One decade later, after a dozen House votes and an incalculable amount of frustration, the U.S. Senate last week passed a bill that would prevent military service members who were deployed from being stripped of their custodial rights because of their service. The provision’s author, Rep. Mike Turner, R-Dayton, first introduced the measure in 2007, pushing it annually ever since.
The provision, part of the National Defense Authorization Act, will now go to President Barack Obama, who is expected to sign it.
For the retired Kentucky National Guardsman, the Senate’s vote signaled the end of a long wait and multiple visits to Washington, D.C., to argue for the bill. To Slusher, of Frankfort, Ky., the measure was a matter of principle: Why, she asked Turner, did the federal government guarantee that she’d be able to get her job back after her deployment, but not her child?
For Turner, who first read about Slusher’s story in USA Today, the question resonated. A senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, he became something of a bulldog on the issue, wrestling support from three Defense Secretaries and pushing the provision through the House on 12 different occasions.
Each time, though, the Senate balked, in some cases because of a misunderstanding about the effects of the bill.
“Our goal was never that the service member receive an advantage, just that we eliminate the disadvantage in a custody battle of being a service member,” Turner said. “When someone is serving their country, they shouldn’t do it at the expense of their family. This sets them equal to the other parent and doesn’t penalize them.”
This year, though, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon, R-Calif., who is retiring, took up the issue. McKeon had supported the measure in the past, but this time, Turner said, he made it a personal goal.
“He had really become very frustrated that this couldn’t be done and decided to take it up as a partner and this year we worked it in tandem,” Turner said.
Slusher regained custody in 2006. Since then, she said, she has heard from countless service members who worried that something similar might happen to them.
The issue is serious enough that it was listed as factor in the Defense Department’s Suicide Event Report.
“Even those not affected are affected by the potential of it to happen,” Slusher said, saying the provision’s passage will help military recruiting and could help keep service members in the military.
Losing Sara, she said, was devastating. Before her deployment, her whole life had been devoted to caring for Sara.
“When I came home and she wasn’t there I didn’t know who I was or what to do,” she said. “I just sat in my empty house not knowing what to do.”
Slusher said it’s important that a federal bill is passed because different states have different laws regarding custody. Because service members are serving their country, it makes sense that a federal law address custodial rights.
Sara, now 20 and a junior at the University of Kentucky, said she’s been proud of her mother’s tenacity. For Sara, it’s about the principle of being able to lose custody while deployed.
“She’s just superwoman,” Sara says of her mother. “I’m really proud of her.”
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