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In 2011, after several Simpson Thacher lawyers attended a Veteran’s Legal Clinic at the City Bar Justice Center in New York, the Firm agreed to represent a female veteran of the United States Army who had been sexually assaulted and harassed by her direct supervisor while deployed to a NATO outpost in Germany.  As a result, she was diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder (“PTSD”) arising from the repeated assaults, and has received years of psychiatric treatment at a local Veteran's Administration (VA) facility. The VA, however, denied her claims for a service-connected injury relating to the PTSD because of a lack of direct proof of the assaults.

Simpson Thacher lawyers represented this client before the Department of Veterans Affairs in connection with appealing the VA’s rejection of her claims for PTSD.  After compiling and submitting materials to corroborate the client’s account of the facts, the Board of Veterans’ Appeals found that our client had in fact suffered a “personal assault” while serving in the military, and that her PTSD was attributable to that assault. Our client is now permitted to seek compensation and benefits related to her injury.  The team included Elisa Alcabes, Jonathan Stradling, Christopher Freeman, and Christina Hoffman.