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On August 10, 2022 President Biden signed the historic PACT Act to aid all veterans exposed to toxic chemicals during service and who have suffered real consequences. Today we are redefining veteran and service and suffering to include women and children who lived at Camp Lejeune.
PACT includes provisions regarding Camp Lejeune that are much in need. The Camp Lejeune Justice Act helps a million veterans and their families who served on the North Carolina Marine base over a 50+ year period (1953-1985). These veterans and their families unknowingly lived in a world where water was poisonous, causing so many to suffer vast consequences. Now, they can sue the government for physical, financial, and emotional damages, on behalf of the lost and living.
A recent opinion piece on the Lejeune tragedy suggests women and children may have suffered worst of all. Suffice it to say, they suffered differently. A government study in 2003 determined the rate of certain birth defects at Camp Lejeune was 265 times higher than the national average.
Mothers exposed to contaminated water while living on the base began reporting miscarriages and stillbirths. The VA officially added miscarriages to its list of conditions linked to Camp Lejeune in 2003. But it didn’t offer any recourse.
In 2013, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) conducted a lookback study, incomplete for lack of data, that determined babies born to mothers who drank the tap water while pregnant were four times more likely to have serious birth defects like spina bifida.
At the time, the CDC was able to confirm 15 cases of spina bifida and anencephaly, 24 oral clefts and 13 cancers. More than 100 cases of birth defects and childhood cancers were reported, but only 52 cases could be confirmed by the CDC through medical records. Children were lost to leukemia before they learned how to spell Mississippi.
“My name is Audrey. There are hundreds of babies that died at Camp Lejeune. I cannot find one study that was done on the children that were stillborn. Why do you think this is? My child was one of those babies and this mystery still haunts and hurts me to this day. One person has located over two hundred death certificates that say cause of death is ‘unknown.’
Nothing compares to the quick stab of lost pregnancy in an otherwise healthy woman. These women had to navigate through unanswered questions about an epidemic of babies stillborn or brought to life without limbs and organs then gone within the day, buried on the outskirts of camp in a largely unmarked national cemetery called “Baby Heaven.” So many parents suffered this loss; it was not okay.
Even though Camp Lejeune is in the rearview now, you still are owed solace and long-awaited restitution. The day has come where you can finally seek justice.
Camp Lejeune wasn’t a war zone during the water contamination years but rather a sprawling community of 1,000,000 cumulative soldiers – men, women and children – all exposed to well water polluted by groundwater where poison chemicals seeped from nearby waste disposal sites and a dry cleaning facility.
It took the U.S. military decades to admit it knew the problem even existed. It did nothing for so long.
Now it’s their turn to make a sacrifice on your behalf.
How Can We Help?
A Case for Women supports all veterans of Camp Lejeune, believing women and your children are included, living and dead. We would be honored to listen to your story and guide you through the next steps toward starting a claim, finding a lawyer for you, and pursuing maximum financial compensation.
And our lawyers only work on contingency. That means you pay nothing unless your attorney wins a verdict or negotiates a settlement on your behalf. If not, you still pay nothing. If you don’t walk away happy, we don’t either, but your attorney pays all the expenses.
You already won every medal in the book. Now you deserve to win something to put in the bank.
