Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) the new Chair of the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Personnel, pressed a panel of judge advocate generals for answers regarding sexual assault during her first hearing as Committee Chair for the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Personnel.
The officers, judge advocate generals from the Army, Navy and Marines were told by Sen. Gillibrand that she was “extremely disturbed” by the self serving answers they gave during the first round of question and answer. Those officers had testified that “convening authority” – the power by which commanders can overturn convictions handed down by military juries – was necessary to preserve “order and discipline” in the armed services. However, Sen. Gillibrand was not buying it and pointed out that she did not consider 19,000 sexual assaults and rapes a year in the military to be “discipline and order.”
“I do not understand how you can say that having 19,000 sexual assaults and rapes a year is ‘discipline and order’. I do not understand how you can say that of those 19,000 cases to only have approximately 2,400 even reported because the victims tell us that they are afraid to report because of retaliation and the blame they will get and the scorn they will get from their colleagues is ‘order and discipline’. And I really cannot understand how 2,400, only 240 of which go to trial, can result in your believing that authority is giving you discipline and order. It is the exact opposite of discipline and order.
And I’m very grateful for all of the changes that have been made. Each of you gave opening testimony that was very strong and thoughtful about the kinds of changes you are making. And I appreciate it that I heard from each of you that there is a zero tolerance. And I appreciate that I hear from each of you about the training that you are giving your lawyers and the training that you are giving your prosecutors and the training that you are giving your advocates. And that is all well and good, but if the convening authority is the only decision maker of whether a case goes to trial, or proceeds, and the only decision maker about whether to overturn a case – well then all that training and all those excellent lawyers and prosecutors you have don’t make a difference. It doen’t make a difference because the person with the authority is not the one who had that years of training in terms of legal ability and prosecutorial discretion and the understanding of the nature of a rape. That it is a violent crime. It is not ‘ask her when she is sober’. That is not what this issue is about.”
These hearings themselves mark the first time in ten years that Congress has looked into the issue of sexual assault in the military and the focus was two-fold. First, the committee is looking into the frequency and nature of sexual assaults in the military and second, they are lookig at the judicial theories that may be enabling and/or encouraging assualts. The primary concern being that the concept of “convening authority” discourages victims from reporting instances of sexual assault and that commanders are more concerned with not “rocking the boat” than they are will seeing justice served.
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