Jeremy Fusco

VA’s counseling center reaches out to LGBT vets to deal with additional community concerns

DAVID TAFFET | Senior Staff Writer
taffet@dallasvoice.com

Providers from the Veterans Administration, speakers and other stakeholders are holding a health awareness day on Saturday, May 19, at Resource Center to specifically address the needs of LGBT vets.

Jeremy Fusco, a readjustment counseling therapist with the Dallas Vet Center on Greenville Avenue, helped put the event together. He said attendees will learn what is available and will receive help with eligibility, enrolling in and accessing benefits.

“Historically, the VA has a good record of reaching out to the LGBT community,” Fusco said.

That’s true not just today but even during Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, he said. During that period, LGBT enlisted personnel weren’t supposed to talk about their sexual orientation, nor were they supposed to be asked about it. But once discharged, they were always entitled to equal benefits.

Fusco’s organization, Dallas Vet Center, is one of about 300 vet centers scattered around the country, with four in the DFW area. The services provided are confidential and even though it falls under the Veterans Administration, personnel at VA hospitals can’t access Vet Center records.

Fusco’s specialty is helping vets readjust to civilian life. One of the groups he leads is Open Alliance, a group for LGBT veterans. While other groups meet at the Vet Center office, this group is moving to Resource Center to become more accessible and more comfortable for LGBT vets.

Vet Center deals with a variety of issues including military sexual trauma, PTSD and anger management. Fusco said each of these issues may have an added dimension for vets who are LGBT, especially those who served under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell or those who served even earlier when gays or lesbians servicemembers could be prosecuted for being LGBT in the military.

The center has been around since the 1970s, and Fusco works with a large group of Vietnam vets. He said the services were actually originally designed to deal with their issues, including not being welcomed home when they returned from Southeast Asia because the country was so divided over the Vietnam War.

LGBT service personnel had to live a double life, either withholding who they were or receiving a less than honorable or even dishonorable discharge. For those who didn’t receive honorable discharges because of their sexual orientation, Vet Center helps get their cases reviewed for upgrades.

Fusco said the Open Alliance group is multi-generational and is beginning to include vets who enrolled after the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

The younger vets are good at keeping the group up on social events that get the older vets engaged in the community.

“That’s what I love about the military,” Fusco said, describing how group members work as a cohesive unit as they learned to do while serving.

More recently, military sexual trauma has become a major issue for Vet Center counselors. The VA recognizes that post-traumatic stress syndrome has a variety of causes — but not all are battlefield-related. Sexual trauma may lead to PTSD as well.

Any service member may have experienced military sexual trauma, but the extra element for gay and lesbian troops include men who are raped because of their sexual orientation or women attacked by men because of their sexual orientation or who have sex with men to hide their sexual orientation.

The VA relaxed the evidence that needs to be provided to make a PTSD claim, and cases that were previously rejected may be re-evaluated. Vet Center can help vets reopen those claims, and all vets would be eligible for free counseling at the center, whether other VA benefits were awarded from that claim or not.

Other groups offered are bereavement groups for families of servicemembers killed on active duty and civilian adjustment groups.

“Some people have trouble adjusting to the civilian world,” Fusco said. “Others feel a loss of identity.”

The LGBT Health Awareness Day is the first the Dallas office is doing specifically for the LGBT community

LGBT Health Awareness Day is May 19 from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. at Resource Center, 5750 Cedar Springs Road. Free and open to all vets or family of vets.