It has been reported that he was sexually molested at the age of 8.
The validity of these reports remains unproven although molestation would fit the profile of the childhood of a serial killer. These reports involve an older neighbour molesting Dahmer and having the assault go unreported. I doubt we'll ever know whether this attack actually occurred or is one of the many rumors of Jeffrey Dahmer's life.
Dahmer was extremely shy and introverted through his childhood and teenage years.
He went from being a shy little boy to being an extremely introverted teenager who had difficulty connecting with the world around him. He was widely praised by adults for being very obedient when in reality he just didn't care what was happening. He withdrew into his fantasies and spent a lot of time collecting, dissecting and examining road kill.
Dahmer rarely smiled.
His father said that Dahmer rarely smiled. This can be readily seen in his high school graduation photo shown below. Some sources said that his double hernia surgery at the age of four confused Dahmer so much that he became quite sullen. His smiles were extremely infrequent and rarely evident in pictures. This is his high school graduation photo.
Here's one of the infamous photos of Dahmer during his court case. He looks quite ordinary, even mildly handsome but the mouth looks extremely flat. As if it has never smiled at all.
When his parent's marriage finally deteriorated to the point of separation, Dahmer was left to fend for himself.
In his senior year, Dahmer's parents split up. His father left alone and his mother left with his younger brother Daniel. Dahmer seized this opportunity of living alone to commit his first murder just a few days after his high school graduation. By this time Dahmer was a very heavy drinker. He picked up a nineteen year old hitch hiker named Steven Hicks and invited him back home for a few drinks. The two drank and had sex. When Hicks went to leave, Dahmer killed him and cut him up into several pieces. He bagged the pieces and buried them in several areas in the woods behind his home. This murder seemed to shock him and he tried to "clean up his act" for the next several years.
Dahmer joined the Army at the insistance of his father who wanted him to get a job or enlist.
Dahmer tried college for two terms and then dropped out. His father then forced Dahmer to enlist in the army hoping that it would clean him up. Dahmer enlisted for six years but was discharged after two for his heavy drinking. It was later investigated whether Dahmer was connected to a series of killings in Germany during his service there. There was no official link between Dahmer and the killings but suspicions remain.
In one of Dahmer's quotes he says exactly what I've been thinking, "It's hard for me to believe that a human being could have done what I've done, but I know that I did it." Perhaps by profiling commonalities in serial killer's childhoods and lives, we can pinpoint what to watch out for and more importantly, what to avoid when dealing with children. If Jeffrey Dahmer had been stopped after his first murder, sixteen lives would have been saved. Maybe Dahmer's life itself would have been saved too.
