After the Tyler Clementi suicide, there’s been a lot of talk about how privacy invasions or privacy breaches might lead to desperate measures such as suicide. The veteran at the heart of a terrible privacy breach involving the Department of Veterans Affairs in Canada says that the violation of his privacy made him suicidal:
A war veteran whose personal medical files were inappropriately accessed by bureaucrats at the Department of Veterans Affairs said the experience left him feeling so terrified and helpless his wife had to stop him from committing suicide.
Retired intelligence officer Sean Bruyea, an outspoken advocate for soldiers, said he knew officials at the department had read and shared his personal information five years ago. That was around the time he was testifying against the new Veterans Charter, because benefits he had previously qualified for were being denied.
A Gulf War veteran, Bruyea described the impact of the breach on his already fragile mental health this way:
“I suffer post-traumatic stress disorder, and at the core of post-traumatic stress disorder is fear for my life, fear for my security, the security of my wife,” Bruyea told CTV’s Question Period on Sunday.
“So when we lost control of my personal life and they started trying to force these assessments in their hospitals, I was terrified, I was helpless, I was powerless and frankly Carolina had to save me a couple of times from doing myself in and she actually had to physically stop me. And that was hard.”
Read more on CTV.