Kennedy, of Fairfield, president of the Connecticut branch of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA-CT), will continue his federal class action lawsuit on behalf of Army veterans nationwide who received less than honorable discharges for behavior later attributed to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

Stephen Kennedy

Kennedy said in an interview that his Army service “was really central to my identity.  I was really proud of that. To have them say it was less than honorable, to have that kind of stamp on it…has been a cloud over the memory of my service.”

“It’s hard not to really take that to heart,” he said, adding that having the upgrade “really feels great.”

The Army Discharge Review Board reversed Kennedy’s previous status called “general under honorable,” which deprived him of veterans’ education benefits and the pride and respect connected to an honorable discharge.

Kennedy, 31, served in Iraq for 13 months.  In the Army, he was given leadership positions, fast-tracked to become a sergeant and honored with several awards including the Combat Infantry Badge, Army Commendation Medal and Army Achievement Medal.  His discharge status was based on his going Absent Without Leave (AWOL) for his wedding and honeymoon, a behavior he later said was uncharacteristic for him and based on PTSD, which had resulted from his military service.  He had become suicidal and self-destructive, cutting himself and drinking and smoking heavily.

Since he left the Army in 2009, he has received medical help for his PTSD, fathered three children, graduated from the University of Massachusetts, taken a leadership role in veterans’ affairs in Connecticut, and is pursuing a doctoral degree in biophysical chemistry at New York University.

He estimated that he lost out on about $90,000 in education grants under the federal GI bill because of his less than honorable discharge status.  He said he will now try to be compensated under the GI bill.

Kennedy is a lead plaintiff in a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Bridgeport, which is asking the court to order the Army to properly apply a Pentagon policy that was designed to facilitate discharge upgrades for veterans with PTSD.  The policy directs military review boards to give “liberal consideration” to veterans whose service-connected PTSD is diagnosed after discharge.

A second plaintiff, Alicia J. Carson, a former Southington resident who now lives in Alaska, was given a status upgrade to honorable by the National Guard in March.

The suit was filed last April. The Yale Law School Veterans Legal Services Clinic is representing the plaintiffs.  The clinic estimates that more than 100,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans received less than honorable discharges, also known as “bad paper” discharges. The suit is representing those who have discharges labeled as general under honorable and other than honorable (OTH).

Stephen Kennedy discusses his military service as U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal looks on last April.

Kennedy expressed hope that the court will require the discharge review board to handle discharge upgrade cases equitably.  He had applied for an upgrade twice, in 2010 and 2015. His second application was denied in a 3-2 vote.  He said that the successful application was exactly the same as the previous one, indicating to him an improper process.

“We didn’t add anything to what I filed originally and got a completely different result because a judge was watching,” Kennedy said. “To take the exact same case and come to a completely different outcome shows the need for everyone to get a review like this. When no one is watching, they are not doing this properly,” he said.

“I really hope that what comes out of this is that everyone gets the same kind of review,” he said.

“It shouldn’t take a small Army of lawyers, a class action lawsuit, and eight years to get the Army to follow their own rules,” he said in a statement, adding that “most veterans with PTSD are in no position to fight the Army like this, and veterans are dying while the Army drags its feet on properly handling these cases.”

Helen White, a Yale law student working on the case, said, “we’re encouraged to see justice done for Steve, but there are thousands of veterans across the country whose honorable service the Army still refuses to recognize.”

The new federal budget signed into law by President Trump last week includes a provision championed by U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn) for veterans with OTH discharges to receive long-term mental health care from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).

IAVA-CT is advocating changes on the state level, which would expand eligibility for state services for service members with OTH discharges and have PTSD, traumatic brain injury, or were victims of military sexual trauma. Such benefits would include state substance abuse treatment, transitional housing, long term care, tuition waivers at state colleges, burial assistance and property tax exemptions. The legislature’s Veterans Affairs Committee has approved the proposal, which needs a vote of the Senate and House to become law.

On May 14, 2011, federal immigration officials stormed Giammarco’s porch as he talked on the phone, ordered him to lie face down, handcuffed him and placed him in detention. The action was long after he had served time, many years earlier, for two 1997 larceny convictions and a 2004 drug conviction. He was detained without bond for 18 months, and sent to Italy on Nov. 26, 2012.

“We’ve been blessed,” Giammarco said of his return home. “It’s a dream come true.”

Tony Bacewicz Photo

Blair Giammarco, 8, and Sharon Giammarco show the welcome banner they made for Arnold’s homecoming.

Giammarco, 61, served in the U.S. Army and the National Guard as a noncitizen soldier and received honorable discharges. His family left Italy when he was 4 years old and moved to Hartford, where he was raised. He worked mainly as a meat cutter.

His life spiraled downward when he became addicted to drugs. He stole to support his habit and was homeless. After his then-girlfriend, also a drug user, became pregnant, the pair resolved to change their lives. They quit drugs, participated in rehabilitation programs, married, got jobs and made a home for their daughter, Blair, now 8.

C-HIT reported in November 2013 that Giammarco was among a growing number of noncitizen military veterans who were deported for crimes for which they had served time years earlier.

Giammarco landed at JFK Airport on July 16, nine days after he becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen in a military ceremony at the U.S. Embassy in Rome. Giammarco had originally applied for citizenship in 1982 and said the government never processed it. Officials later contended that the application was incomplete.

Giammarco has been living in Campo Di Fano, Italy, his birthplace. He did some caretaking, attended church, helped residents with chores and continued to apply for visas and battle to return to the U.S. Being away from his wife, Sharon, and their daughter was “very disturbing, very upsetting, very traumatic, just a bad experience.”

“It’s heartbreaking” missing birthdays, holidays and everyday life with family, he said.

He credited his homecoming to his wife’s persistence and the Yale Law School clinics that have been working for his return since 2013. They initiated court actions, sought temporary visas, tried unconventional tactics — like attempting to get approval for him to testify before the state legislature — and spent months schooling him via Skype in civics questions in preparation for the citizenship interview. Two Yale students and a faculty member accompanied him to the U.S. Embassy in Rome. “They’ve been doing an excellent job,” Giammarco said, adding, “they brought everything to the table.”

In March, Giammarco’s Yale lawyers, who represented him for free, reached a settlement in a federal court suit that permitted him to submit a new naturalization application and stipulated that the “aggravated felony” for stealing tools, which had been cited by the officers who took him away, would not bar him from obtaining his citizenship. The settlement wasn’t disclosed until after Giammarco returned home.

Giammarco said he felt betrayed by the U.S. government, especially since he served in the military for six years. “I served my country. I served it honorably,” he said.

Tony Bacewicz Photo.

Sharon and Arnold Giammarco hug in their living room in Rocky Hill.

He said he never hurt anyone when he stole to support his drug habit, and he maintained that the government should have taken into account that he had reformed and had been punished for his crimes. He said he believes that immigration officials see people as “numbers” and don’t take their life circumstances into account.

“I changed my life around,” he said. “I never hurt anybody. The only ones I hurt were my wife and daughter, being away from them for so long,” he said as he sat with his wife at their dining room table.

Sharon Giammarco pointed out that she had the same drug and criminal background as her husband, but because she is a citizen, she was able to “restart my life.” She is now an addiction counselor at Blue Hills Hospital in Hartford, working 60 to 70 hours a week.

“He was punished over and over again,” she said of her husband. “I never volunteered to serve my country” as he did.

Now, Arnold Giammarco said, “all we want is a normal family.” He hopes to get a job as a meat cutter. He is spending time with his mother, Elena, 88, who receives hospice care at her Wethersfield home. Because of her health, Giammarco received an “emergency passport,” which was processed quickly. She spent “tens of thousands of dollars” in legal fees to try to get her son back to the U.S. before the Yale clinics took the case, Sharon Giammarco said of her mother-in-law.

Giammarco said he wants to make up for the years lost with his daughter. While he was in Italy, the two had communicated by Skype, and he had tried to do fatherly things like helping with her homework.

The family went camping in Bozrah with relatives last weekend. He is teaching Blair how to swim. They play ball. He made s’mores for her. “It’s cool,” Blair said of her father’s return.

His wife reminded him that being home entails other duties as well, he said with a laugh.

“She showed me where the garbage is and where the broom is,” he said.

Stephen Kennedy of Fairfield, a lead plaintiff, is a decorated Army veteran and a founder of the state chapter of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. In the suit, he claims the Army isn’t following a Pentagon policy to make it easier for veterans with PTSD to upgrade their discharge statuses.

Stephen Kennedy

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Bridgeport, is asking the court to order the Army to properly apply the policy. Issued by former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, the policy directs military review boards to give “liberal consideration” to veterans whose service-connected PTSD is diagnosed after discharge.  A second plaintiff, Alicia J. Carson, a former Connecticut resident who was in the Army and the National Guard and now lives in Alaska, is also named in the lawsuit.

The lawsuit potentially affects thousands of veterans with General Under Honorable and Other Than Honorable (OTH) discharge statuses, said Helen White, a student in the Yale Law School Veterans Legal Services Clinic, which is representing the plaintiffs. The class of plaintiffs encompasses Army veterans discharged since April 2002.

At a morning news conference at Yale, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, said, “The Department of Defense has failed to provide the relief that the law provides… failed to provide the consistent standard. This lawsuit should not be necessary.”

Blumenthal said that these soldiers “do not want sympathy, they want real results.”

He noted that the lawsuit does not seek any money, “just basic justice.”

For those with general discharges, an upgrade would allow them to re-enter the Army, and make them eligible for education benefits under the federal G.I. bill as well as perks, like scholarships given by veterans’ groups.

Kennedy, a doctoral student, estimates he has lost out on $90,000 in G.I. education aid.

Those with OTH discharges would become eligible for federal and state veterans’ benefits, such as health care and disability benefits from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and state property tax exemptions, which many can’t get now.

According to U.S. Department of Defense statistics obtained by the Harvard Law School Veterans Legal Clinic, 81,997 enlisted members of the Army received general under honorable discharges from 2002 through 2013, the most recent years available. Another 32,973 received OTH discharges in that period.

Stephen Kennedy discusses his military service as U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal looks on.

Kennedy, 31, filed a lawsuit in December on his own behalf asking for a court-ordered discharge upgrade, which he is still seeking for himself. The class action is an amended version of that lawsuit.

He has tried twice for an upgrade, first in 2009 when he was still battling mental illness. “The process is a huge burden to put on anybody. If you’re having mental health difficulties, it’s impossible,” he said.

Kennedy joined the Army after two years at Boston University. He was given leadership posts, fast-tracked to become a sergeant and awarded the prestigious Army Achievement Medal.

His mental health problems emerged after he returned from Iraq to Fort Bragg, N.C. He performed well at work during the day. But at night, he drank and smoked heavily. He became suicidal, and habitually cut himself. “I was really a mess,” he said.

He got into trouble in 2009 after he left his base without permission for his wedding and honeymoon, an act he attributes to PTSD. He said he had received verbal approval from superiors a year before, but a new officer refused him, saying he needed written authorization. Kennedy, who grew up in Monroe, said if he had been well, he would have appealed the refusal. Instead, he avoided the situation, a behavior consistent with PTSD, he said.

After his wedding, he returned to his base and was diagnosed with depressive disorder, demoted, docked two months pay, and transferred to a different company. He was discharged after an Army psychiatrist told him the base didn’t have the resources to treat him. He spent years seeing psychiatrists and taking medications. He was diagnosed with PTSD by private and VA doctors.

In 2015, feeling well and his life on track, he applied again to the Army Discharge Review Board for an upgrade and was turned down in a 3-2 vote.

Photo Provided by Kennedy.

Stephen Kennedy (pictured left) in Haditha, Iraq.

“What makes his case so compelling is he did everything he was supposed to do in a discharge upgrade proceeding—letters from therapists, evidence of honorable service, and a personal statement explaining the link between his PTSD and his AWOL,” White, of the law clinic, said. “If he can’t be successful,” she added, “it’s extremely unlikely that other veterans are getting proper adjudications from the board.”

Ashley Ingram, a former law student who worked on the case, said, “We know that Mr. Kennedy’s case is not unique.”

In response to Kennedy’s initial suit, the Army asked the court to either dismiss the case on the basis that a military personnel issue shouldn’t be decided in a civil court, or to remand it back to the Army, where Kennedy could file again for an upgrade. In a court brief, the Army said it lost four documents that Kennedy submitted in his 2015 upgrade hearing.

The Army said Kennedy didn’t exhaust all potential military options because he didn’t apply to a second board, the Army Board for Correction of Military Records.

Kennedy is pursuing a doctorate in biophysical chemistry at New York University. He and his wife, Catherine, have two children. As a leader of the state chapter of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, he advocates for state and federal veterans’ legislation. Until recently, he never talked about his discharge status because he was embarrassed, he said.

Carson a former Southington resident, joined the National Guard, Fox Company of the 186 Brigade Support Battalion, on December 25, 2008.   Her unit deployed to Afghanistan in early 2010. She was promoted to Gunner and responsible for the safety and security of her vehicle and participated in more than 100 missions in fewer than 300 days, the lawsuit said. She returned home in late 2010, participated in weekend drills but began suffering from PTSD-related symptoms, such as nightmares, loss of consciousness, and loss of memory.

A VA psychiatrist diagnosed Carson with PTSD and traumatic bring injury in March 2012 and she notified her superior officers that she could no longer participate in weekend drills, the suit said. She was later given a general discharge.

The report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) recommends that the Secretary of Defense direct the Army to monitor prescribing practices in order to detect medications that are discouraged under PTSD treatment guidelines. Those guidelines caution against the use of antipsychotics and benzodiazepines, a class of sedatives, because of their ineffectiveness and potential risk.

“The Army does not monitor the prescribing of medications to treat PTSD on an ongoing basis,” says the report, led by the GAO’s director of health care, Debra Draper. “Without such monitoring, the Army may be unable to identify and address practices that are inconsistent with the guideline.”

iStock Photo.

Army needs to improve monitoring of antipsychotic drugs, GAO says.

The Department of Defense did not dispute the GAO recommendations, but argued that it has worked to reduce antipsychotic prescribing. Army officials cited an analysis showing that the proportion of service members with PTSD who were prescribed such drugs fell from 19 percent in 2010 to 10 percent in 2014. The Army issued a policy in 2012 that required military hospitals to review their prescribing practices for atypical antipsychotics, but the policy expired in 2014 and did not apply to benzodiazepines, the report says.

The GAO noted that the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) actively tracks the prescribing of benzodiazepines and antipsychotics for veterans with PTSD, and requires VA facilities with higher-than-average prescribing to develop and implement plans to reduce those rates.

In a separate recommendation, the GAO urged that the VHA clarify a 2015 policy instructing its health providers not to discontinue mental health medications when active-duty service members shift into VA care. VA providers had “varying interpretations of which medications are covered by this policy,” the GAO found, posing a danger that some providers might be “inappropriately discontinuing mental health medications . . . which could increase the risk of adverse health effects for transitioning service members.”

In a response to the report, Robert L. Nabors, chief of staff to VA Secretary Robert McDonald, said the agency would issue written guidance to its providers clarifying the types of medications covered by the 2015 policy.

The GAO report found that the defense department, which is responsible for the care of active-duty troops, has a wider variety of psychiatric, pain and sleep medications in its formulary than the VHA does. VHA officials told the GAO that safety, efficacy, and cost were factors in determining which medicines to include in their formulary. For example, they said, the VHA formulary includes only two sleep medications because of concerns about the appropriateness of some drugs for the treatment of insomnia.

A breakdown of psychiatric drugs used by the defense department shows that the highest percentage of prescriptions filled for active-duty service members in 2014 were for the antidepressant Trazodone (8.5 percent of all psychiatric prescriptions), followed by the stimulants Amphetamine/dextroamphetamine (8.2 percent) and the antidepressant Bupropion (7.1 percent).