Case of autistic Marine brings recruiting problems to the forefront
 Faced with quotas, a few recruiters are taking shortcuts that allow those
unfit for service into the military.
By Tony Perry
July 6, 2009
 Reporting from San Diego -- A few days after he arrived at boot camp here,
Joshua Fry no longer wanted to be a Marine.

He was confused by the orders drill instructors shouted at him. He was
caught stealing peanut butter from the chow hall. He urinated in his
canteen. He talked back to the drill instructors. He refused to shave.

Finally, he set out toward the main gate as if to head home. He was blocked,
but now he had the chance to tell his superiors a secret: He was autistic.
Fry figured this admission would persuade the Marines to let him return to
the group home in Irvine for disturbed young adults where he was living when
he enlisted.

Instead, he was sent back to Platoon 1021, Company B. The drill instructors
became more helpful, and in April 2008 he finished the grueling 11-week
regimen and was sent to Camp Pendleton for infantry training.

Within weeks he was under arrest for desertion and possession of child
pornography.

Documents in Fry's court-martial case detail a troubled upbringing and a
Marine career that was both improbable and misbegotten.

But far from being a routine instance of a young man unable to adjust to
military life, the Fry case has exposed an awkward issue for the Marines and
other military services: Recruiters sometimes take ethical shortcuts to make
their quotas at a time when Americans have tired of the nation's wars and
finding recruits is difficult.

According to court documents, Fry's recruiter knew he was autistic. The
Marine Corps is investigating the recruiter's conduct.

Compared with the large number of enlistees each year, the number of
allegations against recruiters is small and the number substantiated even
smaller. But a report by the State Department, prompted by concerns in
Congress, concluded that even a small number of misconduct cases "fosters
distrust of the military [and] such distrust makes recruiting for all even
more difficult."

The Marine Corps has the highest percentage of substantiated misconduct
claims. In the last three fiscal years, 265 Marine recruiters have been
relieved of duty for misconduct, most commonly for hiding negative
background factors.

Autism is not among the conditions that automatically bar a would-be
recruit. But, if Navy doctors had known of the diagnosis, Fry would have
been evaluated more skeptically during the pre-boot-camp medical examination
and most likely would have been rejected.

In 2006, a psychiatrist for the Orange County mental health agency wrote
that, although Fry "is high-functioning for a child with autism, he exhibits
the typical characteristics of anxiety, impulsive behavior, distractibility,
very poor social skills and an inability to read social cues and interact
appropriately in social situations."

Fry, now 21, has already spent a year in the brig at Camp Pendleton. His
next hearing is July 27. He also faces a third charge added later:
fraudulent enlistment. The charge is based on Fry not telling his recruiter
he had received counseling for an addiction to child pornography. Under
military rules, he is not allowed to talk to the media.

His grandmother, Mary Beth Fry of Newport Beach, said Fry is not doing well.

"He's had a lot of problems being locked up," she said. "He's on
psychotropic drugs. He's been diagnosed as bipolar and is having trouble
holding it together."

When he was 18, his grandmother went to court to become Fry's legal
conservator. Under the conservatorship, Fry is prohibited from signing
contracts without his grandmother's approval.

Mary Beth Fry said that she told the recruiter her grandson needed her
approval to enlist, but that he ignored her.

A 35-page motion filed by Fry's lawyer details a troubled childhood: parents
who were drug addicts, an evaluation of autism at age 8, multiple stays in
foster homes, behavior problems at Newport Harbor High School, an arrest for
stealing iPods and a court-ordered stay at a facility for psychologically
disturbed youth that lasted 15 months.

Mary Beth Fry said she was unaware that the recruiter contacted her grandson
while he was living in the Irvine group home. "A lot of things went on that
I didn't know about when he was in Irvine," she said. He enlisted in January
2008.

Fry's lawyer, Michael Studenka, sought to have the charges dismissed and Fry
discharged on the grounds that he should not have been allowed to enlist
because he cannot legally sign contracts. A Marine judge rejected that
motion.

Studenka declined to discuss the case.

But Kevin McDermott, an Orange County lawyer who is familiar with Fry's case
and has represented military clients who felt misled by their recruiters,
said potential enlistees who would have been rejected a few years ago are
now allowed to enlist, as recruiters struggle to fill their quotas.

"These recruiters are under enormous pressure," he said.

According to the Pentagon, there were 2,426 claims of recruiter misconduct
in fiscal 2007, when 22,218 recruiters brought 319,229 recruits into the
all-volunteer services. Of the claims, 593 were substantiated. The Marine
Corps, with 43,562 recruits and 2,783 recruiters, had 211 claims of
recruiter misconduct, with 118 substantiated. The Marines were the only
service where more than half of claims were substantiated.

The Marines declined to discuss the Fry case but, in a statement, said, "We
want only those who are qualified: morally, mentally and physically. Any
recruiter who circumvents our layers of screening to place an unqualified
applicant into our ranks only does detriment to the quality of our force."

Mary Beth Fry said she hopes a plea bargain can be worked out that will
bring her grandson home soon.

"I just want him out of the Marine Corps so we can get him the care he
needs," she said.

tony.pe...@latimes.com

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-marine-autism6-2009jul06,0,77...