CHARMAINE BIEDA BELIEVES THE ARMY FAILED
TO PROTECT HER DAUGHTER FROM AN ABUSIVE SPOUSE.

Sunday, September 10, 1995

Page: 1A

By DAWN SHURMAITIS

NANTICOKE — Charmaine Bieda is waging a terribly personal war against the
very government her daughter swore to serve.

The 58-year-old widow is convinced her youngest child, Pvt. Charlene Bieda
Moore, is dead because the military didn’t follow its own regulation to
protect spouses from violence. Following months of abuse in 1984,
Charlene’s husband — another Army private — stabbed the 20-year-old
pregnant soldier once in the stomach and three times in the back.

For that, Bieda wants the government to pay — $10 million.

Bieda insists the Army was negligent because her daughter’s superiors knew
Pvt. Butch Moore was violent, unstable and abusing his wife of six months.

“They knew,” she says in a hesitant voice that rarely rises above a
whisper. “Somebody should have helped.”

A lawsuit filed in 1988 was dismissed without a hearing because she filed
too late and sued the wrong party, but Bieda refused to give up. Through
the years, she wrote letters describing her daughter’s violent death to
every lawmaker in the area as well as the U.S. Secretary of Defense — and
got form letters in return.

“It’s not right,” Bieda wrote in her letters. “They did not do her
justice.”

Charlene’s husband, Butch Moore, confessed to killing his wife and was
sentenced to 30 years in an Alabama state prison instead of military prison
because the crime took place off base. He is already in a work release
program and qualifies for occasional weekend passes. He did not return a
letter requesting an interview.

“He got 30 years. He might be out in 10,” says Bieda, who lives alone in a
three-room apartment in the Hanover section of Nanticoke.

“I got a life sentence.”

Finally, after 11 years of struggling, she gained a powerful ally in U.S.
Rep. Paul Kanjorski, who grew up in the same small town as the Biedas. In
January, Kanjorski introduced a bill to Congress directing the U.S.
Treasury to pay Bieda the full amount she seeks.

The veteran congressman says his office investigated Bieda’s claims.
Kanjorski is satisfied Charlene’s superiors knew she was being abused —
and did nothing.

Charlene, according to a Kanjorski aide, consulted two Army chaplains and
reported her husband’s violent nature to her sergeant.

“The government should compensate her,” says Kanjorski, D-Nanticoke. “You
have a history of abuse to a spouse in government service.

“Perhaps if the reports were taken more seriously, her life would not have
been lost.”

The Army’s policy

Proof of Bieda’s long struggle fill boxes and suitcases that crowd her
kitchen. Each step she took, each letter she wrote, each fact she uncovered
is documented.

From inside one box, Bieda pulls a worn clipping from an Alabama newspaper
that Charlene sent her mother the summer before her death.

On one side is a photo of Charlene dressed in Army fatigues, practicing
maneuvers at the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Ala. By coincidence, on
the other side of the clipping is a 1984 article concerning the Army’s
latest policy on spousal abuse.

“It’s like it was a sign,” Bieda says.

The Army adopted the policy in June 1984 — six months before Charlene’s
death. Since then, the Army has updated and strengthened the policy several
times.

Today, Army spokeswoman J.C. Bean of Washington, D.C., says Bieda’s claim
and the allegations are so old “there is no way the Army can respond at
this time.”

Bean could not locate for comment any of the Army superiors working on the
post in 1984 or dispute Bieda’s allegations of prior abuse. If records did
exist, she says, they probably have been purged.

She added that the Army does have in place a “very viable spousal abuse
prevention effort. We have training available to chronicle everything that
occurs once we discover a spouse is being abused.”

Signs of abuse

Eleven years after her daughter’s death, Bieda’s blue eyes still fill with
tears at the mention of her baby’s name. Charlene, a high school
cheerleader nicknamed “Baby Ranger” by the other soldiers, would have
turned 31 this year.

According to a 1994 Department of Justice study, an average of one child or
spouse dies each week at the hands of a relative in the U.S. Army, Navy,
Air Force or Marine Corps.

Bieda says Charlene never told her family about Moore’s previous threats.
But a sergeant at the post told Bieda that Moore held Charlene at
knifepoint in their off-post apartment. A neighbor interviewed by police
after the killing said she sometimes saw Charlene crying in the hallway and
often heard arguments. She also reported seeing marks on Charlene’s wrists.

Anna Moore says her stepson never abused Charlene but she does remember
Butch telling her about a fight the couple had while working at the arsenal
repairing missiles and munitions.

“Their major told them that if they didn’t stop arguing, one of them would
have to transfer out of the company,” says Anna Moore, who lives in
Washington state.

“They had problems like any young couple.”

Moore’s attorney, Marc Sandlin of Alabama, says police investigated claims
that Moore had previously hurt his wife.

“No evidence turned up that she was ever abused by this guy,” Sandlin says.

“I don’t know whether the military refused to talk, which would not be
unusual, or whether there was nothing.”

Marital troubles

For nearly 20 years, Bieda was a housewife who took pride in staying home
to raise her three daughters and care for her husband, Joseph, a
dress-cutter in a local factory.

The good life changed in 1980, when Joseph Bieda died of diabetes. The
older girls moved on, one to Texas. Bieda got a day job in an office and
waitressed at night.

When 17-year-old Charlene begged her mother to sign the papers allowing her
to enlist in the Army to earn money for college, Bieda refused.

“I was afraid something would happen to her,” she says about her youngest
child leaving home.

Charlene persisted, entering the service after graduating from John F. Fine
High School. Her basic training graduation picture shows a grinning
Charlene, dwarfed by her rifle.

She was 18 years old.

Within a year, she met and married Butch Moore, a California native who
worked alongside her in the 515th Ordnance Co.

Bieda met her son-in-law in August 1984, three months after a surprise
wedding.

“He seemed very nice,” Bieda says. “He was good looking, kind of like Elvis
Presley.”

The honeymoon didn’t last long.

According to records of the Fox Army Community Hospital, Butch Moore was
admitted Sept. 20, 1984, after taking 96 sleeping pills and drinking a
12-pack of beer and a pint of tequila. Charlene drove him to the hospital.

Moore told doctors he attempted suicide because he suffered from “love.” He
was diagnosed as being depressed.

Six days later, Moore was released.

“He said he is going to get some help and we arranged to set up marriage
counseling so he could talk it out,” the doctor wrote on hospital reports.
“The prognosis is good.”

Bieda says the experience frightened the young wife but an Army
psychiatrist advised her to stay with her husband until he was more stable.
Moore did not attend any counseling sessions, but Charlene, a born-again
Christian, continued to consult with Army chaplains.

Charlene became pregnant in October and was relieved from active duty Dec.
4, 1984. Documents show she was planning to have the baby and return to
soldiering in July 1985.

The last time Bieda talked to her daughter, Charlene was chattering happily
about an upcoming doctor’s appointment. Charlene ended the conversation
when Moore came home, surprising her with a dozen red roses.

The next day, Charlene was dead.

When he confessed, Moore told police Charlene lunged at him with a knife
during an evening stroll in a Huntsville city park and he killed her trying
to protect himself.

Moore, a weight lifter, stood 5 feet 11 and weighed 200 pounds. Charlene
stood 5 feet 2 and weighed 115.

Help from Kanjorski

Bieda buried her daughter in a Muhlenburg cemetery on Christmas Eve 1984.

Soon, condolence letters poured in.

One, from then-President Ronald Reagan, honored Charlene’s memory and
acknowledged her service to her country. Another, from Redstone Commanding
Officer Maj. David Meghan, described Charlene as a good soldier who could
always be counted on to volunteer for duty, “whether it be for patrols or
convoys or flying in the helicopter.”

But then, Bieda began to receive other kinds of correspondence — letters
from the Army addressed to her dead daughter. One asked Charlene to sign up
for Army veteran benefits.

Six months after the murder, a local Army recruiter knocked on Bieda’s
door. Mistaking her for Charlene, he asked if she planned to return to duty
after her baby was born.

“They didn’t even know who she was,” Bieda says, shaking her head.

A disgusted Bieda contacted an attorney and wrote her first letter to a
congressman. She says both let her down — the attorney eventually dropped
the case. The lawmaker couldn’t help.

In January 1988, Bieda traveled to Decateur, Ala., to file her own lawsuit
against the government — asking $5 million for personal injury and $5
million for wrongful death. She filled out the forms herself, using a
how-to book from the library.

“The Army was aware of severe marital problems and was to give Charlene
protection,” she wrote, citing the regulation regarding spousal abuse and
protection.

The regulation lists a litany of steps an officer is supposed to take after
discovering domestic violence, including a report to military police or a
social worker and recommended treatment.

A federal judge from Alabama’s Middle District dismissed the lawsuit.

“It is undisputed that the deceased died as a result of battery committed
by her husband, a government employee,” wrote federal judge Seymour Lynne.

But, Lynne continued, Bieda failed to file the lawsuit within the
three-year statute of limitations and failed to sue the right party. Bieda
filed against the federal government, and not the U.S. Army.

Bieda was at a dead end until Kanjorski stepped in.

The congressman took the rare step of seeking the $10 million through what
is known as a private relief bill, which compensates citizens who have been
harmed by the United States but who lack legal standing in the courts.

Kanjorski has attempted to use private relief only twice in 11 years.

He was unsuccessful the first time and acknowledges the chances of a
Democratic congressman getting approval from a Republican-controlled
Congress are slim. His bill is in committee and must be debated before the
end of the Congressional session or it will die. Kanjorski may re-introduce
the bill.

“I won’t give up”

Butch Moore turns 30 in October.

Nearly bald now, he no longer resembles Elvis. But his stepmother says he
is tanned from construction work and buffed from the prison weight room.

Denied parole last year, Moore tries again this March. When he is released,
says his stepmother, he will move to Washington to work with his dad, who
makes aluminum windows. Moore is looking forward to fishing and maybe
buying some land.

“We’re not ashamed of what happened,” says Anna Moore. “It’s a tragedy but
we’re not ashamed of our son.”

Today, Bieda lives off workman’s compensation received for a back injury.
The $37,000 insurance policy she collected from the Army after Charlene’s
death is long gone. She says she gave most of the money to her children.

For Bieda, family is all.

Carefully placed among the family photos in Bieda’s apartment are dozens of
pictures of a uniform-clad Charlene. The snapshots decorate the walls, the
refrigerator, even the covers of phone and address books.

Charlene’s smiling face serves as a touchstone for Bieda, encouraging her
to push on.

“I won’t give up,” she says. “I’ll keep trying and trying and trying.”

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