Jen's Story
Jen: I felt like nobody knew what was wrong with me and I didn't feel like anybody wanted to help. So, I didn't want to be helped.
Homeless and broke, Jen turned to prostitution to pay for her drug habit.
Jen: I just wanted it over and I wanted no part of the life that my family and friends had here. Really didn't want any part of any life at all. I had made a decision to take my life, but I was going to do it with drugs because it was going to be slow and it was going to be painful, and that's what I felt like I deserved.
Fortunately for Jen, those plans were interrupted when police arrested her for drug possession.
Jen: Handcuffs and shackles, go in front of a judge, and the judge said, "You don't belong here." I said, "I know I don't." He's like, "Well," he's like, "You can do your jail time or I can put you in a drug court program."
That's Jen. She joined the Army National Guard right out of high school. She went to Afghanistan. She came home and eventually she ended up standing before a judge in handcuffs and shackles.
That's the part that got my attention. I didn't serve in the military and I'm not going to sit here and pretend I understood what combat does to somebody. But addiction takes a person who once completely had a different life and moving the boundaries a little bit at a time until they barely recognize themselves. That part I understand. And what makes her story especially interesting to me isn't just what happened to her overseas. It's what happened after she came home.
This documentary was made years ago, so I'm deliberately not going to repeat its old statistics. What interests me are these women because statistics change, their stories don't. And Jen's story begins long before the handcuffs.
Jen enlisted in the Army National Guard right after high school.
Jen: When I enlisted in 2000, it was peace time. There was nothing going on. I had, you know, I had uncles and I had my grandfather who had, you know, been in the service, gone overseas, and come back. But it was never anything that I really understood or nor did I think that it was anything that would ever be a possibility for me.
All of that changed September 11th, 2001. What comes next is what makes this something more than just another war story. You would think coming home would be the ending. Safe, back with the people you love, having a life. Listen to how Jen describes it.
Coming Home
Jen: I did not want to be home at all. Uh, I wanted no part of it. I wanted no part of civilian life. I was shocked that I was never going to put my uniform on again. I was shocked that I wasn't going to go back and finish my job uh with my unit. You know, that's still something a guilt process that I still struggle with. Um, you know, I I didn't feel like I fit in anywhere in society and I didn't I didn't want to be a part of it. If I wasn't in the military, I didn't know where I belonged. Yeah, I just had no desire to be here.
I didn't know where I belonged. That may be the important sentence in this whole episode because for Jen, the next question became, "What makes this feeling stop?" And she found something that worked at first. At home, Jen secretly wrestled with nightmares and panic attacks, and she struggled to find work.
Jen: I decided I was, you know, I was going to try to work for a law firm. I was going to do this, but then my paralegal certificate didn't actually transfer into the civilian world. So, I would actually have to go back to school in order to use it. I got a job as a bartender because I didn't know what else to do. That was where I was introduced to uh cocaine. And as soon as I did that, all of a sudden, I could smile, I could be social, I could have friends, and I didn't have to go to sleep, so I didn't have to have nightmares. So my anxiety level was just I mean it was brought down drastically by it.
Addiction
That's what people who've never lived through addiction sometimes don't understand. The drug usually doesn't introduce itself by saying I'm going to destroy your life. It gives you something first. For her it quieted something. In my life, drugs did something different. But the bargain was similar. You think you find a solution. You tell yourself you're functioning. And because you're still showing up, still talking, still working, you can convince yourself that you've got it under control until whatever you are using to cope becomes another problem that you have to cope with.
I'm not comparing my experience to combat. I'm talking about addiction. And addiction can make a very bad arrangement feel perfectly reasonable.
Jen's dependence on drugs cost her nearly everything.
Jen: My mom wouldn't let me live in her house because I was, you know, I was using. It was, you know, get help, do this, and I was an adult, so you couldn't make me. And I was also I was a soldier, you know. I was a warrior. I can handle anything, you know, and I felt like a monster. I felt like nobody knew what was wrong with me. And I didn't feel like anybody wanted to help. So, I didn't want to be helped.
Homeless and broke, Jen turned to prostitution to pay for her drug habit.
Jen: I just wanted it over and I wanted no part of the life that my family and friends had here. Really didn't want any part of any life at all. I had made a decision to take my life, but I was going to do it with drugs because it was going to be slow and it was going to be painful and that's what I felt like I deserved.
Drug Court
And then the criminal justice system entered the story. Police arrested her for drug possession. Now, trauma can explain how someone arrived somewhere. It doesn't erase responsibility for what they did when they got there. I feel the same way about myself. Addiction explains a lot of my decisions. It does not make those decisions somebody else's fault. But the judge in Jen's case apparently recognized something else. Putting her in a jail cell wasn't necessarily the only way to hold her accountable. She was given the opportunity to go through drug court and that changed the direction of her life.
Jen's therapist, Janine, says PTSD and drug use often go hand in hand.
Janine: I think it's common. I think to me it's kind of irrelevant which came first. You know, you're going to usually see them together.
Jen credits drug court, her therapist, and family for saving her life.
Jen: When my drug court time ended, I had told her, about being a war veteran, being a woman, and having pushed my stress disorder, and about how, you know, it's uh you know, I still have a life today even after everything I went through. Hope I make it back.
Veterans Justice Outreach (VJO)
There is now an entire VA program specifically aimed at veterans who come into contact with the criminal justice system. It's called Veterans Justice Outreach or VJO. Its job is to identify justice involved veterans and connect them with VA services as early in the process as possible. That can include:
- Mental health treatment
- Substance use treatment
- Housing assistance
- VA benefits
VJO specialists also work with veterans treatment courts where those programs exist. That does not mean being a veteran makes criminal charge disappear. It's not a get out of jail free card and veterans treatment courts are not available in every jurisdiction, but it means that when somebody like Jen shows up in a courtroom, there may be another doorway besides simply punish her and send her away.
That's the part families need to know exist. And the VA also has a re-entry program for veterans who are already incarcerated and preparing to be released.
Jen's story shows what can happen when trauma, addiction, and criminal justice collide.
Genevieve's Story
Genevieve's story shows a different a different problem. What happens when a person who needs help gets very good at making sure nobody knows she needs it.
Genevieve: I remember that we were driving along and the gentleman who was sitting in front of me, who was a contractor, he used to stuff all of his ammo pouches on his kit with candy. He loved to throw the candy at the little kids. So, he cracked his window like four or five in. The next thing I know was the explosion and it was massive. I thought I thought we were dead. I mean, you the first thought in your mind is this is what it's like to be dead. The flash, the fire, everything came in. It was black. There was smoke. We couldn't breathe. And everything started to go in extreme slow motion. There was very little left of that car that hit us. And the truck is just was demolished. And we were very fortunate cuz if we'd have been in a Humpy, we'd be dead. There's no doubt.
That caught me too. She was good at hiding it. And apparently there was a reason. She didn't want the injury to cost her the thing that had given her identity in the first place. Again, that's not exclusively a veteran problem. People do this with addiction. Mental health, medical problems, even criminal cases. We hide things because we're afraid of what happens when others finally seize it. But hiding a drug problem doesn't make it smaller. Usually, it just gives the problem more time.
Enraged and in shock, Genevieve downplayed her own injuries and jumped in and helped the other injured soldiers.
Genevieve: For days after, your body just I can't describe what it feels like. The whole right side of my body from the inside ached. Everything felt sore, but my right side bones felt sore. My head hurt. Like all I wanted to do. I just kept pushing my brain down. It just the pressure.
Despite the agonizing pain, she kept her symptoms a secret.
Genevieve: I was very good at hiding stuff. So, you just dealt with it in your off time or in the shower or I would go to the bathroom if I needed to. If I wasn't feeling good I'd go and I would get dizzy a lot. Not very nauseous and stuff like that. I really did not care to eat very much in that time. That was in April of 2006. They didn't know a lot about brain injury. Um they didn't know a lot about PTSD. And we were so happy to be away from the flagpole, to be doing our jobs, we begged them not to send us back.
After one more close call outside the wire, Genevieve was assigned to a desk job for the remainder of her deployment.
Genevieve: I wasn't ready. Wasn't ready to be back. I felt really guilty that everybody else was still downrange. When I got home, I started having really bad memory issues. I had memory issues while we were deployed, too, where I would just forget chunks of time. I really did try to handle it all on my own. Um, it never occurred to me to get help because, again, I didn't want to lose my clearance. I didn't want to lose my job. Then I heard about a woman who was asked to leave a PTSD peer support group because they said that there was no way she was in combat because women didn't serve in combat. And I thought that has to change.
Genevieve formed her own support group and began advocating for women veterans by talking to anyone who would listen about her own experiences with traumatic brain injury and PTSD.
Genevieve: But even with all of these services, women must know they are eligible. They must be enrolled and they must have access to the VA.
What Families Need to Know
Think about how strange that is. A woman can survive an explosion in Afghanistan and still have somebody tell her that she doesn't fit their picture of somebody who experienced combat. That's really the thread connecting these two stories. People weren't seeing it. Jen came home and couldn't figure out where she belonged. Genevieve hid what was happening to her. And even when women veterans did look for help, the system didn't always recognize what was standing directly in front of it. VA treatment today specifically addresses PTSD, substance use disorder, and traumatic brain injury together. And VA residential programs include services designed specifically around the needs of women veterans. And for veterans who have already crossed into the criminal justice system, there's something I particularly want Federal Toolbox viewers to remember.
Ask for Veterans Justice Outreach. And if you're a veteran, the family member, the lawyer, or somebody trying to help, don't assume the court is automatically going to find a program for you.
- Ask whether there's a VJO specialist involved.
- Ask where the jurisdiction has a drug treatment court because accountability and treatment don't have to be opposites.
Jen still had to answer for what she did. I had to answer for what I did. But if you can deal with the conduct and what's driving it, you have a much better chance at not seeing the same person back in the same courtroom again. And to me, that's what the Toolbox is supposed to be about. Not excuses, options.
I'm Brad. This is a Federal Toolbox. And again, thank you for listening.
Learn More About Veterans Justice Outreach
If you or a family member is a veteran facing criminal charges, the VA's Veterans Justice Outreach (VJO) program connects justice-involved veterans with VA health care, housing, and treatment as early in the process as possible. VJO specialists work inside jails and diversionary treatment courts to make sure veterans get into the right services instead of falling through the cracks. You can find your local VJO specialist through the VJO contacts directory or by calling the VA at 877-424-3838.