The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Veterans find themselves discharged and left out
Advocates seek change in state law for traumatized vets
It is called bad paper and it has come back to haunt some of Connecticut’s most committed, battlehardened and now, badly bruised military veterans.
For Juliet Taylor, 44, of Bridgeport, it was post-traumatic stress disorder and a traumatic brain injury she sustained during a tour of Iraq with the United States Army’s 118th Medical Battalion. Back home with the Connecticut National Guard, which she joined after eight years of active duty, the effects piled up.
The death of a sister exacerbated undiagnosed effects of her overseas experiences: a serious fall, witnessing of the rape of a fellow soldier, as well as a series of suicides in her unit, including her first sergeant.
Then came the hysterectomy, the low-vision diagnosis, the repossession of her car. It piled up and it became tougher and tougher to attend weekend National Guard drills. After a dozen years in uniform, including eight years of active duty with no break in service, she was given a lesser, general discharge for “continuous and willful absence” from Guard activities. An honorable discharge is needed for benefits like college-tuition waivers.
“It’s such a crazy situation,” said the former medical-patient administrator and assistant chaplain, whose duty stations included Arlington National Cemetery.
“There was no support from leadership. It was horrible going to drill on weekends. It was shaming and embarrassing, as if everything I did before that was for nothing.”
For the second consecutive year, the Connecticut Chapter of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America wants the General Assembly to change state law and
allow about 800 veterans with service-connected mental health problems, who have other-than-honorable discharges, to be eligible for a variety of programs from which they are prohibited. The costs to the state, they said, are minimal.
Post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury, and sexual trauma would be included in the legislation, in attempt to stem the groups’ higher rates of suicide, homelessness and drug abuse during their service.
But in a bureaucratic maze that makes it tough to appeal to the military for discharge upgrades, these vets, who all volunteered and many of whom served in hazardous war zones, are ineligible for treatment for a variety of programs aimed to ease other vets back into civilian life, including substance abuse and mental illness in the state veterans’ home and hospital in Rocky Hill, tuition assistance for state colleges, and even funeral or burial assistance.
Many veterans don’t even start feeling the longterm effects of stress and trauma until well after they return home.
After graduating from Masuk High School in Monroe, Steve Kennedy attended college for two years, then dropped out to joined the Army’s famous 82nd Airborne Battalion, serving two tours of duty in Iraq, starting in 2007. Under different circumstances, sympathetic superior officers might have forgiven the 10 days he was absent without leave after returning to the U.S. Maybe someone could have reached out to help with the nightmares, the feeling of isolation, the need to know someone was watching his back, like all uniformed personnel did, back in-country.
“The big thing when you return home is being back on your own,” he said. “The psychologist in the Army told me ‘We don’t have the resources to treat you.’ My discharge, depending on the commander, could just have easily been honorable.”
In discharge-appeals cases, the burden is on the veterans to prove they’re eligible for the upgrade to honorable, and few are in positions to hire lawyers to fight for them.
“They’ve served their country and sacrificed a lot to do that and now they need help to find their way back home,” said Kennedy, who received a general discharge. “There are different reasons for their mental health issues, but as it is now, they’re entitled to nothing.”
Now, the 31-year-old from Fairfield, a chemistry Ph.D. candidate at NYU, with a fellowship paying expenses, is helping the veterans’ organization, with support from Yale Law School students, to lobby state lawmakers for a new pathway to gain some of the benefits awarded vets with honorable discharges.
“It’s a flawed federal system,” said Kennedy, who got involved with the veterans group as a social activity, then saw the growing need for vets with bad paper to get the services they earned, and need.
“I think I didn’t think about it at the time because that was our culture,” said Taylor, who came home to full-time work at the VA hospital in West Haven, then got an internship with the state Department of Children and Families.
Her family and church have assisted immensely. But she stressed she and hundreds of others need mainstream assistance, the kind that those with honorable discharges get, after putting themselves in danger for the United States. “We need help with mental-health evaluations and we need leadership to listen to us.
“We went into the service and we want to feel we’re appreciated,” Taylor said. “I should have gotten better treatment.”
“You do see people railroaded out,” said Kennedy, who gets partial benefits. “Administrative discharges are up to the commander, whose number-one priority is readiness. So there is a perverse incentive on the part of commanders. What we need is treatment while in service, or to quickly have their discharges reviewed.”
State Rep. Jack Hennessy, D-Bridgeport, a cochairman of the legislative Committee on Veterans Affairs, said the proposal to expand eligibility will get a public hearing and possible action this year. He said that awareness, and support, is building.
A former Army Ranger, Hennessy said he and other committee members understand what the service veterans face.
“We’re asking the National Guard to provide us with a list of the different violations that might lead to less-than-honorable discharges,” Hennessy said. “We want to see exactly what it is that veterans have to have done, to see the severity of violations that occurred. For example, if someone is caught smoking marijuana, is this a credible action to deny veterans benefits? I would say the answer would be, not really.”