Human Rights Watch report on retaliation against sexual assault complainants

Human Rights Watch has issued a lengthy report on retaliation against sexual assault complainants in the U.S. military. According to HRW:

[O]ur research indicates that the six purported accountability mechanisms have not proven up to the task. These are: reporting to the commander; reporting to a commander in another chain of command; reporting to a Sexual Assault Response Coordinator at another installation; filing a Military Equal Opportunity (MEO) Complaint; reporting to the Department of Defense inspector general; and punishing retaliators for failing to obey orders.

These mechanisms are not utilized, are ineffective, poorly understood, hamstrung by jurisdictional limitations, not sufficiently independent of command structures, mistrusted because they lead to new incidents of retaliation—or all of the above. Further, little effort has been made to deter retaliation by holding wrongdoers accountable for their acts, despite a plethora of disciplinary options available to command.

The report, Embattled: Retaliation Against Sexual Assault Survivors in the US Military (May 2015), is available here.