“I couldn’t,” Mr. Capshaw recalled, shaking his head, in an interview this spring. “You say you’ve been raped by another man, people blame you, they shame you. They just don’t get how something like this can happen.”
Mr. Capshaw joined the Army at 17 and was stationed at Baumholder Army Garrison in Germany in 1980 when he was assigned to share a room with Mr. Dahmer, who was then an Army medic.
Within days, he said, Mr. Dahmer was beating him, drugging him and keeping him locked in their room. At one point, Mr. Capshaw jumped from the second-story window to escape, and ended up in the hospital with a cracked pelvis. But he never said a word about what was going on, even to the doctor who examined him.
“It developed into a Stockholm syndrome-type situation,” Mr. Capshaw said. “He totally controlled me. He didn’t let me leave the room. He would beat me and rape me. But we would also play chess, he would buy me books and suture up my wounds. I don’t know how to explain it.”
Mr. Dahmer was discharged from the military in 1981 for alcohol abuse. Mr. Capshaw was discharged a few months later, his military record shows.
2019-10-07