When Veterans Divorce Ep 61 (Part 1)

This one’s powerful. 

If you or someone you love has worn the uniform, you already know that the battles don’t always stop when deployment ends. And when veterans divorce, there’s usually a whole lot beneath the surface leading up to the split. 

 In this episode of The Splitting Smart Podcast, I’m sitting down with someone I deeply respect: Hon. Mark Johnson (Ret.), an Iraq War vet, Bronze Star recipient, and the judge on the Veterans Court in Riverside County. He’s seen it all—PTSD, moral injury, addiction—and he’s here to share what most people (even lawyers) miss when a veteran ends up in family court. 

We talk about trauma, recovery, justice, and the marriages caught in between. 

In this episode: 

• Trauma and healing: what a decade of Veterans Court taught Judge Johnson  
• The signs of combat-related PTSD—and how they impact marriage 
• Why reintegration is harder than people realize 
• When domestic violence can really be about untreated trauma (and what to do about it) 
• What spouses and lawyers need to ask—but usually don’t 
• Stories of recovery, redemption, and hope 

About Mark Johnson: 

Hon. Mark Johnson (Ret.) served as a Superior Court Judge and Colonel in the U.S. Army. He’s a decorated Iraq War veteran and longtime advocate for veterans who find themselves in the justice system, especially those struggling with PTSD and trauma. His novel, Scars and Strife, brings these stories to life through fiction rooted in truth. 

Stay tuned for Part 2 (episode 62): 

In the next episode, we dive deeper into veteran divorce, and what it takes to build real co-parenting agreements after military service and trauma. 

HON. MARK JOHNSON (RET.)'S BOOK: Scars and Strife – https://a.co/d/38sod6z 

MEDIATION STARTER GUIDE: https://mailchi.mp/2939c428981d/mediation-resources  

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Transcript

2:04

Well, Mark Johnson, thank you for joining us here on the Splitting Smart podcast. What a joy to have you here and talking about one of my favorite subjects, which is the law and veterans. You know, You spent so much time, more than 11 years, running the Veteran's Court here in California for Riverside County Superior Court. So can you tell our audience a little bit about what the Veteran's Court treatment program is for those who aren't familiar? I would love to, I try to advertise our Veteran's Courts because I think they're really important. A Veteran's Court is, they call a collaborative court. It's like a non adversarial court. It caters to veterans. It has a collaborative team that helps out veterans and the whole goal is rehabilitation. Ideally we keep the adversarialness out of the court and about 90% of the time we're successful. But, these programs are designed to rehabilitate veterans, get 'em back on track after their criminal case, and just see them off to a good life, which they have so richly earned, I think. Well, and when you say get 'em back on track, explain how they get themselves into the court system to start with and how do they land in Veteran's Court? Well, they get in by filing of, by the prosecution of a crime, basically they committed a crime. Call what there would be called justice involved veterans. The case gets filed. Hopefully if things work well, the lawyer's familiar with the Veteran's Court asks this individual, have you ever been in the military? Once he or she says yes, they come to Veteran's Court. You know what was really nice about that court is very often in our system, we feel like there's just too many cases to do a great job. I hate to admit that, but there's, there's too much... I had calendars of 150 cases a day, and you tell me how on earth I'm supposed to give individual treatment. You're not, I'm just trying to get through the calendar. And because if you don't, it gets kicked over to the next day and you got 180 cases. But in any event, this court focuses on vets and a vet would come in, I would refer them out for about a month to get psychological evaluations from our Department of Mental Health, report from the VA as to their benefits and any disabilities. And also the probation department would give me a recommendation of suitability for the person, and whether they have a criminal record. I mean, If we had that kind of information on every case we could get rid of about half of the crime because we'd start addressing the root causes. Right. That's the ever present question, isn't it, is how do you really rehabilitate criminals? But we're talking about a little bit of a different situation because in order to get qualified for Veteran's Court isn't, doesn't there need to be a connection to their military service with their crime? Yes and no. They had to have a mental health condition related to their service. That's been a big issue over the years with me and my court and nationally on whether you require a nexus, a connection between the crime and the mental health condition. I don't want to get too complicated here, but the Veteran's Court, we have military diversion, felony military diversion. They have slightly different criteria. But I tell you, I got to the point where I got so sick of hearing lawyers arguing about whether there was a nexus to military service. It became enough for me, does this man or woman have a condition related to their military service? If I got a yes, and they were otherwise suitable, they're in. They're in. And that's fantastic because the whole goal of Veteran's Court is to bring the treatment, right, the healing, and at the end of the day, expunge the criminal record, isn't it? As the, a Veteran's Court somebody graduated our program, I did whatever I could legally as a judge to make their criminal record look better. We'd reduced felonies and misdemeanors that expunged the conviction. And I feel that these vets, the vets that we took in and the great job they did working on their mental health I, I think it really merited this. What's important here and the reason why we're talking about it in the context of this Splitting Smart Podcast, which, you know, my world is about divorce and mediation and things of that nature is because when it comes to marriages falling apart, involving veterans, I think it's oftentimes it looks to be like it's not, is it related to, at all to a veteran service? The problem can look about a foot wide and 50 miles deep. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah, absolutely. Because of the background. So that's why it's so important, and I know you saw a lot of what really was going on with veterans, which drove a lot of the behavior that landed them in a, in a criminal situation. If we can address that and understand that I think it will help people who have family members who are veterans who are going through a divorce, whether you're a spouse of a veteran going through a divorce, or you think maybe you're headed down that road, to really understand what a lot of these factors are that the things that happen to veterans in service. And you had a front row seat to it. The only reason I laughed is I think on my bio I put there that Johnson was on the front lines of the battle. I was a little dramatic, I must admit. You're a veteran yourself and who better than someone like you to run a veteran's court and you have a heart for people, which is huge. I've spent 28 years in service. And I tell you, you see some of these 19-year-old kids that are guarding your rear end when you're over in a war zone, which I was in Baghdad, it's hard not to feel a lifetime obligation to help them if they have problems. Yeah. I, I really so much appreciate you doing this. Like a lot of attorneys, they're not. They're not attuned to this, these things at all. They don't even ask them like in family law, whether they're a veteran until they're maybe filling out some income and expense declaration. Right. Or something. If they have a mental health condition like PTSD or that something, especially if the VA has given them a disability, don't look for a connection to the crime. I used to hear the public defenders arguing any guy who drove by a military installation, there's a nexus sometime years ago. And then the DA wanted the guy to be screaming out the Viet Cong are after me. I was so tired of the argument. Finally I said, no, nexus, we're not doing a nexus. What you're talking about is, you know, there are so many things that can feed into choices that veterans make later in life. It doesn't necessarily have to be a direct, well, this happened to this veteran in this one instance in theater. Right. And, and therefore he committed this crime. There's a lot in between. Can you talk a little bit about, you know, because really we're, we're dealing with PTSD and overall trauma that's occurred. So what kind of cases did you see in the Veteran's Court and really what was standing out in terms of underlying trauma? Can you share some, some that might have been memorable? Our Veteran's Court started in 2012. The first started in the country in 2008, back in Buffalo, New York. Judge Russell, who's kind of a, icon in the collaborative court field. He had some a guy standing in front of him. He was running a drug court and there's drug courts all over the U.S.. And there was a guy standing in front of him and he just couldn't get through to this guy. And he had a veteran working for his court and the veteran was speaking with the guy, found out that this guy was a Vietnam vet. And Judge Russell describes how after a brief conversation with this vet and another vet that this guy walked into the court standing proud, looked like a totally different guy because a lot of these vets, they come into these programs. They just feel like nobody understands them. Judge Russell, based on that, started the first Veteran's Court and then it's spread. There's probably about 300 in the US now. Probably about 30 counties of the 58 in California. It's just important. Vets work best with other veterans because they feel like it's somebody that I can talk to, who knows what I've been through. See, and this piece is so huge. I think when a veteran gets into a tough spot, and gets the opportunity because it truly is an opportunity to get into a Veteran's Court and they get to stand before a judge who's also a vet and then they're surrounded by other veterans who've screwed up, so to speak. Yeah. That sets the stage for you're not alone. Yeah. Right. Someone's got your back. Someone's got your back. Yeah. It's culturally cool to say you see a veteran, thank you for your service. I'm not saying you don't say thank you for your service, but I don't think people really understand what your service really meant. And so a a diversion program and alternate court like Veteran's Court is, I think also helping to spread awareness to the community of, it's much deeper than it appears with veterans. So when we talk about this underlying trauma, what kind of cases stood out in your mind? The Veteran's Court itself, we took largely felonies because there were diversion programs. A diversion program is something where you basically divert the case out of the system. If the vet does a bunch of stuff they come back in a year, get the case dismissed. Now, Veteran's Court we had a big MO, a memorandum of understanding among

several agencies: 12:03

DA, public defender. Probation court, department of mental health, private attorneys, and we were handling the more serious cases. Now the only exclusions were homicides and sex offenses largely. Our court had a ton of community support. Attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, robbery, kidnapping. We took a lot of serious charges. I'd say no, I don't want to make the general public think we're just cutting loose a whole bunch of kidnappers. No, I will tell you the violence cases, I know I'm going to contradict myself a little here. The violence cases I wanted a little more. I wanted to see a connection to military service. You know, there's some guys out there, they just like beating on women. They lose their temper. They go to their fifth, they go to the weapon that men generally have over a female, and it say, I don't want those guys who... I don't care if you got the Medal of Honor. I don't want those people because it's not related to military service. But if I saw a nice guy that was married, decent person, no criminal record, and all of a sudden his, his young wife says, he's come home and I don't recognize the guy anymore, and he hits her, I will bend over backwards to take that if I believe it's related to his military service in a military mental health condition. Because you've seen, and what you're hearing is this isn't who this was. There's a shift, there's not a background of domestic violence, that sort of thing. Is that what you're saying? This person has had a, a shift in how they normally are, and so it's probably likely, resulting from some kind of trauma that's occurred. Is that right? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You asked like examples and I can give an example of a, of a Marine who he was up on the division staff. He was a, a warrant officer. Three, four tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. One time driving through a village in Iraq, from the second story of a building, someone starts shooting at him with an AK 47. So they did what Marines do. You're not going to just leave that there for the next convoy to come by. They, they were going to go and clear the building basically means capture or kill the people in there doing it. Well, he ran upstairs, kicked in the door, and there was a bed, the same room the shots came from. There was a bed in the room and he sees a rifle barrel, sticking out from under the bed. So he unloads a magazine 30 rounds into that. Well, they lifted the bed up. There was a 2-year-old and a 3-year-old down there. And, this is a, this is a good man. And he had trouble living with himself, even though anybody in the military would've been taught to unload that magazine. But actually we helped him. He, he's doing well nowadays, but it took a lot of talking about it... So he had that unbelievable trauma occur, so what led him into the Veteran's Court , what got him to Veteran's Court? He was a Marine with 24 years. One night in his house on the base his wife said he was out of it and suddenly he threw her against the wall. He jammed her, put a hole in the drywall with her head. Oh geez. Shoves her and is yelling,"where's your helmet corporal?". I guess I want to say to people, I'm going to take that guy. I know people will say that's domestic violence. It's this and that. I'm going to take that guy because I think he's a good guy and we just need to get him on track. And I was right. Sometimes what keeps you up at night is the fear of being wrong. But but you know, the important thing about him in his treatment just for somebody like him, he went into the program, started getting regular psychological treatment. One of the problems is that the, the Marine Corps or the First Marine Division put him out with a bad discharge and he wasn't eligible for VA services. These are all the things you work on and I guess it really illustrates the point that there's a whole group of problems here. You can deal with PTSD, but then you gotta deal with a co-occurring thing, which is generally drug abuse or alcohol abuse. When you commit an act of domestic violence, a lot of people don't realize it can go and be on a dual course. DV can be handled in the family court, but it's also a crime. Yeah. And so he was dealing with, it sounds like, a domestic violence situation in family court as well as he had a prosecution going on. Now, as a family law attorney who handles domestic violence, and we do quite a few of those cases around here. I think it's really important to understand this, that when you have a veteran and when it's risen to the level of criminal action, because not all of them, sometimes they're just in family court, the domestic violence action and, but often we'll see 'em go the dual path and so they'll, they're being criminally prosecuted. I don't see many of my colleagues who actually ask the question, should we put this on pause for a minute? I mean, get the protections in place of restraining orders. I think we need to have that happen. But also when we have a veteran, do they need elevated services? Is this one that is coming out of a service related kind of situation versus, you and I both know because you're a veteran doesn't mean that you're not a perpetrator of domestic violence because as you pointed out, you just simply like to take your anger out on women. There, there are those, and there's, there are those of every, every kind, right? But I think it's important for us in the family law arena to say, " wait a minute, what's happening with this veteran? Does he need help?" And you get the protections in place. But also encourage the attorney on the other side to say, "what are you doing for your client?" I've spoken in terms of criminal law, but one of the first questions a lawyer should ask their client is, have you ever been in the military? And that's how you ask it to, don't ask, are they a veteran? Some of them have a bad discharge or something, or some of them feel like they're, I'm not a combat veteran, so they'll say no. Oh, that's interesting. Have you ever been in the military? Yeah, that's the question. And then we can take it from there. But you know, because I've seen miracles, I really have seen miracles. I saw a vet a good guy retired as a first sergeant from the Marine Corps. That's a very high level sergeant. And he had horrible PTSD and he assaulted his wife and she, you know, next thing you know, he is got a ton of restraining orders and he is got a family law case and he's got a criminal case and something with his car and it's like, it's never ends and the, a lot of these guys who are kind of overwhelmed with society coming back here in the in the first place. Suddenly now it's like everything's coming in on you and nobody cares. We got him into our court and got him the treatment he needed. Talked about a lot of the things he had seen, the people he'd killed, and nowadays his ex-wife, they got divorced, but she trusts him so much. He and his son have a good relationship. He gave me a picture at his graduation of him and his son on a camping trip. These were all things that he was losing and lost. And he got back. Yes. And his wife trusts him now. She knew what he was capable of beforehand. He now works with vets and, you know, I love this. We create an army of these guys. We get 'em out there, we get 'em out there, and they can go help other vets because you know, Marines, they want to talk to Marines. If you've been over it in a combat zone, that's,, that helps. So he's talking to Marines now. He works, he was working for Mighty Oaks. It's a program that deals with Marines. They go through graduation after 18 months and I'm going to do whatever I can to help this vet to make his record look cleaner. Cleaner, cleaner. I love that. I think it's so important and, you know, we're going to link to all of your information and your contact sources and things like that for people who are listening. Because if you have somebody that needs some help or you might need help yourself we want people to at least have a resource where they can contact someone to get connected to the right place. And really that's what we aim to do with folks who have been in military service, even when they're on the other side of a case with us. If we have an inkling that this is, you know, way beyond what the normal pale is, we want to say to opposing counsel, "have you gotten your guy contacted with people who can help him? Because our goal as family law attorneys is, believe it or not, not to bust up as many marriages and drive up our billable hours as much as we can. But you know, really when you're doing the most service, how do we keep a family together? Yeah. And so our approach has always been when we were representing somebody who's been violated as a victim of domestic violence to say to the other side and their counsel if they have them. The idea isn't to make you the bad guy, the idea is to get you healthy so these kids can have a dad. The idea is to get you healthy. Yeah. So you can go on to, you know, either this relationship or another relationship and not do this again, break the cycle of it. But we can't, unless we link arms with people like you and the veterans that you have that serve other veterans. Hey, before we get back to the show, would you like me to serve as your personal mediator? You know, where I help you and your spouse or your soon to be ex navigate some pretty important family law issues, deciding things about your kids, how to split up your assets, your debts... all outside the chaos of the court. How do we do that? We do it faster, way more economically and with absolute civility and confidentiality. If you want to know more, go ahead and hit that link below and you'll find out how you can connect with me and we can talk about what's most important to you and your future. Now, back to the show. And that's what's so important. So let's talk for a second about, you know, from your time on the bench, the impact that combat related PTSD has when they come back here and they're in their marriages and they've got their families. What kind of impacts did you see? And I know for example, you mentioned a moment ago that when a soldier comes home, that there's some impacts that happen when they're, they come from out of combat and now they're back home. Will you share a little bit about, first of all, how that looks different today? I know it's different than when we had folks in World War II and Vietnam. What the transition looks like today and what kinds of things we tend to see because of the transition not being quite as decompressing as it used to be. In terms of differences, look, part, a lot of this is anecdotal evidence with me. These are just things I've seen. But, you know, there's a lot of statistics that actually put the level of post-traumatic stress disorder among Iraq, Afghanistan vets is higher than during World War II. Now. I just watched Band of Brothers. Yeah. That is a great series. Yeah. That's horrible what those young men and women went through, but it actually puts it higher... Iraq and Afghanistan. Yeah. Than the others. And I wouldn't have expected that, honestly, a lot of the Vietnam vets, they really, if you want to look at the, probably the worst example of a bad transition, it was our Vietnam vets, you know? I had a friend who went over as a battalion surgeon in Vietnam. He was patching up our soldiers, patching up Viet Cong north Vietnamese army. And then when he, first thing he did, when he came back to San Francisco, somebody spit in his face. I think the military's getting better. I would've claimed about 10 years ago. I mean, some of these guys, they, and, and women, I say guys for men and women. I don't think there's any like, kind of romantical correctness to that, but... Don't worry about it. Some of these, they come back and it's so fast. I mean, I tell you, I left Iraq, went down, sat around waiting for a ride home in Kuwait, and you know, like, like 72 hours from the time you start, you fly from Baghdad to Kuwait. I was in my forties when I deployed. I was different than a lot of these young people. I had a little more of a network and everything. But you know, you get some of these young reservists, the guard and I'm going to talk about them first because I think they're often the ones who get thrown back into the world the quickest. But you know, you're sitting there, people are trying to kill you. Maybe you killed somebody and 72 hours later you're back home. No, no real decompression time. In World War II they used to shove'em out of transport ship and let'em float across, head across the Atlantic or the Pacific for three weeks with other veterans and there was kind of a decompression period.. And isn't that interesting because you the best thing or one of the best things about it was that veterans had other vets to talk to, you know, like, and, and so, but you had that scenario on those ships for three weeks with each other. Now I may be biased because I was a reservist. I had 28 years in uniform, about eight active and 20 reserve. I did think that sometimes the problem was really the worst in the reserves and guard. But I don't want to take away, you get these now, the active tends to be a lot younger. There are younger kids, younger people, but you know, they're also living on base. If they got a family, for instance, their wife or husband, and the kids is home with a supportive network of people who are in the same boat. Where these reservists, they may be living out in Moreno Valley or something, and there's nobody around who's even been in the military, much less has a relative over there. I don't want to criticize too much because I, I felt that way back, you know, 20 years ago. The military's getting a lot better with transition programs and that, but I don't know if a lot of people realize who's fighting our wars. They're really, I think, the best Americans, but a lot of 'em are 19, 20 years old. They're kids. They're kids. They're very naive. They don't know how to do things. I will tell you, In our Veteran's Court we had mentors. These are older guys, fifties, sixties, that could talk to this kid sometimes, maybe to square 'em away, but they were there as kind of a friend. But help 'em also with these things like how to do a job interview and that stuff's important. With it being so fast, it's crazy. It's like you wake up and you're in a completely different world, and so, and then we expect them to just adjust. And I think another problem too is that nobody understands what you've been doing. If you start looking at the statistics from World War II down to now, I mean, it's like what? It's like 10% of America was in uniform or helping out in some way. Everybody, everybody had a family member in the military. Then you go to Vietnam, it goes down to about 3%. Now it's like, it's rare to find anybody. It's like a half of 1%. You know, sometimes a lot of these vets feel like people don't understand their experiences. As a veteran, when you've gone, you don't talk about it when you get home? Or is there, because it seems like, or maybe it's not said that way, but it seems like there's kind of an understanding among the brotherhood that you don't talk about it. Yeah. Because when you come out of, you know, overseas and all of a sudden you're back, put right back in your home within 48-72 hours, whatever it is, it seems like they don't talk about it very much. There are some jobs, those special ops guys where they're not supposed to talk about it. Yeah. You know, that old joke about, I'll have to kill you if I tell you, but... Let me say, that was not my thing. I was free to talk about whoever, you know, pretty much. But I will tell you, sometimes a lot of vets feel uncomfortable talking with people who they don't think are going to understand at all. I remember I got back some guy asked me if I'm, if I carried a gun over there and I feel like going, sure as hell carried a gun. Are you serious? I wasn't going to carry a gun. The problem is I was at a table of public defenders and I think, out of about seven of us, six of them all thought this was a reasonable question to ask a man. It is like this weird catch 2022. So you have the public now who really doesn't know what military service is the way our culture did years and years ago. Korea, Vietnam, World War II, and then you've got what I think, or I suspect, is a culture of really not talking about it to civilians. I told you we have limited veterans in our family. And the one I knew and was closest to was my grandfather who passed away a number of years ago at 87 or 88. He was a tough guy. He was Army. And I want to say he was 22 years old, 23 years old. And he was in in the group that they were going in to the front lines in France after D-Day. And getting into Germany. And then he ultimately was in the the freedom, uh is it battalions? I, I'm going to get it wrong. Oh, like the occupying army? Well, where they went in and they, they went into the camps. So but I tell you this to say he never talked to his family about it. And probably about three or four years before he died, he and I were sitting in the living room. I was visiting with him. He lived far away. So we, I didn't see him often. And we start talking and I have this funny little gift and skill that we always laugh and say people tell me things people do. So for whatever reason, he shared with me that he still took Valium.. And still had night terrors. At 87-88 years old. And he shared with me a little bit about what happened over there. And as I talked to my family and my dad about it, my dad was just dumbstruck because he said he never told anybody that in all of those years. My dad didn't even know that. A good friend of mine is Virginia Bloom calls a big time lawyer up in Riverside, but her dad, she describes the same thing with her dad. Dad was a Navy hero and you know, they, their ship was getting hit all the time and he never talked about it. You know, I do think a lot of people, I think there's a little bit of a two-way street, not because a lot of people won't ask it either. They don't, they're not supposed to say anything. I'm not supposed to ask. Just ask them. They don't have to answer. I mean, ask them. But sometimes you probably do want to talk about it, especially if like what you did, especially if it's a family member so you can pass on, I think this heroism to your kids. Oh, huge. He was a huge hero, but the family didn't really know it. A lot of times you're afraid to ask him too. What would you say would be a couple of good questions. I'm going to put you on this spot. Alright. I'm the guy who opened his mouth. In fact, that's a gift you have there. I never would've said that to anybody else. That's a joke. So if you say ask him, well, what would be a good question to ask that other than did you have a gun? They don't ask the questions. They don't ask them. And the, the vet's not talking about it. A good friend of mine is a guy named Ken Haley. Ken came to our court and he was kind of a mess. He was a real mess. And I know Ken's a good friend. He doesn't mind me. I've written an article about it. But Ken was a marine two per Purple Hearts shot in the chest. And he he came back, he got put out kinda lost. This is one of those guys. They're all, he's all Marine. He was a staff sergeant all Marine, and he was having adjustment problems. Ken was having such bad nightmares that he started setting his alarm to go off every two hours so he wouldn't go into REM sleep. I said, you know, Ken, I think you kind of need that sleep, don't you? But yeah, he, yeah. And then he had problems with substances. You need REM sleep. Right. If you don't get it, you'll go crazy. So he was a, he was afraid that I just don't want to go there. Ken picked up some serious like assault charges. Yeah. And drug charges. Well, he's one of our success stories. Because Ken was in, granted, he set a record. The program was 18 months. Took him three years to graduate. Now, Ken as of fall 2023, he had seven years of sobriety. He met this nice lady who rescues dogs and works with hospice patients. Met her at his church, asked me to perform their wedding ceremony, which I did in October, excuse me, November, 2023. Ken is now a pastor of a church. If there's one thing I could say, if you've got a family member, you've got a vet and your family needs help, maybe it's you, ask for that help. But secondly, I saw miracles in there. You get the right treatment. You tell me how, what other court on earth are you going to find the judge performing a wedding ceremony for a guy that came before him on felony? Right. You're not. And this discussion isn't just for folks, not just, but isn't limited to folks who have had some criminal problems. Because what we're saying here is you may not run into criminal problems, but the point is get help when this stuff is happening. You saw all levels from, I don't want to call it PTSD life, but where the symptoms were not as severe, doesn't mean it wasn't as serious, to severe PTSD where it was just getting in, in, in this veteran's way. So for someone who's, you know, dating or married to a veteran what are kind of the signs of PTSD, whether it's light PTSD or heavy duty to the point where, you know, life is completely disrupted? In the bench. I used to keep cheat sheets up there. But I'm going to, I'm going to put the camera out so we can see that you're looking at your cheat sheets. Okay. Let me tell you, this is a great site. This is from the National Center for PTSD. It's part of the VA. They're great, but okay. To get to the point where there's a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder, I'm going to tie this in to some of those things. You need the traumatic event. I've been talking men, but I tell you, sexual trauma's a problem in the military. That happens to women in more than I would ever like to hope in the military. And let me ask this before you go on. So, as you saw female soldiers come into your courtroom. Were there any in that program that had not been victims of sexual assault in the military? Or was it the majority? Every female who came into the Veteran's Court that I dealt with had been the victim of something. The VA, will give you statistics that 25% of the women who have come to the VA... and that now in my is mine is what we call anecdotal evidence. I kind of was afraid of that as a guy, really as a male. Well, again, I always feel like I'm going to ask something insensitive. My personality tends to be kind of a big, rough around the edges personality, and I'm afraid some little, little, young female there, I'm going to scare the crap out of her. That's serious. And so I will tell you, I had some great ladies that worked with me and they'd be the ones to go talk. And I would always ask them, how should I address her in court? And that helped. But you gotta have the trauma. See your buddy blown up. I was diagnosed with PTSD. I saw a car bomb right after; all this field of body parts. And some type of trauma. Then you've gotta have people kind of reexperience things they see. And I'll give an example. I had a vet in my court who he saw his buddies blown up and he was smelling exhaust at the time. Now, the trauma of the event gets attached to the smell of exhaust. So this guy, you know, he'd be out on the road and smell a bunch of exhaust and he may have a flashback to Fallujah back in 2006. The one we often see is this hyper vigilance. What does hypervigilance look like? Okay. I'll tell, I'll tell you another one. Okay. Iowa for a while was doing these firearm hearings, and that's if you lose your firearm in California Welfare and Institution's 51 50. Well, that's danger to self or others. You lose your firearm rights first time, five years automatically, but you can petition the court to get them back earlier. Well, this Marine, Marine sergeant with three combat tours his wife walked in, found him with a loaded nine millimeter contemplating suicide, and they had a small child and he called the police. Of course they took him in 51 50. Oh, he lost his firearm rights. So five months later he's sitting in front of me and he wants his firearm rights back and he's crying and he's saying that I can't protect my family. It's, I live in a bad area of Lake Elsinore and I, I can't protect my family. He's sitting at the council table and the door of the courtroom's back there and there's a deputy here. Yeah, but he, he's like jerking. It's like constantly looking back. He's, he's got a big open area behind him and he's constantly looking back. And I remember him said, talking about protecting his family. And I said, Sergeant, I said, here's the problem. I'm afraid you're going to shoot a trick or treater I called up our county vet center and one of their reps came over and I told this Marine, tell you what, you talk to this guy. You go get treatment for your post-traumatic stress disorder. I'll see you in two and a half. I'll give you your firearm rights if you're doing well back, halfway through the five years. Well, I forgot about the guy. About two years later, from that point, here he is back again and he comes in, he's got a therapy dog. His wife is sitting there with their child and uh, he, he was like a different guy. He said he got the treatment. He's doing a lot better. A lot of these guys do. We find the root of it. He was having a hard time forgiving himself. Sometimes you feel like he let your buddies down and they got killed. That survivor's guilt is a killer for these guys. Yeah, but his wife - he had her testify and she said he's a different guy. He's not hypervigilant anymore. They had him on medication and I gave his firearm rights back. This was a different man who came in there, and he also said that dog, this little yellow lab, like the one you got running around your office. This dog was part of it. I don't want to get choked up, but that's the time you kind of feel like as a judge, you actually did something that helped somebody, because often you don't have that feeling. You feel like you're just moving a vast amount of cases through the system. Then finally, his wife says, Your Honor. I would like him to be a little more romantic and stuff. I said, that was a question. I said, m'am, you married a Marine, let's not push it. Okay. I said, he's doing well. I thought that was funny. What a thing... be a little more romantic. What a beautiful story. I hope our cameras caught you, being a little bit choked up. You know why? Because I think it, it shows people need to understand how important this is and when you are put, I know you feel the same way I do about our roles. I feel like when we're put in these positions as a lawyer or a judge, it is a phenomenal responsibility that we have. When you recognize it and then when you do recognize it and you're a Mark Johnson who brings gifts to bear in that, those are your skills and gifts that God's given you. No doubt about it. And look, you're changing lives by just showing up and doing what you do. So I can't thank you enough for it, because I've seen it firsthand, you know? It is, it's beautiful. I would even add to that, you gotta have guts too, because there's a lot of people who are telling you, you shouldn't do this, or this guy's violent and that, and I tell you, 'em. You do the right thing and because they're always going to be whispering in your ear, telling you, don't do this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, we have a saying around here, just always do the right thing and let God take care of the rest. Talk about emotional detachment for a minute. What about that? Do you see that? I dealt with some issues. I'd be sitting in bed. It'd be a nightmare. I'd be seeing them, but like body parts and stuff. And sit in the end of the bed, what is it? Nothing. And then I'd go sit out there, maybe down about four shots. And and I just realized, you know, one of the things we say to a lot of veterans is sometimes they don't even know they got PTSD. And I guess as I'm sitting here talking to you, Kelly. I guess I was one of 'em because I just thought, I don't know if I thought it was normal, I just didn't, you know, you kind of feel like you're kind of a badass guy, and I don't want to be sitting there saying I'm having these problems. So, but when you're sitting up in the middle of the night taking five shots of vodka or tequila to go back to sleep. That's, that's, I realize it is emotional avoidance. And I see a lot of vets, I tell them now, I try to tell 'em about that. And I tell 'em, look, if you're out in the garage drinking yourself to death, you gotta ask for help because you know, they asking for help, the getting of the help is very li liberating. They can find freedom, but they gotta talk. They gotta bring it to us. We can help them. Yeah. And that, that emotional detachment thing, you hit the nail on the head. I think it comes with avoidance like crazy and in the personal development world, I know that Tony Robbins and through his business mastery program, they teach away from values. And running toward values. Away from values really go to avoidance. And so we'll do anything to not have to, whatever it is make, makes you uncomfortable. And that's kind of what was happening with you. I'd rather go take a shot and tell my wife, no, it's nothing. Right. And avoid the conversation. So, because I value avoiding it, these are the behaviors that, that I choose. Versus I value dealing with it head on and talking to somebody about it who can understand so that I can address this freaking pain and, and get past it. Right. So that, that's kind of the difference between. An away from value, moving away from it, avoiding, and a moving towards it value. And I had a friend of mine recently who was in a very high powered position. And he'd been in this job for 16-17 years. And he wanted to move on to something else and kind of retire from that and go into, you know, something else. And and I knew he was thinking about the retirement for quite some time, and I'm pretty close friends with him. And he texts me and tells me on a Monday that his last day at the job is on Wednesday. And I'm moving out of state in a week. And it was a little shocking. And the reason I'm sharing this with you, because it was like, well wait a minute. And so this strange behavior kind of developed. And I learned that he didn't even tell his colleagues he was leaving until the Friday before. Right. So it just, it was like this sudden kind of crazy situation. As I talked to him a little more about it because I kind of got ruffled by, you know, I thought we were friends. What are you doing? You're just leaving and you're not saying goodbye. And we had the conversation and he said to me when we got off texting, you know, we got on the phone and I said, what is this? And his response was, "A lot of people don't know this about me. You know, some of it. But I was raised very, very poor. And my parents got evicted all the time. Yeah. We were raised up in East LA and we were moving all the time." He said, "When I was in second grade, I went to six different schools because we moved so much. And I learned not to attach to people. And saying goodbye is not my forte." So we had a discussion about, do you see how that's a moving away from value? I'll do all these things over here to avoid saying goodbye because I learned as a child that it's really painful to attach to people and then have to constantly move on and start. So that's what this reminds me of is that that was a, that's an extreme case of emotional detachment. And, but then we translated over to veterans. I'm telling kind of a long story about that, but... Yeah. I've seen vets, vets like that they'll sit around talking like, you know, I've talked to guys who've killed 50 people. Sometimes I've talked to guys and you think they were talking about washing their car or something. I mean, we asked 'em to do some pretty horrific stuff. And then, you know, they're, they're going to try in their mind, and I'm not speaking as a mental health professional here, but they're going to try in their mind, but kind of sanitize it and they'll talk about it. But this guy talk about it like, it was, like I said, like he was washing the car or something. That just all part of the day's work. You know, that's not a part of the day's work. That friend Ken, I told you who's back in Oklahoma, and I'll have to tell him to watch this. Hi Ken. That was some of his problem there. He didn't want to face this stuff. One of the recognized treatments is cognitive processing therapy for this, for PTSD and, one of the things he did in the therapy was he wrote about all of his trauma, and he said he filled, filled up about 30 pages. And then he said, then the hard part, I had to read out loud. We gotta get it out in the open. We can kill it if you get it out in the open. Boy, are these important things to know. If you've got a veteran in your family and all of a sudden they're detached or you know. I mean, all these things are so important to understand and go, well wait a minute. What's going on? Instead of just saying he came back different, he's not the same person. Well avoidance in terms of PTSD is referring to, like avoiding places or things that remind you. But but they'll also avoid talking about it. And you know, you got some young lady who's probably not that much life experience, not that easy when dealing with this stuff. And here's, like I said, here's the guy and he won't talk to you. He just won't talk to you. I would imagine a lot of resentment builds up. Because there's, okay, your, our marriage is going down tubes and you're not talking about it. The human response to that is getting angry and why won't you talk to me? You don't value me. You know, all of these things. But it's probably none of those things. Right. Well, some of these guys, they'd go take a bullet for the female, easier than they can talk about this stuff. And you know, Kelly, one thing I want to say, if you get lawyers, they want to talk to me, I'll do whatever I can and I'm cheap. I don't charge anything. If you got a vet coming in here, I'm happy to sit down with you and talk to you. I'm not a therapist, but I, but I have worked with a lot of vets. And one thing I do have, I got a lot of connections. I have a lot of connections to people who can help a veteran who needs some things. You got your dad or your brother sitting out in the garage with some half gallon of liquor, pounding it down in two days. Yeah. It's time to, it's time to talk to someone. Yeah. I'd be happy to talk to that. I think that's fantastic. Why is there such a big substance abuse problem? What's it doing for the vet? Why are they running down that road so quickly? It's about double the rate among veterans as it is for the rest of the population. Same thing with the suicide rate. Now, this is a little, I'll say this a little anecdotal, but this has been my experience. You know, I remember I talked to a young lady who was addicted to methamphetamine. She had PTSD, she'd been raped on active duty and. And I asked her, what are you getting out of the meth? You know, that is the most destructive drug if the devil's got a hand in things, he developed that. And she said, "I felt like crap all the time. And meth made me feel good." And you know, one thing I think a lot of us don't understand is unless you've been there, is that, you know, these substances work. They actually do work. I can remember at some situation of great grief in my life and I used to make jokes that alcohol got me through it.