Tales of a coffee-holic: Deal with it

On Monday the U.S. Senate passed the Victims Protection Act, unanimously. This bill, which was introduced by Sen. Claire McCaskill and sponsored by Nebraskan Sen. Deb Fischer, as well as Sen. Kelly Ayotte, strives to put an end to sexual assault in the military, bolster victims’ rights and make offenders more accountable for their actions.

This legislation allows the victims of sexual assault to decide whether they’d rather have their cases tried in military or civilian courts.

A bill which would have made more drastic changes to the way that the military deals with sexual assault, introduced by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, was rejected by the Senate last week despite garnering votes from 55 senators. This bill would have placed prosecution of sexual assault cases outside of the military. Many of those in the military including the Pentagon and the Senate Armed Services Committee opposed the bill. They argued that military commanders need to maintain their power in order to cut down on sexual assaults.

Gillibrand and McCaskill have fought for around a year new over whether or not prosecution of sexual assaults should be taken out of the chain of military command.

Americans are all about supporting our troops with flag waving and tough talk, but when it comes to making sure those currently enlisted—both men and women—aren’t sexually assaulted I think we continue to fall pretty far from the mark. Those who enlist in the military and are willing to give their lives for their country deserve at least the courtesy of knowing that if they’re raped by a higher ranking officer that their allegations won’t be ignored.

Although any bill which seeks to address the outrageous rates of sexual assault within and between the ranks is a step in the right direction, I don’t believe that one which forces a victim to choose between prosecuting the crime inside or outside the military is the answer. This will only lead to pressure from commanding officers on someone who’s already experienced trauma and may be in a fragile state of mind to keep it “in the family” so to speak, where we already know that things aren’t being handled the way they should. No one could know what sort of retaliation or backlash from co-workers the victim might face, after choosing to go outside the chain of command.

This problem, which has plagued the military for years, was brought to public attention last year when the Pentagon released a survey which estimated that 26,000 people in the armed forces were sexually assaulted in 2012. It is well known that many of these assaults were not reported. The military only recorded 3,374 reported cases of sexual assault in 2012, according to the New York Times. The Pentagon estimated that 12,100 of the 203,000 women on active duty and 13,900 of the 1.2 million men on active duty had experienced some form of sexual assault, the report continued.

If none of this information persuades you that prosecution of sexual assaults in the military needs to be taken completely out of the chain of command, I suggest you Google some “stories of survivors of sexual assault in the military.” I hope you are disturbed by what you read. In at least one story I found, the woman’s attackers brought her to medical personnel, to whom it had to be obvious that she was violently raped. These medical personnel patched her up and told others to keep her out of public because an inspection was coming.

The medics did not report the rape.

No one can persuade me to think that victims of sexual assault won’t be pressured by their commanders and fellow troops to keep prosecution within the military.

I think we should all consider that soldiers who suffer sexual assault are real people -not numbers-who deserve to have their voices heard and not stifled by the chain of command which is already, obviously failing miserably at its job to protect those within the ranks.