NEW HAVEN >> U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., simplified the issue.
“The veterans that need the greatest level of care are getting the least. The veterans who need the most care are getting none,” Murphy said in a press conference at City Hall on the Honor Our Commitment Act he just introduced in Congress.
Murphy, former veterans and legal advocates said there are at least 22,000 veterans in the country and between 800 and 1,000 in Connecticut with serious mental health and behavorial health disagnoses who are not getting access to the care they need for their war-time injuries.
The senator said it is a Catch-22 situation in which veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder or traumatic brain injuries are being given other than-honorable discharges because of behavior tied to their injuries.
The behavioral health care they need is then denied by the Veterans Affairs Administration because of the status of their discharges.
“You don’t have to dig real deep to figure out why we have a veteran suicide crisis in this country,” Murphy said. It is estimated that 20 veterans a day commit suicide.
The senator said the heart of the legislation is straightford: “If you fight for this country, if you are injured in battle, then you are due services to help you deal and recover fom those injuries,” Murphy said, even if you have not gotten a discharge at the highest level.
“To me this is common sense. The fact of the matter is we are breaking our promise to veterans,” Murphy said.
He said soldiers caught in this cycle desperately need access to the Veterans Affairs medical system and should get GI benefits or other services as a matter of course.
Murphy said less than honorable doesn’t need dishonorable discharges or a separation tied to a court martial.
“It just means you weren’t given the highest level of discharge,” he said. Murphy said often the misconduct is very minor and connected to their diagnoses.
Murphy said his bill, which has eight other co-sponsors, including U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., is a step in the right direction, but it only deals with mental health benefits.
He said the VA made a small concession earlier this year by providing behavorial services temporarily to these veterans “in crisis.”
On the other hand, he said the Army is in denial of the problem and continues to issue other-than-honorable discharges to individuals who are ill.
Thomas Burke, president of the Yale Student Veterans Council and a Marine Corps veteran, credits Murphy with saving his life and getting him the care he needed.
Burke served in Iraq and Afghanistan and is now a third-year student at Yale Divinity School.
Burke said he tried to commit suicide in February 2010 after having to clean up the bodies of Iraqi children he had befriended, after they found an RPG while they were swimming in a canal.
To deal with the ordeal, Burke said he started smoking hash to forget what he was seeing. After his suicide attempt, he was kept in a lockup in Hawaii.
Burke said he was charged with smoking marijuana and eventually prescribed a medication that made him manic. He said he finally broke and told his commanding officer he was leaving.
“I felt I had failed. I failed those kids and I had failed at the one thing I always wanted to be — a United States Marine. It would take a long time to realize I was no failure,” he said.
Burke said when he was forgotten while being held in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, Murphy’s office started to reach out to help him.
“Senator Murphy has consistently fought for the most vulerable men and women who serve in the Armed Forces,” said Burke said, who was given an other-than-honorable discharge.
He said he was lucky to receive a disabilitiy rating that allowed him to get medical coverage and GI benefits, so he could enroll in school “and begin my path to ministry and care for veterans.”
In addition to being a master’s of divinity candidate, he is treasurer of the nonprofit High Ground Veterans Advocacy group, which trains veterans how to advocate for themselves.
He said it is a “perilous journey” re-integrating into society after combat. But if you have an other-than-honorable discharge, Burke said you are stripped of your identity and you will not be resislient unless you get the medical help you need.
“We sent them to war and it is now our responsibility to care for them. It is as simple as that,” Burke said.
He said theses soldiers are not taking advantage of the system.
“These are men and women who are broken after watching their best friends die in front of them or by being raped by those who are supposed to be protecting them,” he said.
“Not much has changed in 3,000 years of war and like Thucydides said, it is much easier to honor the dead than it is to care for the living,” Burke said.
Margaret Middleton, executive director of the Connecticut Veterans Legal Center, said most of the hundreds of veterans that have contacted her to receive medical benefits continue to remain ineligible, particularly those from the Vietnam era when PTSD did not exist as a medical disagnosis.
“Combat veterans should not need a lawyer to get urgent mental health care,” she said.
John Petkun, a Yale Law student intern at the school’s Veterans Legal Clinic, and a veteran himself, said the proposed legislation is an important step forward.
He said since 2001 more than 125,000 veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraq generation have less-than-honorable discharges, while more than one-third deployed to these war zones suffer from brain injuries or PTSD.
Over the last seven years, Petkun said they have found the VA and the military to be “woefully inadequate” to meeting their responsibilities to these veterans.
