Veterans are training to be veteran mentors for the Veteran Treatment Court in Butte.
In preparing to start the court, mentors are being background checked and trained in issues such as domestic violence so they know what to expect when they are assigned a veteran.
Dan Murphy, a police officer for Butte-Silver Bow, will be helping mentors with the domestic issues they might come across when talking to their veteran.
"With this program we’re going to be able to really kind of dig into their lives and into their relationships, try to find out where the sticking point is, try to find out where the problem areas are whether that be a chemical dependency, PTSD issues, secondary trauma issues. All those different factors that go together to create this perfect storm of domestic violence and we’ll be able to dig in there and ferret those things out and hopefully, hopefully, get them past that portion and be able to address some of the other issues they’ve got that brought them to veteran’s court," Murphy said.
Mike Clague, the Butte-Silver Bow Deputy county attorney, said that a key principle to the treatment court is a well-trained court.
"We spent a lot of time training so it’s important to have veterans that understand both the process, you know they're advising their mentee as they walk through the process so it’s important they can answer those questions," Clague said.
Mike Vincent, the veteran’s court mentor coordinator, said that this court is important to him because after he served in the Vietnam War there were no services like this offered.
"Just by the grace of God I didn’t get in too much trouble but some of these guys are and we’re gonna help them," Vincent said.
