Military sexual assault

The New York Times Magazine has this timely article by Melinda Wenner Moyer on sexual assault in the U.S. armed forces. Excerpt:

For decades, sexual assault and harassment have festered through the ranks of the armed forces with military leaders repeatedly promising reform and then failing to live up to those promises. Women remain a distinct minority, making up only 16.5 percent of the armed services, yet nearly one in four servicewomen reports experiencing sexual assault in the military, and more than half report experiencing harassment, according to a meta-analysis of 69 studies published in 2018 in the journal Trauma, Violence & Abuse. (Men are victims of assault and harassment, too, though at significantly lower rates than women.) One key reason troops who are assaulted rarely see justice is the way in which such crimes are investigated and prosecuted. Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, military commanders decide whether to investigate and pursue legal action — responsibilities that in the civilian world are overseen by dedicated law enforcement.

Some politicians have been fighting, and failing, for years to change these military laws. Every year since 2013, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York has introduced legislation to move the decision to prosecute major military crimes, including sex crimes, out of the hands of commanders and into those of independent prosecutors. And every year, it has failed to move forward. Historically, the Pentagon has vehemently opposed the idea, saying that it would undermine institutional leadership. During a 2019 Senate hearing, Vice Adm. John G. Hannink, judge advocate general of the Navy, testified that removing authority over serious crimes from commanders “would have a detrimental impact on the ability of those commanders — and other commanders — to ensure good order and discipline.”

But this year has seen the arrival of a new administration, the end of a 20-year war in Afghanistan and the United States military’s reckoning with many of the politically heated questions also being debated across America, including demands to change the names of bases named after Confederate leaders, accusations of racial bias and sexism across the armed services and right-wing backlash over the supposed teaching of “critical race theory” to service members. It’s a combination of events that could help shepherd into the Pentagon some of the most significant policy reforms in a generation.