Below is a scenario that may well play out over and over to some Redding and Shasta Counties women veterans.
All to often Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) goes undiagnosed even today, found in returning Iraq and Afghanistan war female veterans of Northern California.
With more iraq gulf war veteran females returning and limited low income housing, homeless shelters and mental health care, this will continue be a growing problem segment of the homeless population here in America.
We can only hope the plans for the new Northern California Veterans Home reserves a section for well deserving female veterans of Redding and Shasta County California.KIMBERLY HEFLING –
Dec 15, 2009LONG BEACH, Calif. — "The $15,000 that former Army Pvt. Margaret Ortiz had in the bank when she left Iraq is long gone, spent on alcohol and cocaine.
By the time she found her way to a program run by the nonprofit U.S. Vets for homeless female veterans in this Southern California city, she'd slept in San Diego on the beach or anywhere she could find after a night of partying. One morning, she woke up behind a trash bin, her pants torn, with no memory of what happened.
Instead of helping her forget her six months in Iraq, where she said she faced attacks on her compound and sexual harassment from fellow soldiers, the alcohol and drugs brought flashbacks and raging blackouts. She said she tried to kill herself.
"You knew something was wrong with you, but you didn't know what was wrong with you," said Ortiz, 27, from atop her twin bed in a plain dorm-style room, a black 4th Infantry Division ball cap on her head. "Nobody knew, and so you couldn't really handle it."
Ortiz is one of the new faces among America's homeless veterans.
They're younger than homeless male veterans and more likely to bring children. Their number has doubled in the past decade, and there are an estimated 6,500 homeless female veterans on any given night — about 5 percent of the total homeless veterans population.
But women-only programs such as the one Ortiz participates in are few.
"It is always hard to find a place or resources or help when you are homeless," said Sen. Patty Murray, a member of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee. "It is almost impossible if you are a woman. Most of the VA facilities cater to men, and you can't take a mom with two little kids and put her in the middle of a homeless center with 30 or 40 male veterans," said Murray, D-Wash.
The distressed economy only made things worse.
"People think we're just coming out of the military and we should have our stuff together," said Tiffany Belle, 33, a former Navy sailor who served in the Philippines after the Sept. 11 attacks and lives with Ortiz at the U.S. Vets program. "It gets really hard. Some people don't know where to go, what to do."
Like male veterans, many homeless female veterans face substance abuse and mental health problems. Many also struggle with sexual trauma that occurred in their childhood, in the military, or elsewhere.
Ortiz said she was the victim of childhood sexual trauma. In Iraq, she said she dealt with harassment from male soldiers who talked to her like she was a prostitute. She was a driver and her convoys regularly were attacked, she said.
She said she's particularly bothered by an incident in which she was 40 feet from a building destroyed by a mortar where she was living in Tikrit."
READ More:
http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_14030471On the Net:U.S. Vets: http://www.usvetsinc.org/ Department of Veterans Affairs: http://www.va.gov/ National Alliance to End Homelessness: http://www.endhomelessness.org/Iraq and Afghanistan Veteran of America's report on female veterans: http://media.iava.org/IAVA_WomensReport_2009.pdf
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