Vanessa Guillén’s case has become a turning point in the long campaign to address sexual assault in the military, prompting SenGillibrand, joniernst & RepSpeier to introduce anti-harassment legislation. MemorialDay
—a 38 percent jump from a similar survey conducted in 2016. The anonymous survey revealed that one quarter of all women across the military experienced sexual harassment, with increases across all four branches of the military and highest in the Marine Corps. Most of the assaults happened to service members 17 to 24, by perpetrators known to the victims. The majority of these assaults occurred at a military facility or onboard a ship.
“We have got to get to the heart of that issue, and that simple move will be by taking the prosecution — that decision making authority—out of that commander’s hands [and] putting it with a specialized prosecutor,” said Sen. Gillibrand, who chairs of the Senate Armed Services Personnel Subcommittee. Sen. Gillibrand plans to put the bill into the National Defense Authorization Act, before the Senate this fall.
The Independent Review Commission on Sexual Assault in the Military has recommended taking sexual assault. The IRC is chaired by Lynn Rosenthal—a longtime advocate for survivors of gender violence and the White House adviser on violence against women during the Obama administration. On April 23, the IRC recommended that independent judge advocates, not commanding officers, should decide whether to pursue legal charges in sexual assault cases. The independent military lawyers would report to a special victims prosecutor, who would decide whether to court-martial those accused of sexual assault, sexual harassment and hate crimes. The IRC also recommended that substantiated sexual harassment cases result in mandatory separation from the military.
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