Blind to Betrayal: Why We Fool Ourselves We Aren't Being Fooled (23 page)

In 2005, Sean began to stand up in public to halt a program to replace lifelong pensions for disabled veterans with one-time lump sums. Even though he was never going to be affected by the program, he wanted to protect others who would be given an “inadequate lump sum.” He testified to the Senate and then to the House of Commons, urging them to stop this replacement. The legislation passed over his objections, and anyone who opposed the plan was threatened with being called a “veteran hater.” After this initial speaking out, Sean was effectively deserted by two colleagues who had helped him in his initial stand, when they were both placed in highly lucrative positions in the government. In order to accept these positions, they had to adhere to confidentiality agreements that severely limited their ability to speak publicly on veterans' issues, leaving Sean as the sole opposing voice.

It was shortly after this that the retaliation started. “Bureaucrats in the department began denying and questioning my treatment, which had never been questioned for more than five years prior. Secretive audits of every aspect of my benefits were initiated, and delays for reimbursement for medical care placed great financial strain upon my wife and me.”

At this time, Sean's nongovernment medical team came to his aid. They warned the department that improperly scrutinizing and questioning what had never been questioned was causing him harm. They also underscored that any actions to remove his treatment would have grim and possibly fatal consequences.

Sean continued, “As a result, certain non–medically trained officials in government concocted an increasingly devious plan. They would invite me alone to a meeting, wherein I would be instructed to immediately submit to a week-long (or more) inpatient psychiatric assessment at a Veterans Affairs facility. Results of this assessment had been provided to the minister more than three weeks prior to the planned meeting.

“Essentially, the planned assessment would conclude that all my treatment would cease. If I refused the treatment, the minister was told and apparently agreed that all my treatment would cease. All I was told was that this would be a friendly meeting, with no agenda. There was an important stipulation: my medical practitioners would not be allowed to attend.”

Ultimately, Sean declined to attend any meeting that did not include his health care practitioners, and a change of government in 2006 brought this plan to a halt, and he personally appealed to the new prime minister.

He renewed his struggle to stop the lump-sum payments for veterans. “I believed that surely the new government would stop the legislation to replace lifelong pensions with lump sums. I contacted the minister's staff in an attempt to brief him before bureaucrats could get to him. Instead, my personal cellular telephone number was leaked by political staff to bureaucrats who wrote the new law. They called me and brazenly reported back to their bosses that they tried to stop me from seeing the new minister. These bureaucrats unabashedly wrote to each other of the conversation wherein they told me I would never succeed in stopping the new program.

“The Prime Minister's Office was then to call me days later. Not once but twice, they asked me to not hold a press conference that I had planned. I held the press conference anyway. The next day, the most powerful offices of the country, the prime minister, the Privy Council, the minister, and the most senior bureaucracy in Veterans Affairs held a meeting to deal with me and my press conference. What plan they implemented is still shrouded from public view, but the effect was to isolate me from having any substantive influence upon or any input into government.”

Sean was devastated and discouraged. He strongly believed in his stand in support of future veterans and reached out to a previous military commander for a reference: “He refused to be a reference. His reason: I had been ‘talking with the Washington media.' He was referring to an article in the
Washington Post
in the spring of 2006 which quoted me regarding the policy of not lowering flags for deceased military personnel returning from Afghanistan.”

It was only then that Sean could begin to question the immense betrayal by the organization that had promised to protect him. “Even with a once close comrade abandoning, in effect, betraying me, the military indoctrination held fast. Nonetheless, I began to question all that I had sacrificed in uniform. In typical black-and-white military thinking, either the government was undeserving of my sacrifice or the government was still sacred and noble and I was somehow deserving of the reprisals, the rescinded loyalty, the intimidation, the betrayal.

“I was in an existential dilemma,” he said. “Suffering PTSD and major depression, along with my physical disabilities, dragged me into a swirling suicidal vortex of confusion, self-loathing, terror, and worthlessness. Either I would succumb to the easy comfort of death, or I could emerge from self-loathing into a world that by now was a one-dimensional terrifying monochrome shade of betrayal.”

Sean credited two things for his continuing struggle—the love of his wife and the rebirth of compassion within himself for those who would be affected by what he considered an unjust system. “I came to understand that I could not just feel, but some portion of me could actually ‘be' compassion. I will admit it was not a large part of me, with so much pain, terror, anger, and confusion. However, the unswerving connection of my wife with me showed me that love, kindness, patience, all that makes our world a better place, is not something we just act out for others. Part of us actually becomes kind and patient, while a definable measure in us becomes loving.

“Calling out to change the system to protect others became my new noble cause. Even while I struggled with a depression-tattered ego and negligent self-worth, as only PTSD can warp our own perception of our value to others, I inched forward toward meaning and away from fear.

“I made a personal commitment to myself: I would attempt to prevent what happened to me from ever happening to another soldier less resourceful or fortunate than me.

“To do this, my first step must be stand up to government. I knew that confidential information surrounding the disabilities and benefits of veterans was the most personal and intimate information one could have on a proud veteran and once proud soldier. If this private part of their lives was taken from them and distorted in malicious proportions, I knew that so many of these fragile veteran soldiers would succumb to the inevitable messages of self-destruction. The heart of these messages is inevitably poisonous helplessness and humiliation, resulting from having lost control of the most intimate part of themselves.

“In effect, having someone or something else take away what is most important to us is akin to suffering a spiritual incontinence over which we are powerless to prevent the spilling of our souls. Wounded soldiers are especially vulnerable to such a powerless spiritual disease.”

So Sean began to write. First, he wrote to senior bureaucrats (who never responded) and then to the public to bring awareness of a system that betrayed its promises to the most vulnerable, the most silent: disabled veterans and their families. He also began to collect evidence about what that system had done to him. “Days became months. In our cold, damp, and increasingly crowded basement, I sorted, read, and cried profusely, fighting against the pull to believe what distortions of me they freely passed around like confetti at a wedding. I fought to make sense of what has now become more than 20,000 pages that bureaucrats proudly wrote, shared, briefed, and filed away in their own personal vaults . . . all about me.

“Multiple senior bureaucrats, including the highest ranking, the deputy minister, opened dedicated files on me. Briefing notes for ministers were circulated like supermarket tabloids to more than 75 executive bureaucrats (Canada's department of Veterans Affairs has only 1,400 employees in its Head Office and only 4,000 employees total). Two ministers, a Parliamentary secretary, and even my member of Parliament either saw the Briefing Notes or were briefed according to their contents. The Prime Minister's Office, the highest office of our land, was even given similar information.

“Ultimately, more than 857 individuals (those whom I know of) shared and accessed private information on me.

“This was all too overwhelming, all too helpless, all too humiliating. I had to grow in order to survive. I had to believe that life was more than distorted medical summaries written by non–medically trained bureaucrats. I had to believe that my right to say no was more powerful and more sacred than any trite and inaccurate summary of what others thought I was. I am . . . I had to be, more than that.”

Sean had to grow in order to survive the betrayal—something that all of us have to do to cope with such enormous grief and anger. And Sean did grow. In the face of his betrayal, Sean continued to collect documents and to speak out. He began to write articles to show the government that it could not push disabled soldiers around. More than forty published (newspaper) articles later, he enrolled in a Masters of Ethics program in Ottawa. Then he was selected to present three papers at an academic forum on Military and Veterans Health.

And the government? “Since my revelations of what became known as the privacy scandal came to public light, four senior executives intimately connected to this privacy scandal have resigned with full pension and benefits. However, a number of key culprits remain. Being the first individual to publicly call for an Ombudsman in 2004, I was relieved to see such an office was created in 2007. It is still quite powerless, and the will of the senior officer is less than admirable, but at least the office exists.

“I have also received confirmation that the interim public service integrity commissioner has reopened my complaint and determined that indeed the previous officer should never have refused to investigate. The office has determined that on four important counts, Veterans Affairs committed substantial wrongdoing. Will this integrity officer do something to change the system? I doubt it, but I will try my best to make sure he does.

“Has anyone been punished? Will any bureaucrat be dissuaded from doing the same to another? Have injured soldiers and veterans been treated with greater dignity? Has the program I originally criticized been rescinded?

“Sadly, no to all of these.”

Sean may never be able to come to terms with the betrayal of the military and his government, but in becoming aware of and standing up to that betrayal, Sean has discovered new life in himself and has discovered new allies: “The media became an ally. It even became a friend and a compassionate advocate for not just me but for the very individuals I was trying to help: injured soldiers and their families. This was an incredible shift for a country that does much to ignore its veterans except during Remembrance Day. Almost every editorial board of every major daily newspaper in Canada condemned the privacy violations. Newspapers, radio, and TV carried the story over a six-week period.

“With this information, normally passive Canadians came alive. They wrote letters to members of Parliament, they wrote letters to newspapers, and they wrote to me, encouraging me to keep fighting, to continue helping others. The Canadian government may have abandoned me, but many Canadians did not. I felt a sense of growing pride and maybe peace that perhaps my military sacrifice and my sacrifice to help other veterans were not in vain. The betrayal of the system became less monolithic and more a manifestation of greedy, small people. In contrast, so many more good people helped me stand up to those who would otherwise take my dignity.

“Will public education eventually change this culture of immunity in government? Will Canada sacrifice for its soldiers the way its soldiers sacrificed for Canada?

“I can only answer that I hope so. This may not be a definitive answer. However, remember it was hope that kept me alive in the darkest days when bureaucrats tried to silence my voice. It was hope that kept my wife and me close when we felt our most alone, and it was hope that has given us a new life, in more ways than we could have ever hoped for.”

Sean's story is one of courage and compassion in the face of betrayal and retaliation. His story has much to teach all of us about the struggles of becoming aware of betrayal and facing it squarely.

On the floor of the Canadian House of Commons, Veterans Affairs minister Jean-Pierre Blackburn issued the apology.
^4.
Blackburn said that he and the government are “truly sorry for the needless suffering and anxiety caused by the dissemination of the medical and financial files among hundreds of public servants.” Bruyea accepted the apology, wisely observing, “That helps a lot. . . . It's not about money, it's about fixing the system.”
^5.

Speaking out about betrayals is risky, but this awareness and honesty have the potential to fix the system. Silence keeps the injustices intact. As a society, we pay enormous attention to some suffering and ignore equally horrific suffering. We ignore suffering when we respond with betrayal blindness. This is understandable, given what we know of human psychology, but we can do better in this world by purposely paying attention to betrayal and righting the wrong.