{"id":6499,"date":"2019-03-07T23:01:00","date_gmt":"2019-03-08T07:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=6499"},"modified":"2019-03-08T03:12:12","modified_gmt":"2019-03-08T11:12:12","slug":"post2-37","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=6499","title":{"rendered":"“Senator Martha McSally\u2019s Revelation of Assault May Reopen Debate”, The New York Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Jennifer Steinhauer and Richard A. Oppel Jr., 7 March 2019<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

WASHINGTON \u2014 A Republican senator\u2019s revelation of her sexual assault while serving in the Air Force is likely to renew debate over how to best get justice for victims, an issue that seemed settled several years ago when Congress adjusted conduct codes that dictate military justice.<\/p>\n

Long before the #MeToo movement brought sexual violence and harassment to the fore, women in the military and their advocates had highlighted such misconduct in the armed forces. In 2005, Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine and at the time a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, questioned a top Army official about the issue, and he dismissed her with annoyance.<\/p>\n

In the intervening years, Congress has sought to address the matter, which leaves a large number of veterans \u2014 women and men alike \u2014 in despair long afterward.<\/p>\n

But it stopped short of a plan championed in 2013 by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, that would have taken sexual assault cases outside the military chain of command. Military prosecutors, rather than accusers\u2019 commanders, would have the power to decide which cases to try.<\/p>\n

Many lawmakers, including Senator Martha McSally, Republican of Arizona, who spoke candidly on Wednesday about her rape<\/a> before the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Personnel, would like Congress to take another look at the issue.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis problem doesn\u2019t seem to be getting better,\u201d Ms. Collins said. \u201cSo maybe we need to try another approach.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Pentagon report for the 2017 fiscal year<\/a> found that the Defense Department received 6,769 reports of sexual assault involving service members as either victims or subjects of criminal investigation, a nearly 10 percent increase over the previous year. That could suggest that more people are reporting their assaults, the goal of the earlier legislation.<\/p>\n

In the past few years, women who have run for office have increasingly learned that revealing past traumas is not the political liability that many have perceived. Many have spoken openly during their campaigns about their assaults, abortions, domestic abuse and family tragedies, finding it as a way to connect with others who have suffered similar experiences. \u201cShe comforted and inspired millions,\u201d said Representative Ayanna S. Pressley, Democrat of Massachusetts, who has long shared her own history of assault<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Ms. McSally\u2019s revelations were carefully planned. At a meeting a week ago on Capitol Hill, she stunned several military victims\u2019 rights advocates who had come to discuss military justice overhaul when she disclosed her assault.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe said, \u2018I\u2019m a survivor of military sexual trauma,\u2019\u201d said Stacey Thompson, who was sexually assaulted in the Marines and later founded #MetooMilitary<\/a>, a victims\u2019 rights group. \u201cAnd she said she was just appalled at the way it was received\u201d when she finally confided it to people inside the military, Ms. Thompson said.<\/p>\n

Noting that Ms. McSally retired as a colonel and was one of the most well-known officers in the Air Force as the branch\u2019s first female pilot to fly in combat, Ms. Thompson added: \u201cIf it happens at that level, imagine how often it happens at the E-1, E-2 or E-3 level,\u201d referring to the lowest enlisted ranks. \u201cIf they didn\u2019t take her seriously, and they did not do anything about it at her level, why would we think they would have done anything about it at lower-ranking levels?\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms. Thompson said she and several others in the meeting did not press for details: \u201cAs a survivor, I don\u2019t think anyone in the room felt the need to ask more.\u201d<\/p>\n

Don Christensen, a retired colonel who served as a prosecutor, defense counsel and military judge in the Air Force for 23 years, said that word of Ms. McSally\u2019s rape never circulated among the Air Force\u2019s military justice community.<\/p>\n

The Air Force tries very hard to stifle accusations against senior officers, and if the accusation was never disclosed outside Ms. McSally\u2019s chain of command, then it could have easily been suppressed, said Mr. Christensen, who served as the Air Force\u2019s chief prosecutor from 2010 to 2014 but left the military after an Air Force general threw out a conviction he had won against a pilot over sexual assault.<\/p>\n

Had the accusation ever been shared with members of the Air Force\u2019s Judge Advocate General\u2019s Corps \u2014 the lawyers who serve as legal advisers, prosecutors, defense lawyers and judges \u2014 it would have been difficult to stamp out, given her prominence at the time and given how small the corps was, said Mr. Christensen, who is now the president of Protect Our Defenders, a military victims\u2019 rights group.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody knew who McSally was,\u201d he said. \u201cShe\u2019s kind of an icon in the military. I just don\u2019t think it ever got to the legal world.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Until 2006, the military\u2019s Uniform Code of Military Justice contained a five-year statute of limitations for rape cases. But Congress eliminated that from 2006 on; however, cases before that were still subject to the five-year statute, Mr. Christensen said.<\/p>\n

If Ms. McSally\u2019s rape occurred after Congress took action, then military investigators could begin an inquiry into her accusations on their own. \u201cBut it would be difficult without her cooperation,\u201d Mr. Christensen said.<\/p>\n

During her testimony on Wednesday, Ms. McSally indicated that she believed the issue of sexual assault should stay within the military chain of command.<\/p>\n

\u201cI share the disgust of the failures of the military system and many commanders who failed in their responsibilities,\u201d she said in prepared remarks. \u201cBut it is for this very reason that we must allow \u2014 we must demand \u2014 that commanders stay at the center of the solution and live up to the moral and legal responsibilities that come with being a commander.\u201d<\/p>\n

A spokeswoman for Ms. Gillibrand, whose 2013 proposal took the opposite tack, said that the senator planned to introduce it again this year. \u201cWe do believe the hearing will help create momentum for Congress to do more to address sexual violence in the military,\u201d said the spokeswoman, Whitney M. Brennan. She noted that Ms. McSally\u2019s testimony brought to light other issues, too, such as fear of collateral misconduct charges for more minor infringement \u2014 underage drinking or fraternization, for example \u2014 chilling the willingness of victims to report.<\/p>\n

Other experts suggested that Ms. Gillibrand\u2019s plan deserved another look. \u201cThere is general agreement on this even by those defending the Pentagon\u2019s efforts that they continued to not have a grip on this,\u201d said Eugene R. Fidell, a senior research scholar at Yale Law School. \u201cThe numbers suggest that sexual misconduct is continuing essentially unabated. We have been at this for a generation; we are so close to where we started from.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jennifer Steinhauer reported from Washington, and Richard A. Oppel Jr. from New York.<\/em><\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jennifer Steinhauer and Richard A. Oppel Jr., 7 March 2019   WASHINGTON \u2014 A Republican senator\u2019s revelation of her sexual assault while serving in the Air Force is likely to renew debate over how to best get justice for victims, an issue that seemed settled several years ago when Congress adjusted conduct codes that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001004,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6499"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001004"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6499"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6535,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6499\/revisions\/6535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}