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Attorneys for the veterans, the Justice Department and the military jointly filed a motion on Thursday that spelled out the terms. The settlement must be approved by a judge to be final. It also affects another thousand veterans who already had lifetime retirement benefits, but would receive a higher disability rating from the military. All of the veterans affected by the settlement would potentially receive new monthly disability compensation.
The settlement stems from a 2008 class action lawsuit filed in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington by veterans unable to serve, at least in part, because of the anxiety disorder who said they were illegally denied benefits. The law requires the military to give a disability rating of at least 50 percent to troops discharged for PTSD, but each of the plaintiffs received a disability less than that, said Bart Stichman, co-executive director of the National Veterans Legal Services Program, a nonprofit organization that represented the veterans.
As part of the lawsuit, the military in January 2010 said it would expeditiously review the cases. But attorneys for the veterans grew concerned about the pace in which the cases have been reviewed by military boards. One of the boards reviewing the cases was moving so slow, it was going to take seven years for all the cases to be reviewed, Stichman said. That led to settlement talks.
Timothy Martin, 32, a former specialist in the Tennessee National Guard, who struggles with panic attacks and nightmares related to his war service in Iraq, would benefit from the settlement. He said the health care benefits from the settlement would help with health care for his kids, ages 2 and 5. "The extra money, the back pay, the insurance, it's going to really help change our lives," Martin said. Each of the veterans in the suit was released from the military between Dec. 17, 2002, and Oct. 14, 2008. PTSD is an anxiety disorder that can develop after a terrifying event in which a person felt physically harmed or threatened.
Vets With PTSD May Get Lifetime Disability Benefits in Deal With Gov
He killed her, Joshua Stepp admitted. He slammed the face of his 10-month-old stepdaughter into a carpeted floor, roughed her up as he changed her diaper, stuffed wet toilet paper down her throat, and soon she was dead. But Stepp, a 28-year-old former Army infantryman who saw combat in Iraq, insists that he is not guilty of first-degree murder. His post-traumatic stress disorder left him incapable of premeditating the killing of tiny Cheyenne Yarley in November 2009, he and his lawyers say.
Because of his severe PTSD, Stepp was not able to "form the specific intent to kill," his attorney Thomas Manning said. He asked jurors last week to find Stepp guilty of the lesser charge of second-degree murder, which lacks the potential for the death penalty. After a decade of combat overseas, growing numbers of veterans are relying on PTSD as a central element of their defenses in criminal cases. Stepp's trial is being closely watched as one measure of just how far defense lawyers are able to push in arguing that the disorder influences veterans' criminal behavior.
The number of such cases will rise as more veterans return from Afghanistan and Iraq with post-traumatic stress or other trauma from repeated combat tours; already, more than 170,000 veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan have been diagnosed with PTSD, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. Thousands of veterans accused of nonviolent crimes have had charges or sentences reduced in the last several years after citing their PTSD as a mitigating factor. Veterans with combat trauma are now often sent to counseling and treatment programs rather than to prison for low-level offenses.
"The idea isn't to get the guy off; it's to help the veterans get the treatment they need. They deserve our help," said Shad Meshad, founder of the National Veterans Foundation and a Vietnam veteran who has counseled soldiers for 40 years. The prosecutor in the Stepp case told jurors that his defense insults veterans because it "taints their suffering" and "perverts this disease."
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She encouraged the employee who was sitting against the wall, Corey Michael McGee, to join the rest of the group at the table, but he declined. After the meeting, McGee explained: I sit against the wall where Im safest. Or in my mind I feel Im safest. An army veteran who was struck by an improvised explosive device and gunfire in Fallujah, Iraq, McGee says post-traumatic stress disorder and some remaining effects of his injuries affect him in some ways in the workplace, but its gotten a lot better over the years. Many employers have not delved deeply into how they might address PTSD, a relatively new issue, but they could face it more frequently as more veterans return to the workforce.
About 2.4 million members of the military have been deployed in the past decade in Iraq and Afghanistan, and tens of thousands are returning home. The influx is expected to continue until 2016. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs estimates as many as 11 per cent of veterans of the war in Afghanistan and 20 per cent of Iraqi war veterans are afflicted by PTSD, which can generate both sympathy and fear. Employees with the disorder may face problems arising from anxiety or have limited ability to perform certain tasks. At the same time, some employers may overreact, and veterans often dont want employers or co-workers to assume they have a condition resulting from combat.
Ferguson, an HR manager at the Atlanta Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Decatur, Ga., is experiencing the challenges firsthand. It sometimes takes creativity to address McGees needs while capitalizing on his strengths and maintaining his privacy, she said. She decided, for example, to invite employees to sit wherever they wanted to avoid singling McGee out. Nobody wants to feel like they dont fit in, said Ferguson, who is a veteran herself.
PTSD can often rise to the level of a disability protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act, which calls for employers to make reasonable accommodations for employees to do their jobs, said Jennifer Sandberg, a partner at labour and employment law firm Fisher & Phillips. Administrative charges of PTSD discrimination filed under the ADA totalled 593 in fiscal year 2011, and have increased every year since 2006, according to data from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Some who suffer PTSD have problems with memory, concentration, organization or sleep all of which can affect their work, according to a Department of Labor website for employers. PTSD affects about 7.7 million adults, according to the National Institute of Mental Health.
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It's horrific. I hope the advanced knowledge in neural chemistry has improved treatment to the point no one will ever be destroyed by it again. It doesn't just destroy the man. It destroys their families, too.PTSD doesn't have to be disabling (I've learned to cope with mine) but it affects individuals in different ways, and there's no question that at least for some vets, it is; I've seen good men destroyed by it in spite of treatment. PTSD symptoms come in degrees ranging from fairly mild, to severe; and while some affected get over it in a relatively short time, for many it's a lifetime struggle. A lot of people who haven't known someone with severe PTSD don't realize how serious it is. Fortunately, we've learned a lot about screening for it and treating it since Vietnam, but as with any emotional disorder, there's a lot we still don't know.
That very first kill haunted him most. There were many others, to be sure, but long after hed returned to Memphis from three deployments with the Marines, Paul Oliver voiced the greatest pain while recounting his lethal encounter with an Iraqi insurgent who ignored a command to disarm and raised his rifle. It was one of the memories that drove Oliver into seclusion in the back bedroom of his home just off Summer Avenue, where he pulled blankets over the windows and kept his mattress on the floor so he could feel vibrations from any intruders. For days at a time, friends and family members say, he hunkered down there, fighting through fitful sleep and the nightmares that unspooled in his head.
At times like those, Oliver told others, he saw the faces of all the people he had killed. But there was more to the memory of the Iraqi insurgent than just the mans face. It was what Oliver heard the instant after he pulled the trigger. He heard the combined, piercing screams of the insurgents wife and small child. He heard that scream for the rest of his life, said Olivers mother, Nancy Oliver. Paul Olivers life ended Dec. 6, 2013, in that same back bedroom on Lynncrest Street. He was 30 years old. The ruling from the Shelby County Medical Examiners office said he died from an accidental drug overdose, citing a toxic mixture of Xanax and Oxycodone prescription drugs for anxiety and pain.
Marine Lance Cpl. Paul Oliver
But if a drug mixture was the clinical cause of death, the emotional and physical wounds that Oliver brought back from the war zones were contributing factors. Having endured horrific combat during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and at a forward base in Afghanistan in 2004, he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and a traumatic brain injury. Those scars earned Oliver a 100 percent disabled rating from the Veterans Benefits Administration. And they seemed only to deepen in the years after he left active duty in 2005. Olivers story told through interviews with family members, friends and fellow Marines, and from text messages, court records and a journal he kept traces a tortuous journey.
It begins with a big-hearted, high-spirited and almost prototypically All-American boy hed been prom king and football captain at Catholic High School going off to war and serving bravely and effectively, probably saving the lives of comrades. It ends with his transformation into a shattered, haunted and sometimes suicidal war veteran who self-medicated with drugs and alcohol, got in trouble with police and struggled, unsuccessfully, to find a purpose and get his life back on track. Mentally, he never came back from the war, said his sister, Mary Frances Oliver.
Violent killings tortured his soul
