations of cases that we see to really appreciate that people do come forward and that people do ask for help.

WINFREY: I hear you.

Ms. JOHNSON: And they ask for help in Special Forces...

WINFREY: I hear you.

Ms. JOHNSON: ...and they ask for help when--if they're infantry, and they ask for help across the board.

WINFREY: OK. We're not saying that that isn't happening, but obviously what you are also saying is that there needs to be more.

Ms. JOHNSON: Yes.

WINFREY: There needs to be more. Right. We're going to talk to Colonel Hackworth when we come back.

(Announcements)

WINFREY: This is retired Colonel David Hackworth. He is the author of several books on the military. The latest is "Steel My Soldiers' Hearts." He is a veteran of three wars and is one of America's most decorated soldiers. Colonel Hackworth says that domestic violence is very common in the military. One reason for that, he says, is that the
military does not have a good system to help soldiers turn off the battlefield mentality once they come home, which is the same thing Penny was saying here. Correct?

Colonel DAVID HACKWORTH (Retired, Military Expert And Author): Bottom line is is that the military is, by its very nature, a very violent society. Has to be. Live or die on a battlefield. And that's on a battlefield. But when you leave the battlefield and come home, there has to be some kind of decompression, unwinding thing. We had that in World War II. When I came home, it was by ship, lost in a replacement depot, on a train. It was three months from the time I left the front line until I got home. Same in Korea. And I was with my buddies all along. If I had problems, they brought me down. We talked our way through it.

But today, for example, in Vietnam, when my folks left Vietnam or I left Vietnam, 24 hours later, we were, from a killing field, home in a domestic field. In one situation, you got a medal for killing somebody. The next moment, you're home, you kill somebody, and you go to jail for life. Bottom line is that there--in my view, there has to be a
way station that when it--you leave the battlefield, you go and you chill out for a number of weeks, maybe working with counselors, but with the folks that you've been with.

Regarding this argument of--of there's a great program in place to look after folks, I don't accept that, because the military is--a regular military, where 70 percent of our force is married, it's one strike, you're out. If you have one dent on your fender, you don't get a magic efficiency report. You don't go up to the next rank. So if you have any kind of problem, if the first sergeant says, 'Look, there's a domestic problem here, you'd better straighten it out,' this doesn't get through the chain of command; nor does the individual want to tell anybody, because he doesn't want that dent on his fender.

WINFREY: So what do you think is behind the murders at Ft. Bragg? Do you have any theory about it?

Col. HACKWORTH: I think the jury's out.

WINFREY: Yeah.

Col. HACKWORTH: I--I think that there's been all kinds of suggestions from domestic problems to the anti-malaria pill. When you examine th--the folks that went to Afghanistan from, say, Ft. Carson, Ft. Lewis, Ft. Campbell, which provided the--the great numbers of folks, there's been no problems there. Why is that? I--Is it because, for example, at Ft. Drum, that the 10th Mountain Division came home, they did have a very active program that brought the whole society in,
that helped these people wi--wind down. But my argument is we've got to go--to have some kind of decompression system that we had from default after World War II, but--because of those replacement depots, the ships and so on.

WINFREY: What do you say to that, Delores?

Ms. JOHNSON: I say that I--I find it very interesting that we continue to skirt the issue about what domestic violence is. The issue about how we deploy our forces around the country and--and acknowledging that people can return home a lot quicker now because transportation is faster, communications is faster, is--should not be confused with this issue about why people kill people that they love and why they are afraid.

Col. HACKWORTH: Yeah. But if you're on a battlefield, on--one second in the middle of the night, some con--a movement in a shadow and if you don't move instantaneously, you're dead, and those are the kind of reactions you bring home. You bring that kind of violence home, and it ta--it takes time for that to kind of settle out.

Ms. JOHNSON: And--and I would say to that that we have brought back soldiers at different installations--actually, we've had more soldiers from different installations deploy and come back without the kind of clustering that we see at Ft. Bragg. So we've got to really try to get our handles around this.

WINFREY: But does that mean there really a...

Ms. JOHNSON: But we should not provide an opinion about it at this point.

WINFREY: OK. But I'm--I'm just saying what he's saying t--makes perfect sense to all of us who are listening. It makes sense. Doesn't it make sense that you would do that? It makes sense, but I'm not--which is not to skirt the issue of domestic violence--not to skirt the issu--the issue of domestic violence at all. But it just makes sense that you would have some kind of decompression from going from, you know, pulling triggers to, as I said, shopping at Kroger's the next
day.

Ms. JOHNSON: And--and that may be true, Oprah, but we have a--soldiers who are coming back...

WINFREY: No. But you're saying we have mal--millions of them who came back and were fine, but we don't know that they're fine. Just because they didn't kill their wives, we don't know that they're fine. That's what I'm saying.

Ms. JOHNSON: OK.

WINFREY: That's a point.

Ms. JOHNSON: That's a point.

WINFREY: Just--just give me that one. OK.

Ms. JOHNSON: I'll give you that one.

WINFREY: OK. We'll be right back. I'll let you talk...

(Announcements)

WINFREY: I just was saying to Delores during the commercial break, I am in no way trying to imply through this show that, you know, what is happening in the military is some kind of special case going on. I think it's--there definitely needs to be investigated why at Ft. Bragg there was this cluster of murders, but, I mean, for years, we've talked
about domestic violence on this show and what we as a society have contri--have done to contribute to it. So don't think I'm just sitting here trying to be down--let me show you some love. Not be--not--not--not down on the military.

This is Jackie Campbell, who is an expert on domestic violence and homicide. She's also on the Pentagon Domestic Violence Task Force and says that the Ft. Bragg murders should be a wake-up call--that's what it should be--to all of us about the ma--don't you agree, audience?

Ms. JOHNSON: Absolutely.

WINFREY: Is not--we shouldn't be pointing the fingers at them. It should be a wake-up call to all of us about domestic abuse, I mean, so that Andrea's life and Shalamar's life and all of the lives of those women that we witnessed over the summer i--is not in vain--in--is not in vain and at least this gets us thinking about it. I know today there will be thousands of women who will see you, your daughter's story, and will see themselves in that story and will perhaps think
differently--and your story--about what's going on in their own lives. What did you want to say?

Dr. JACKIE CAMPBELL (PhD, Domestic Violence Expert Johns Hopkins University): Part of my experience on the Task Force has been that the majority of military are extremely concerned about this issue, all the way up to the highest ranks. We have generals. We have an admiral on our Task Force. People really are concerned. But we do need to do more, and we're making very serious recommendations. For instance, that there be a domestic violence advocate on every installation that
people can go to in confidence. One of the underlying issues here was all marital troubles in these--in these cases. And some of these soldiers were apparently sent home to deal with those marital troubles.

WINFREY: Right.

Dr. CAMPBELL: But the underlying issue is these men were abusers, and no matter what--no matter what stress happened, that may have interacted with the underlying propensity to try and control and abuse...

WINFREY: Right.

Dr. CAMPBELL: ...which is not true of the majority of soldiers in the military. But some, it is true...

WINFREY: Right.

Dr. CAMPBELL: ...just like in the--in the civilian world.

WINFREY: Like in society. All right. We'll be right back.

(Announcements)

WINFREY: Thanks to all of my guests. Penny and Amanda, thank you very much. Tyniesse, for being here to share Shalamar's story with us. Delores Johnson, thank you. Colonel Hackworth and Tracy, thank you very much, and Jackie Campbell, thank you. Join us for After the Show on Oxygen. See you then.