After a Spike in Sexual Assaults on Troops, Is Real Change on the Way? – By Jennifer Hlad (Defense One) / Dec 7, 2022
The 2023 defense policy bill will close a prosecutorial loophole that advocates say has been preventing justice for victims of rape, harassment, and other crimes.
Part 1 of “The Threat Within,” a three-part series on sexual assault in the U.S. military.
This report has been updated to reflect the released version of the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act.
When the Pentagon’s annual sexual-assault report landed on Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s desk in September, its findings left the longtime reform advocate neither happy nor surprised: fiscal 2021 brought a sharp increase in sexual assaults, as well as other disturbing trends.
“Every year we pass meaningful reforms to improve outcomes, and the DOD is not implementing them,” Gillibrand, D-NY, told Defense One. The Pentagon, she said, “just hasn’t taken this issue seriously.”
But the Senate Armed Services Committee member said this year’s defense policy bill will bring changes that just might make future reports less bleak
Those fighting to reduce sexual assault in the ranks—Gillibrand for a decade, Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., and Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio, even longer—had long been unable to dent the Pentagon’s insistence that the prosecution of such assaults must be left to the accused attacker’s commanding officer. Good order and discipline required this arrangement, military leaders insisted, despite evidence that victims don’t trust commanders to carry out justice and several high-profile cases that illustrated why.
