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Navy Seal Accused of Child Molestation

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seerdon

By Debbie Gregory.

We consider Navy SEALs to be honorable and to be among our heroes. They perform super missions for American putting themselves at extreme risk.  However, we live in a less than perfect world, and there are some very disturbed people in it.  It is with a heavy heart that Military Connection reports this story.  We must all remember that by and large, the members of the Navy SEALs go to extraordinary lengths to protect our nation, and not allow one sick person to harm the high regard Americans hold for them.

SEAL Team One Petty Officer 1st Class Gregory Kyle Seerden, 31, was arrested in San Diego by federal marshals. Seerden is accused of filming himself molesting a sleeping girl and raping a woman in Virginia.

The alleged crimes “involved a prepubescent minor who had not attained the age of 12” when the acts purportedly took place about three months ago, according to an indictment filed in U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Virginia.

Agents investigating the reported rape of an unconscious Virginia woman, identified only as Jane Doe, uncovered the child sex crimes after a three-month investigation.

Doe accused Seerden of raping her January 27 after she blacked out after drinking with Seerden in his hotel room aboard Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek- Fort Story, where he was on a temporary assignment.

He also kept a stash of child porn on his cellphone. NCIS agents investigating the accusations secured authorization to search Seerden’s iPhone 7, allegedly finding dozens of images of girls and boys engaged in sex acts on the device

Seerden faces felony child pornography and child sex assault charges in Virginia following the investigation by Naval Criminal Investigative Service’s Norfolk field office. If convicted, the mandatory minimum sentence for the charges is 15 years in prison.

Military Connection salutes and proudly serves veterans and service members in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, Guard and Reserve,  and their families.

Veteran Accused of Executing Therapy Dog Found Dead

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Marinna

By Debbie Gregory.

Marinna Rollins, an Army veteran who was accused of tying her dog to a tree and shooting it to death, all while videotaping it and later posting it on Facebook, has died of an apparent suicide.

Rollins’ death came nine days before she was scheduled to appear in a Fayetteville, NC courtroom to face charges of felony cruelty and conspiracy charges.

Rollins was charged along with her boyfriend, Jarren Heng, who serves in an Army Special Operations Command unit.

The pair were arrested, placed in jail, but later released on $25,000 cash bail each. Their court date was set for May 16.

In January of 2015, Rollins experienced a traumatic event that forced her return to the U.S. after serving just four months in South Korea. During this period, Rollins was diagnosed with a series of mental disorders, including Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, narcissistic personality disorder and bipolar disorder. She was later medically discharged

The dog had belonged to Rollins’ estranged husband, Matt, who asked Rollins to look after the dog while he was stationed in South Korea.

Matt got into an argument with Rollins after she “switched Huey’s microchip from my name to her name and that she ‘registered’ him as her Emotional Support Animal,” despite the fact that all the adoption paperwork was in Matt’s name.

Matt was forced to wait to deal with the situation until he returned to the U.S.

When Matt returned home, he was working on finding someone to take care of Huey until he could take him back.  Then he noticed Rollins had posted on social media that Huey was being put up for adoption. But the situation was far worse.

“They had already killed him,” Matt said.

Apparently, Heng hated the dog.

“I think he convinced Marinna to get rid of Huey,” Matt said.

Rollins and Heng had driven to a remote wooded area where they tied the dog to a tree. Rollins shot the dog five times in the head while Heng videotaped the killing. Heng also shot the dog five times with a rifle.

Military Connection salutes and proudly serves veterans and service members in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, Guard and Reserve,  and their families.

Calling All Doctors!

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army medical command

By Debbie Gregory.

The Army Wants You!  The United States Army Medical Command is aggressively recruiting physicians and reaching out to medical schools.   The Army Medical Command has used the online recruitment advertising services of MilitaryConnection.com in the past.   One of our major areas of focus is healthcare recruitment including doctors and psychiatrists, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, nurses, and all types of allied healthcare professionals.

Military Connection has been named a Top 100 Employment Web Site for six years and is well respected within the military and veteran communities.   We have a significant reach with robust traffic, a database of hundreds of thousands of emails and almost 700,000 combined fans and followers on social media.  We offer many effective online recruitment advertising options for both civilian healthcare professionals and military healthcare professionals.

The Army offers the opportunity to not only serve your nation with critical life-saving skills across the globe, but also outstanding benefits.   One benefit may include the opportunity to get out from under student loans.   With medical school being so expensive, this potential benefit holds a great deal of appeal to doctors and medical students alike.

For more adventurous doctors, the Army offers the opportunity for adrenaline-seeking surgeons to jump out of an aircraft and perform surgeries in the middle of a combat zone.

Army leaders are encouraging premedical school students and medical residents to consider careers in the Army. There are more than 90 medical concentrations in the Army, including trauma life support, head and neck specialists, and preventative medicine.

Fort Bragg’s 44th Medical Brigade is a small surgical team that has the ability to mobilize and deploy within 18 hours.

They can perform as many as 30 surgeries in three days.

The Army allows greater career diversity, including research opportunities, said Lt. Col. Kevin Smith of the 2nd Medical Recruiting Battalion.

Smith emphasized that the active-duty component needs emergency physicians, family medicine physicians, general surgeons and psychiatrists.

“You can’t always evacuate a soldier, Smith said. “You need to be able to treat them on the battlefield.

Military Connection salutes and proudly serves veterans and service members in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, Guard and Reserve,  and their families.

Resources for Veteran Business Owners

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vet owned

By Debbie Gregory.

Many veterans exhibit advanced team building skills, high levels of resiliency and strong organizational commitment, traits that contribute to making them successful entrepreneurs. There are numerous resources that assist veteran business owners thrive, including the following:

VAMBOA, the Veteran and Military Business Owners Association, is a non-profit trade association that promotes and assists Veteran Business Owners, Service Disabled Veteran Owned Businesses (SDVOB) and Military Business Owners by providing networking, collaboration, mentoring, education, certification and advocacy. Membership is free.

American Corporate Partners is engaged in national corporate career counseling for returning military. The non-profit connects veterans to business leaders for mentorship and career advice.

BusinessUSA provides users with an interactive questionnaire that guides them to the most relevant federal, state, and local services, tools, trainings, and opportunities, assisting in starting or expanding a veteran owned small business.

DVBE, the Disabled Veteran Business Alliance, empowers, provides resources to, and works side-by-side with disabled veterans to promote and support them in establishing, maintaining and growing viable business enterprises.

EBV Foundation’s Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities offers training in entrepreneurship and business management to post-9/11 veterans with service related disabilities.

Federal Business Opportunities is a portal for all businesses, not just vet owned, looking for active federal contracting opportunities.

Honor Courage Commitment, Inc. provides resources such as grants, scholarships and a fellowship program to veteran entrepreneurs, designed to build leadership qualities.

Institute for Veteran and Military Families provides a wide variety of resources geared towards military veterans re-entering the workforce or looking to start their own businesses.

National Veteran Business Development Council (NVBDC)  is the nation’s leading third party authority for certification of veteran owned businesses of all sizes.

National Veteran Small Business Coalition supports veteran owned small businesses by promoting policies that encourage participation of veteran owned businesses in federal contracting opportunities.

Patriot Boot Camp  focuses on helping active duty military, veterans and their spouses build technology companies. The three day event provides participants with free education, training and mentorship.

Small Business Administration (SBA) provides a multitude of assistance to veterans in their local communities, including Veteran Business Outreach Centers, Boots to Business,

SDVOSBC , the National Center for Veterans Institute for Procurement, Veterans Business Outreach Center (VBOC), and Leveraging Information and Networks to Access Capital (LINC) .

Streetshares brings together business owners in search of funding and investors looking for both financial and social returns.

21 Gun Salute Initiative supports service-disabled veteran owned businesses with the goal of reserving 3% of contracts for service-disabled veteran owned small businesses.

VetBiz is a VA website that provides information about the Center for Verification and Evaluation’s verification process for veteran owned businesses looking to gain eligibility for the VA’s Veterans First Contracting Program.

VetBizCentral is a veteran run site that assists veteran and active duty military entrepreneurs through training and counseling, networking opportunities, mentoring and advocacy.

Veteran Entrepreneur Portal provides access to a number of business tools and services, from business education to financing opportunities.

Veteran Fast Launch Initiative provides mentoring and training, along with free software and other services, to military veteran entrepreneurs.

Veteran Women Igniting the Spirit of Entrepreneurship  provides resources, courses and mentorship to female veterans who have started businesses or are looking to do so.

Vetrepreneur Mentoring provides mentoring services to help veteran entrepreneurs with everything from contractor registration to website creation.

Victory Spark is an accelerator program focused on startups led by U.S. military veterans. The program includes a 12-week mentor-driven Lean LaunchPad Program, along with grant funding for entrepreneurs who complete the program.

Military Connection salutes and proudly serves veterans and service members in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, Guard and Reserve,  and their families.

Running Back Soldier Trying to Return To Football

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coffee

By Debbie Gregory.

Glen Coffee was a third-round pick in 2009. But after just one year in the NFL with the San Francisco 49ers, he abruptly retired.

“I was doing what the world expected me to do,” Coffee said.  “What my mom expected me to do and what my friends expected me to do.  All I had known was football.  My whole schedule was built around football.”

His rookie season Coffee battled it out on the gridiron. But it was nothing compared to the battle going on inside. So to ease his mind he threw himself into the lavish lifestyle of a pro athlete.

“So I got the money and I started to splurge just a little bit to try to catch a feeling, to find some happiness. I know money didn’t buy happiness but I was going to try to find something. There had to be a reason everybody’s chasing money. I could never find it. I’d buy this or get this, or have this, and it didn’t mean anything.”

In his lone season as a pro football player, Coffee put up decent numbers as a backup for Frank Gore. He ran for 226 yards on 83 carries, and added 76 receiving yards over 11 receptions. He found the end zone once.

Fast-forward seven years; after serving for the last four years with the Sixth Battalion of the Army Rangers, Coffee has filed for reinstatement. He is trying to make an unprecedented and unlikely comeback.

Now, out of the Army, Coffee wants to see if he can play football again. After he came out of retirement on April 21, the 49ers promptly waived their rights to his contract, making the soon-to-be 30-year-old a free agent. With a running back-rich NFL draft, it remains to be seen how much interest Coffee will garner on the free-agent market.

One advantage he may have? Serving in the Army has resulted in Coffee being in better shape than when he played football.

“My cardio and endurance is definitely a lot better right now,” he said. “Because in football, you’re not really in shape. People think you’re in shape, but you’re really not. Not like that.”

Military Connection salutes and proudly serves veterans and service members in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, Guard and Reserve,  and their families.

Army Ranger Killed in Mosul

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lee

By Debbie Gregory.

An improvised explosive device that detonated during a patrol on the outskirts of Mosul claimed the life of U.S. Army soldier 1st Lt. Weston Lee.

The 25-year-old infantry platoon leader was from Bluffton, Ga., was assigned to 1st Battalion, 325th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, at Fort Bragg, N.C.

According to a DoD press release, the Georgia native joined the Army in March 2015, and was killed “while conducting security as part of advise and assist support to partnered forces.”

It was his first combat deployment.

Lee’s death marks the first time an 82nd Airborne paratrooper has been killed in combat since 2014. He was also the first member of the division killed in Iraq since 2011, the year the U.S. formally withdrew all combat troops from the country.

There are now more U.S. forces in Iraq than at any other time since the 2011 U.S. withdrawal, marking an intensifying war as Iraqi forces and the U.S.-led coalition work to push ISIS out of the last pockets of territory the extremists control in Iraq.

Lieutenant Lee, who has been stationed at Fort Benning since March of 2015, graduated from the University of North Georgia and commissioned as Second Lieutenant in the United States Army in December of 2014. While at Fort Benning, he completed the Infantry Basic Officer’s Leadership Course prior to Ranger and Airborne schools. He has recently been assigned to 1-73 CAV, 82nd. Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, Fayetteville, North Carolina.

Lee was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star, Purple Heart, and Meritorious Service Medal.

“He was exactly the type of leader that our paratroopers deserve,” Col. J. Patrick Work, the 2nd Brigade commander, wrote in a statement to reporters.

We at Military Connection express our sincerest condolences to Lee’s family and friends, and express our gratitude for his service and sacrifice.

Info on VA Streamline Home Loans

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irrl

By Debbie Gregory.

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) strives to help  servicemembers, veterans, and eligible surviving spouses obtain home loans so that they may become homeowners.

A VA loan provides a home loan guaranty benefit and other housing-related programs to help buy, build, repair, retain, or adapt a home for personal occupancy. These loans are obtained through private lenders such as banks and mortgage companies. The VA guarantees a portion of the loan, enabling the lender to provide more favorable terms.

A VA Streamline (also known as Interest Rate Reduction Refinance Loan, or by its acronym IRRL ) is a refinance opportunity that enables refinancing of a VA Loan to a lower rate, or from an adjustable rate to a fixed rate. When deciding on refinancing, it’s important to determine whether it is beneficial to do so. The general rule of thumb is that if you can refinance and reduce your interest rate by 1% then it is something worth considering. However, it’s important to consider other factors, such as closing costs and how long you plan on living in the property.

An IRRRL can only be made to refinance a property on which you have already used your VA loan eligibility. It must be a VA to VA refinance, and it will reuse the entitlement you originally used.

An IRRRL may be done with “no money out of pocket” by including all costs in the new loan or by making the new loan at an interest rate high enough to enable the lender to pay the costs. But there is no opportunity to receive any cash out from the loan proceeds.

The occupancy requirement for an IRRRL is different from other VA loans.  When you originally got your VA loan, you certified that you occupied or intended to occupy the home.  For an IRRRL you need only certify that you previously occupied it.
The loan may not exceed the sum of the outstanding balance on the existing VA loan, plus allowable fees and closing costs, including funding fee and up to two discount points.  You may also add up to $6,000 of energy efficiency improvements into the loan.

Military Connection salutes and proudly serves veterans and service members in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, Guard and Reserve,  and their families.

Muslim Chaplain Will Meet Spiritual Needs at Lewis-McChord

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chaplain

By Debbie Gregory.

In January, Lt. Col. Khallid Shabazz will become the first Muslim division-level chaplain in the history of the U.S. military – a Muslim spiritual leader for more than 14,000 mostly Christian soldiers.

Shabazz, 48, will administer spiritual leadership to the Army’s 7th Infantry Division at Lewis-McChord. He is one of only 10 Muslim chaplains in the entire U.S. military; of the Army’s 1,400 or so chaplains, just five are Muslim.

“When you get the call saying you have been bestowed a division, the news is kind of like, unearthly,” Shabazz said. “The list is so small and it’s such a tough cut.”

Shabazz came into the world as Michael Barnes, born into a large Lutheran family in Alexandria, Louisiana.

After high school, Shabazz headed to Jarvis Christian College, a historically black college in the small town of Hawkins in eastern Texas. Upon graduation, he returned to Louisiana and began teaching biology to fifth-graders at an elementary school in his hometown. He said he wasn’t prepared for how despondent he became at seeing so many children whose growth was stymied by poverty or poor parenting; he struggled to accept that he couldn’t help them all.

After just six months, he quit. At age 23, he decided to join the Army, thinking that it would help him mature and make him a better, stronger teacher afterward.

While stationed in Baumholder, Germany, Shabazz began studying Islam on his own.

After two years, he decided to convert to Islam, taking the name Khallid Shabazz. He said that there had been no single tipping point in his thinking, just a deep identification with Islamic tenets, such as the lack of a clerical hierarchy and the emphasis on charity.

It was a decision that his family found hard to accept.

“I do still go to church with my family – that’s an important part of reaching across the aisle,” Shabazz said. “It would be improper for me to disrespect something that instilled in me so much of who I am.”

Shabazz’s conversion caused a few speed bumps with the military as well. He had to write memos for religious accommodation, such as time to perform the traditional Friday prayers. Fasting during the holy month of Ramadan, while keeping up his physical activity, was also challenging. Dietary restrictions were also an issue.

Shabazz has now been in the Army for 26 years, 18 years as a chaplain. He’s been deployed seven times – including Iraq, Kosovo and a stint at the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he was sent to advise commanders on religious issues after a string of scandals.

“My job is not to convert anybody to Islam. God guides people. My only goal is to have people leave my office stronger than when they came in.”

Military Connection salutes and proudly serves veterans and service members in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, Guard and Reserve,  and their families.

DoD-funded School at Center of Federal Probes Over Suspected Chinese Military Ties

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Yanping Chen Frame

By Debbie Gregory.

The University of Management and Technology (UMT), located in Arlington, Virginia, United States, is an accredited institution of higher education offering undergraduate, graduate and doctoral degree programs and professional development programs.

The school, based four miles from the Pentagon, has been at the center of multiple federal probes about its leadership’s alleged ties to the Chinese military and whether thousands of records from U.S. service members were compromised.

The U.S. taxpayer-funded school has a campus in Beijing and partnerships with universities around the world, and claims to have had 5,000 graduates in the last five years.

But the school’s leadership has drawn the attention of the FBI, the Justice Department, the Pentagon, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) since at least 2012 — and perhaps as early as 2009.

In December 2012, the FBI made two very public raids of UMT and the northern Virginia home of university president Yanping Chen Frame and its academic dean, her husband J. Davidson Frame.

Yet since those FBI raids, UMT has continued to collect more than $6 million from Defense Department tuition assistance programs as well as the Department of Veterans Affairs through the post-9/11 GI bill.

“It’s a bad deal for the soldiers, and it’s a bad deal for the taxpayer,” said Stephen Rhoads, a military veteran turned whistleblower who says he worked with the FBI on the case.

Chen, who appears to have served in the People’s Liberation Army, came to the United States in 1987 from Beijing on a non-immigrant visa with her daughter Lele Wang. She may have been a full colonel.

The Chinese government funded Chen’s research at George Washington University where she received a Ph.D. in Public Policy in 1999, the year after UMT was created.

Military Connection salutes and proudly serves veterans and service members in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, Guard and Reserve,  and their families.

Drugs Vanish at Some VA Hospitals

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opioids

By Debbie Gregory.

Opioid theft, missing prescriptions, and unauthorized drug use by staff at federal hospitals has increased sharply since 2009, according to a recent investigation.

Now, federal authorities are stepping up investigations at more than 1,100 Veterans Affairs medical centers.

The investigation by the Associated Press revealed that drugs intended for patients simply disappeared.

Aggravating the problem is that some VA hospitals have been lax in tracking drug supplies.

“Drug theft is an area of concern,” said Jeffrey Hughes, the VA’s acting assistant inspector general for investigations.

Both the inspector general’s office and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) said they have increased scrutiny of drug thefts from the VA, with the DEA reporting more criminal investigations.

It’s not clear if the problem is worse at the VA than at private facilities, where medical experts and law enforcement officials say drug theft is also increasingly common in a time of widespread opioid abuse in the U.S.

But the VA gets special scrutiny from lawmakers and the public, given Americans’ esteem for veterans served by the agency, and because of past problems at the VA, especially a 2014 wait-time scandal in which some patients died.

The drug thefts from VA also raise the possibility that patients will be denied medication they need or that they will be treated by drug-impaired staff.

Perhaps the problem of missing medicine is no worse at the VA than in private facilities, but the VA is charged with caring for the nation’s wounded or ill veterans, and should be held to a higher standard. Our nation’s new VA secretary should make fixing this problem a priority, and ensuring that the drugs designed to treat our military veterans end up in the hands for which they are intended.

Military Connection salutes and proudly serves veterans and service members in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, Guard and Reserve,  and their families.


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