Clyde Hoch, a 67-year-old Vietnam
veteran, volunteers with the Lehigh County District Attorney's Veterans Mentor
program. (APRIL BARTHOLOMEW, THE MORNING CALL)
Vets enlisted to help other vets in
Lehigh County Court.
When vets get in trouble in Lehigh
County, mentors step in to help.
For vets in trouble with the law,
Lehigh County has a lifeline.
For Clyde Hoch, the real war began
when his tour in Vietnam ended.
He had survived the heaviest
fighting of the Tet Offensive, a campaign of bloodshed in 1968 that leveled
cities and villages and left about 4,000 Americans dead.
Hoch, then a 21-year-old Marine
sergeant, sustained a traumatic head injury when the tank he was riding on hit
a land mine.
The blast stole some of his hearing
and altered his mind in ways that were poorly understood in that era.
Post-traumatic stress disorder was
not yet part of the vernacular, so veterans like Hoch, who struggled with
violent flashbacks that left him socially isolated, were labeled shell-shocked.
Unlike their fathers and
grandfathers who had fought in prior wars, Hoch and his fellow soldiers were
not welcomed home as heroes.
"When I got back from Vietnam,
it was the worst time in my life," said Hoch, 68, a retired printer who
lives in Pennsburg. "Everyone, in general, looked down on you if you were
in the military. We were made out to be villains by the media. I was more
comfortable in combat than in my own country."
The experience transformed Hoch and
set him on a path to becoming an award-winning author and veterans' advocate.
He runs a transitional home for struggling vets in Pennsburg and, as a
volunteer for the Lehigh County District Attorney's Veterans Mentor program, is
often seen in Allentown courtrooms standing beside veterans who have run afoul
of the law.
Launched in 2011, the program helps
veterans navigate the difficult path from war zone to society by pairing them
with other veterans. Mentors support the defendants during court appearances
and check in on them at home to make sure they're taking medication and showing
up for therapy sessions.
It's effective because no one
understands a soldier like a soldier, said Bret Moore, a psychologist from San
Antonio who worked with the Army and has written several books, including one
about adjusting to life after deployment.
The military is a unique culture and
the shared experience of having lived in that culture often brings veterans
together, he said.
"In short, veterans understand
each other," Moore said.
Lehigh County officials started the
mentor program because they saw a growing number of veterans from Iraq and
Afghanistan getting into trouble with the law, said Steven Luksa, first
assistant district attorney.
While courts in the Lehigh Valley
are not seeing a surge of veterans charged with crimes, the ones who are
arrested typically struggle with combat-related mental illness, especially
PTSD, officials say.
This mirrors a national trend of
incarcerated veterans. A five-year study for the Veterans Health Administration
looked at 30,968 vets in state and federal prisons and found that those
returning from the recent wars in the Middle East were three times more likely
to have PTSD than veterans of prior wars.
Lehigh County's veterans mentor
program is not designed to give participants a break on their punishment, but
it does recognize that their service to the country carries some psychological
baggage.
"We're reducing recidivism
because the person who gets the help, gets the mentor, gets the treatment, and
is less inclined to re-offend."
Veterans are eligible for a mentor
if they were honorably discharged. Veterans with a "general"
discharge or "other than honorable" discharge are eligible on a
case-by-case basis after a review of their military records.
Other counties, including Berks,
have a specialty court for veterans with courtrooms and judges set aside for
their cases. In the Berks program, veterans may have their criminal charges
reduced or dismissed if they complete certain programs.
Luksa said Lehigh's approach uses
fewer resources to achieve the same end.
"We can accomplish all the
things that a specialty court does, without the costs associated with a
specialty court," he said.
The Lehigh County program doesn't
require any taxpayer money to keep going but accepts donations — including
$15,000 recently from the Air Products Foundation — to help vets with housing,
transportation and therapy.
Northampton County does not have a
veteran’s court or mentor program, but District Attorney John Morganelli said
veterans will get special consideration in the county's mental health court,
which is expected to launch before the year ends.
Veterans who complete the program, a
mix of intense supervision and treatment, will get their records expunged for
certain crimes, Morganelli said.
"In years past, especially with
the war winding down in Iraq and Afghanistan, we would see men who were
suffering with documented mental illness, and they would steal something or get
in a fight when they were off their meds," Morganelli said.
"If we convict these people,
it's a double whammy for them, because now they have a hard time getting a job
and reintegrating into society. Better to get them back on their medication
than give them a record."
He said military service deserves
recognition. If someone is arrested for a minor crime right before leaving for
boot camp, for example, Morganelli might consider dropping the charges after
speaking with the defendant's recruiter.
Lehigh District Attorney Jim Martin,
who had hoped to join the Marine Corps after graduating from college in 1967
but got rejected because of a bad knee, said it was important to him that the
program not be structured as a get-out-of-jail-free card.
"I view my job — and I think
most prosecutors view their jobs — first and foremost as ensuring public
safety," Martin said.
About half of the 24 mentors in the
Lehigh County program were on active duty in such places as Vietnam, Kuwait,
Kosovo, Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan and the Mediterranean. Volunteers are asked
to work with defendants until the cases are complete and defendants are no
longer under court supervision, such as on probation or parole.
To date, 20 defendants have
completed supervision and remain arrest-free, according to the district attorney's
office. Five others violated probation or parole by using drugs or alcohol or
by committing another crime.
The program does not work for all
vets. About a dozen defendants decided they didn't want a mentor after one or
two meetings.
Bronson Peters, a 44-year-old Army
veteran, served in Desert Storm and in Bosnia during the 1990s. Peters, of
Fogelsville, became involved in the program after being charged with several
misdemeanors in 2012. He said he struggled to adjust to civilian life after 10 years
of deployment, often feeling he didn't fit in.
"There is nothing that you can
compare to the military. There's no civilian occupation that matches up to
that," he explained.
The district attorney's office
paired him with Army veteran John Hinkle, a 70-year-old entrepreneur from
Emmaus. Hinkle, a well-known fixture in Emmaus business and political circles,
got Peters a job as an irrigation specialist with a friend's landscaping firm
and even went to the job interview with him.
Hinkle said he's able to connect
with Peters and other young men he's mentored through the program because he
understands the way they think.
"The military is a different
mind-set," Hinkle said. "There's a level of commitment that people
who aren't in the military don't understand. And you don't just leave that
behind when you leave the military."
Lehigh County courts do not keep
statistics on how many veterans are accused of crimes. Luksa, who co-chairs a
committee that weekly discusses newly arrested defendants who need special services
for mental illness, substance abuse or other issues, said the group started to
see more combat vets in the caseload about five years ago.
Substance abuse, especially
alcoholism, is often a factor in veterans' crimes.
According to the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services' 2012 Survey on Drug Use and Health, of the 20
million or so veterans living in the United States, 56 percent of men and 41
percent of women regularly use alcohol. At least 23 percent of male veterans
have admitted to binge drinking, as did 14 percent of female vets.
Alcohol abuse is what landed
Breinigsville resident Carlos Pagan Rosario in court and then in the mentor
program. The 55-year-old former Marine spent 22 years in the military,
completing missions in Grenada, Bosnia and Iraq.
Rosario has been taking painkillers
for chronic back pain since 2004, when he fell 16 feet from a roof onto hard
gravel during a firefight in Taji, Iraq. He mixed the drugs with alcohol,
leading to a dangerous incident in July 2011 that netted him two drunken
driving arrests within 24 hours.
Rosario's mentor, Jim Kerner, 63, of
Coopersburg, said he wasn't surprised that Rosario had a drinking problem. Many
of the men who served alongside him in Vietnam lost battles with alcoholism.
"Alcohol is glamorized in the
military," Kerner said. "That's what the vast majority of military
people used to escape the reality of the current situation."
Rosario said that having Kerner to
talk with has helped him deal with the feelings of frustration that had alienated
him from family and friends after he returned home.
Instead of keeping the horror
stories of war inside, he compares notes with Kerner. Both have seen things
that cannot be discussed in polite company. Kerner, for example, spent 13
months performing autopsies as a medic.
"I've seen human bodies in
every possible condition," he said.
The program needs more people like
Kerner, Hinkle and Hoch, who are willing to give their time. Martin said it is
always on the lookout for new volunteers.
"Over the foreseeable future I
continue to see a need for this," he said.
Hoch, who is mentoring three
veterans, said writing provided an outlet to his post-war frustration, some of
which was caused by the hate and rejection he experienced on his return from
Vietnam. To date, he's penned seven books and is a frequent speaker at local
schools and community organizations.
Hoch said he's haunted by stories of
veterans who committed suicide after coming home from war and hopes that his
books foster understanding of PTSD and other mental health problems affecting
war vets.
"This is something that I've
lived with my entire life," he said. "For a long time, I felt like
there was no one who understood me. My wife didn't understand, my children
didn't understand me. It's amazing how a combat veteran will open up to another
combat veteran. They are the only other people who truly understand how you
feel."
Twitter @LehighCourts
610-820-6506
TO PARTICIPATE
For more information on the Lehigh
County District Attorney's Veterans Mentor Program, call 610-782-3100.
For more informatio
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