The Pentagon is overhauling how it handles reports of sexual assaults among service members’ children on base. The rollout has been uneven.
June 12, 2019
“We were like, ‘How is this OK?’” the mother of one 5-year-old girl told The Associated Press, which is granting her anonymity to protect her daughter’s privacy. She locked her kids inside. This was not supposed to happen again. Last August, Congress ordered the Defense Department to overhaul how it handles allegations of sexual assault among the tens of thousands of military kids who live or attend school on U.S. bases worldwide.
Like other armed services, Air Force representatives are helping form that policy. A Pentagon spokeswoman could not say when it will be published. Because military law doesn’t apply to family members, justice must come under civilian law. So cases on Army bases will be referred to state or local district attorneys who, unlike federal prosecutors, have juvenile justice systems.
“We’re going to continue to track this,” Speier said. “I’m not certain that this is enough. I’m very watchful in terms of observing what happens when these incidents occur. And they will occur.”The Marine Corps is updating its guidelines to include “language and protocols that address problematic sexual behavior in children and youth,” according to Maj. Craig Thomas. Publication is expected by year’s end.
School officials are supposed to be trained by Oct. 1, and a new incident logging system is scheduled to launch in the fall, the Department of Defense Education Activity said in a written statement. For now, the school system introduced aFour Title IX experts who reviewed the policies for AP said that while broadly they create comparable protections, their substantial shortcomings include a complex investigation process that relies on already-stretched school principals.
The full scope of the latest case remains under investigation. The AP interviewed two mothers of girls who were among the first to report and a third person who helped organize families. According to one mother, investigators stopped giving updates after relating that 10 kids had alleged abuse.
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