Female veterans rebuild stability

There is a time each night when Teresa Martin will bolt awake from a dead sleep. Sweaty and scared, she sits up in bed remembering the night she was raped by three fellow soldiers while stationed in Hawaii.

• Comment (1)
• E-mail
• 

• Photos

Back | Next

Jackie Ricciardi/Staff

Teresa Martin

Back | Next

Jackie Ricciardi/Staff

Army veteran Teresa Martin works a production job at the Charlie Norwood VA Medical Center in Augusta. She is preparing to lease an apartment and enter college.

Advertisement

"Because of the rape incident -- it happened in the middle of the night -- it's like clockwork," said Ms. Martin, 46, who later struggled with an alcohol and crack cocaine addiction and became homeless. "I wake up every night between 3 and 4."

Drug dependence, post- traumatic stress disorder and homelessness are issues facing thousands of veterans across the country. But increasingly these are the problems of female veterans. Women now make up about 20 percent of those serving in the armed services, and in the past five years their percentage of the homeless veteran population has more than doubled, to 10 percent, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.

"It's growing tremendously," said Mark Carrico, of Stepping Stones to Recovery in Augusta. "They (the VA) have seen phenomenal growth in the number of women, homeless vets in relation to the total as a whole."

Stepping Stones to Recovery received a $499,000 federal grant this week to provide recovery residences for 20 homeless women, 16 of whom will be veterans with substance abuse problems. The Stepping Stones program will take women referred by the VA and from domestic violence and homeless shelters and place them in residences to be built on Interstate Parkway near Doctors Hospital. A series of programs, including drug rehabilitation and job training, are being designed to get the vets back on their feet.

"We are truly, truly grateful," Mr. Carrico said. "We believe we're going to be able to save a lot of lives."

Mr. Carrico said there are three key things the program should give the women: residential stability, an increase in skill level and income, and a decreased reliance on others for their well-being.

These are all things Ms. Martin said she needed when she came to the VA looking for help. She had been homeless for a short time after leaving the Army in 1989, her life having spiraled out of control because of her drug addiction. She was living with her mother in Athens, Ga., before entering a counseling program at the Charlie Norwood VA Medical Center, Uptown Division.

While living in the Uptown VA's domiciliary, she has received counseling for her post-traumatic stress disorder and now works in the hospital packing boxes of bandages. A portion of the money she earns is saved and will be used to help her when she leaves the program.

On Monday she took a huge step to being on her own again. Ms. Martin signed a lease for her new apartment and is preparing to enter Augusta State University in January as part of the VA's vocational rehabilitation program. She hopes to become a middle school teacher.

She knows now that the hardest part in her whole ordeal was making herself seek the help she needed.

"You have to want it for yourself," she said. "This is something you have to want, and if you don't want it you won't get it."

Reach Adam Folk at (706) 823-3339 or adam.folk@augustachronicle.com.