Ex-Marine Describes Violent Hazing and the Lies That Covered It Up
By DAVE PHILIPPSSEPT. 29, 2016
Continue reading the main story
Share This Page
Photo
Thomas
Weaver, a top-notch recruit who was expelled from the Marines, said
drill instructors singled out minority recruits they disliked for extra
hazing. Credit Charlotte Kesl for The New York Times
PUTNAM
COUNTY, Fla. — In Marine Corps boot camp, Thomas Weaver learned to
endure punches, kicks and choking by drill instructors in the Third
Recruit Training Battalion at Parris Island, S.C. When one instructor
repeatedly bashed his head against a doorway, he kept quiet and acted as
if it were no big deal. But what he eventually could not take was the
lying that covered up the abuse.
“We were taught the Marines is
all about honor and honesty, and my superiors were constantly telling us
all to lie about what was happening,” Mr. Weaver, 21, said in a recent
interview at his parents’ home in rural northern Florida. “I had been
really proud to join the Marines, but I was not proud of what we were
doing.”
A Marine Corps investigation prompted in part by Mr.
Weaver’s information has uncovered widespread abuse by drill instructors
in the so-called Thumping Third. In a lengthy interview, Mr. Weaver — a
top-notch recruit who has since been kicked out of the military, ending
his career — provided new details of how he said hazing infected all
levels of drill instructors and instructors carefully concealed their
abuse and threatened to give recruits “stitches” if anyone told.
The
continuing inquiry has so far led to the removal of three leaders. The
corps has said 20 Marines face possible criminal charges.
One
drill instructor tumbled a Muslim recruit in a hot clothes dryer,
according to a report from the investigation. The same instructor hazed
another Muslim recruit repeatedly shortly before the recruit leapt to
his death from the barracks, the report found.
The Marines
declined to comment on Mr. Weaver’s accusations, and certain aspects
were impossible to corroborate. Another Marine in the battalion
confirmed most details of his account, but asked to remain unnamed,
saying he feared being singled out for retribution.
“We were all
scared, terrified,” Mr. Weaver said. “I wrote a lot of letters home
about what was going on, but I tore them all up because I was afraid the
drill instructors would read them.”
Hazing in Marine Corps boot camp has popped up persistently over the years, even as the leadership has added more safeguards.
The
stubborn problem reveals an underlying struggle in the Marine Corps
over its identity. Most officers are pushing for an inclusive and
orderly force, with more women and minorities, and strict regulations to
protect against abuse. But in the ranks, a widespread belief holds that
the corps, which prides itself on making some of the toughest war
fighters in the world, needs harsh training and must push back to
preserve traditions against the creep of politically correct mediocrity.
“It’s
like, they are so focused on trying to make real Marines that they
don’t see how they are hurting a lot of good recruits,” said Mr. Weaver,
who has begun telling his story publicly.
Mr. Weaver graduated
from boot camp in July 2015, near the top of his class. He was
meritoriously promoted ahead of others and planned to make a military
career. But what he saw at boot camp gnawed at him until he could no
longer sleep, he said, and he was too depressed to attend his next level
of training. He was hospitalized in September on suicide watch. In
November, he told his commander he was too depressed to train, and the
Marine Corps moved to formally discipline him.
That month, Mr.
Weaver’s father, Troy Weaver, contacted the commander to explain that he
thought his son’s depression was a result of hazing in boot camp. His
son then gave a detailed written account to his superiors about what he
had seen at Parris Island, and the inquiry was opened.
In
December, Mr. Weaver was kicked out of the Marine Corps for not training
and given an other-than-honorable discharge used to punish bad troops.
He is trying to upgrade his discharge, but the system is slow and
appeals are often unsuccessful.
In a statement, the Marine Corps
said that Mr. Weaver’s depression did not qualify for a medical
discharge and that an other-than-honorable discharge is proper when
troops refuse to train.
Photo
Mr. Weaver graduated from boot camp
near the top of his class, but his experience with hazing left him
depressed and unable to attend the next level of training. The Marines
kicked him out with an other-than-honorable discharge. Credit Charlotte
Kesl for The New York Times
Despite the common image of boot camp
as a place where barking sergeants in broad-brimmed hats have nearly
free rein to harass recruits, strict rules control what instructors can
do. They cannot swear at recruits, hit them, kick them or even touch
them unless it is to provide guidance during training that regulations
call “corrective action.”
Regulations also limit what the Marines
call “incentive training”: extra push-ups, crunches and other exercise
as punishment. There are limits, for example, on how often and for how
long such exercises can be ordered, and rules require that they be
performed on a padded athletic mat.
Mr. Weaver, a varsity track
runner and captain of his high school soccer team who arrived at Parris
Island ready to face grueling physical tests, said he soon found that
drill instructors treated the rules with tongue-in-cheek contempt.
A
few days into training, while being issued equipment, he said, he
watched an instructor grab a recruit by the neck after a minor mistake
and slam him to the ground, where he held him by the throat while
swearing at him.
Continue reading the main story
Related Coverage
Marines Scrutinize a Culture of Toughness After a Muslim Recruit’s Death SEPT. 14, 2016
20 Marines Face Discipline After Muslim Recruit’s Death Is Ruled a Suicide SEPT. 9, 2016
Recruit’s Death Leads to Wider Investigation of Abuse in Marines JUNE 30, 2016
After
choking the recruit, the instructor stood up, looked at the rest of the
group and asked them whether he was hurting the recruit or “making a
corrective action,” Mr. Weaver said.
“We all said ‘You were making a corrective action, sir,’ ” Mr. Weaver said. “We were all too scared to say anything else.”
“Every
drill instructor played that card,” he added. “They would hit someone
or choke someone, then made us say it was O.K. when they knew it
wasn’t.”
Instructors forced recruits to hold stress positions on
concrete until elbows and knuckles bled, he said. They often ordered
recruits to form a human wall to hide punishment from view or took
recruits alone into the bathroom.
Instructors singled out minority
recruits they disliked for extra hazing, Mr. Weaver said, including two
immigrants, a man with what Mr. Weaver called a “feminine voice” and a
Muslim from Brooklyn whom instructors called “the terrorist.” Twice, Mr.
Weaver said, the Muslim recruit was sent for medical attention after
long bouts of extra training.
“They would just push them, try to make them fail,” Mr. Weaver said.
That recruit, who is still in the Marines, declined to comment.
Instructors
hid hazing from officers, Mr. Weaver said, and officers did little to
police it. Most of the abuse, he said, happened in the barracks, known
in the Marine Corps as squad bays, where officers rarely ventured and
where instructors said “real Marines are made.” There, Mr. Weaver said,
instructors piled dozens of recruits in a small boiler room and walked
on them. He also said the instructors covered the squad bay in laundry
soap and ordered the recruits to push the tallest recruit along the
concrete as “a human scrub brush.”
“They were always telling us, ‘What happens in the squad bay stays in the squad bay,’ ” Mr. Weaver said.
Recruits
were warned not to report the abuse, he said, and instructors repeated a
motto used in street gangs and prisons, “Snitches get stitches.”
Junior and senior instructors covered for one another, he said.
Violence
was a common response to slight missteps, Mr. Weaver said. He said he
saw his senior drill instructor and another instructor take one recruit
into the woods after the recruit accidentally struck one of the
instructors during a training exercise, and beat him bloody.
Photo
Letters
Mr. Weaver sent to his family when he was a Marine. He wrote other
letters, about the abuses he had seen, “but I tore them all up because I
was afraid the drill instructors would read them,” he said. Credit
Charlotte Kesl for The New York Times
Mr. Weaver said he was
grabbed by the shirt by a third instructor after inadvertently bumping
into him, and that instructor slammed his head repeatedly against the
doorway until other recruits pulled him away.
Mr. Weaver said that
he reported the assault to his senior drill instructor, but that his
instructor responded by saying that Mr. Weaver did not appear to be
injured and should stay out of the instructors’ way.
Mr. Weaver also provided new details about the night in July last year when the Muslim recruit was forced into a dryer.
Late
that night, he said, four or five drill instructors from another
platoon came into the squad bay smelling of alcohol and screamed at
recruits to lie face down on the floor. Mr. Weaver said he watched them
repeatedly slap a recruit, hard enough that the blow could be heard
through the barracks.
Later, Mr. Weaver said, the group returned. He watched from his bunk as they took the Muslim recruit into the laundry room.
“We
heard screaming, doors being slammed, loud noises,” Mr. Weaver said. “I
was scared, I didn’t know what they were doing to him.”
Afterward,
Mr. Weaver said, the recruit was clearly shaken. Mr. Weaver tried to
comfort him when, he said, one of his drill instructors came in and told
the Muslim recruit not to report what had happened.
Mr. Weaver
graduated from basic training in July and shipped off to Naval Air
Station Pensacola, in Florida. But the abuse he had seen in boot camp
caught up with him, he said. Bad dreams kept him from sleeping; he lost
motivation to train. A lifelong runner, he lacked the energy to go for a
jog on the beach, he said.
“Everyone was so proud of me, but I just saw the Marines as one big lie that I was now a part of,” he said.
After he was hospitalized for being suicidal in September, he was put on medication and began seeing a base psychologist.
In
November Mr. Weaver told his commander he was not well enough to train.
The psychologist treating him wrote two letters to his commander, Maj.
Jenny A. Colegate, recommending a general discharge for medical reasons.
But
Major Colegate, who in a previous assignment had trained recruits at
Parris Island, ordered Mr. Weaver to return to duty. When he refused,
citing the psychologist’s advice, the Marines discharged him for a
“pattern of misconduct.”
Maj. Clark Carpenter, a Marine Corps
spokesman, said that Major Colegate was not available for comment but
that the discharge was technically correct because Mr. Weaver had
refused to train. He added, though, that not all information had been
included in the recommendation for a discharge that went for final
approval, and that it was likely that if it had been included, Mr.
Weaver would not have received the punitive discharge
For months
Mr. Weaver has been doing odd jobs in his neighborhood. The
other-than-honorable discharge on his record has become a badge of shame
and makes it hard to find work, he said.
He said he feels as if his future was taken from him.
“All
I ever wanted to be was a Marine, and I was a good Marine,” he said.
“But now I’m being punished for a bunch of stupid stuff that isn’t
supposed to happen.”
Donald Trump ordered waitresses at the Trump National Golf Club in
California’s Rancho Palos Verdes to be fired if he did not deem them
attractive enough, according to an investigation by the Los Angeles
Times. When Trump was visiting the course, managers said they felt they
needed to schedule only young, thin, pretty women to work those shifts.
According to court records, Trump wanted any unattractive women who
worked at his club to be fired. He wanted to employ only beautiful
women, according to former club staffers. “I had witnessed Donald Trump
tell managers many times while he was visiting the club that restaurant
hostesses were ‘not pretty enough’ and that they should be fired and
replaced with more attractive women,” said Hayley Strozier, who was
director of catering at the club until 2008. The comment was made in a
sworn declaration during the course of a lawsuit that focused on the
rigorous working environment at the club. The Los Angeles Times story on
the documents includes several examples of various inappropriate
comments Trump made to the employees who he believed were attractive.
Officials in Louisiana have released body-camera footage that captured
two deputy city marshals firing on a vehicle and killing a 6-year-old
boy in 2015. The head of the Louisiana State Police has called the video
“the most disturbing thing he’s seen.” A state judge 
Donald Trump’s company officials were secretly doing business in Cuba
during the U.S. embargo against the communist island-nation, according
to a Newsweek report. An article by reporter Kurt Eichenwald posted
early