Expert: Jason Grabill - 5/22/2009

Question
I have a 21 year old niece who is currently living with us because she has burned all her bridges with other family members and can’t afford to pay for rent anywhere.  She just announced she has been accepted by the Marine Corps and will start basic training mid June.  When she was 15 years old, she was sent to a live-in program for troubled youth where she lived from ages 15-18.  During that time she was diagnosed with ADHD and Borderline Personality Disorder.  Since age 13, she has had bulimia.  She has been arrested for shoplifting and underage drinking and is a chronic liar.  This past December her parents paid $70,000.00 for her to participate in a three month in-patient program because her bulimia had gotten so bad that she couldn't control herself at all.  During this program, the doctors there determined that she is full-blown bipolar.  According to her, she has stopped going to the out-patient counseling that was provided and has stopped taking her medications because she didn't want it to show up when she was drug tested.  She admits that has not disclosed any of these problems she is still dealing with and says her recruiter told her "lots of people don't disclose their problems and are just fine and still accepted into the military".  She's supposedly going to MEPS tomorrow.  My concern is this: first, I truly feel that she is unstable and I really don't think the stress would be good for her.  Secondly, could she really get into the Marines without all of this information being found out later?  I keep hoping she'll get a call from her recruiter saying that they have found out about her problems and will not be able to report for basic training.  I'm sure she has lied about a lot of things on her application and of course that will eventually come out.  What kind of background checks do the Marines do on their potential recruits and at what point do they do these checks?  I would rather her be disqualified now than later when she could be in much bigger trouble.  Should I try to find out who her recruiter is and let him know what's going on?  Is there someone I can contact to stop this before it is too late?  I think all branches of the military are amazing and although I love my niece, I think they deserve better than what she can offer.  It scares me to think someone like her could get in.  Please let me know what, if anything I can do.  Thanks.


Answer
Kim:

 There is no way the Marine Corps would take her knowing all this information, and it will eventually come out no matter what.  I'd suggest contacting the recruiter yourself and letting him/her know exactly what is going on with her.  She's going to get a bad discharge for fraudulent enlistment when this is discovered.  You can likely locate her recruiter by checking the business pages.  If she doesn't live near you there are only a few recruiters per town or area, they should be easy to find.

 I agree with you that she would NOT make a good Marine, and would likely fail out of recruit training as soon as the stress level goes up, and be sent home with a bad discharge.

Jason