A Proposal to Remove Commanders From Sexual Assault Cases Gains Momentum |
For the first time, a sitting chairman of the Joint Chiefs has signaled that the armed forces could support having service members' claims of sexual harassment and assault be handled outside the chain of command, the idea being that they would be overseen instead by independent investigators. |
The Associated Press reported on Monday that Gen. Mark Milley has dropped his longstanding resistance to such changes. "I was adamantly opposed to that for years," Milley said. "But I haven't seen the needle move." |
 | | Gloria Guillen, Specialist Vanessa Guillen's mother, speaking in Washington last year. Congress has introduced sweeping reform bills aimed at the military justice system.Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press |
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Milley's comments can only be seen as a tacit acknowledgment that the current system of justice, often administered by commanding officers, has failed to reduce the rising numbers of sexual misconduct claims in the ranks. |
In the military, the authority of commanding officers to decide whether to investigate and prosecute alleged crimes within their units has been near absolute for generations. But in the wake of years of data showing systemic leadership failures in cases of sexual assault and harassment, the issue gained momentum after the recent murder of a soldier who reported harassment to her leaders. It also increased support for legislation that could take that power out of commanders' hands for good. |
A bipartisan group of senators introduced a bill on April 29 that would turn such cases over to an independent and civilian-led cadre of judge advocates general. |
For nearly a decade, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democrat of New York, championed this policy only to meet with stiff resistance from Pentagon leaders and Republicans. But this year Gillibrand gained an important ally across the aisle when Senator Joni Ernst, a Republican of Iowa and a retired National Guard lieutenant colonel, voiced her support for the bill, my colleague Jennifer Steinhauer reported last week. |
"I have been torn," Ernst told Jennifer. "On the one hand, I was a commander in the National Guard and know how important that role is. But also, as a sexual assault survivor, I know we have to do more. I never really wanted to take this out of chain of command but we are not seeing a difference." |
This latest move follows a damning report on the failures of Army leadership that both preceded and followed the murder of Specialist Vanessa Guillen at Fort Hood, Texas, in April 2020. "Unfortunately, a 'business as usual' approach was taken by Fort Hood leadership causing female soldiers, particularly, in the combat brigades, to slip into survival mode," the report said, where they were "vulnerable and preyed upon, but fearful to report and be ostracized and re-victimized." |
Another report released last week found that on two occasions before she was killed, Guillen spoke to her chain of command about a superior harassing her. In one instance, the superior suggested they have sex. In another instance during field training, the report said, a superior walked near her while she was "showering or cleaning up." In both cases, no formal action was taken by the Army. |
The Pentagon's own reviews have shown increasing numbers of sexual assaults reported in the places where many senior uniformed leaders begin their military training: the nation's service academies. In January 2019, three service academies — the United States Military Academy at West Point, the United States Naval Academy and the United States Air Force Academy — reported a sharp rise in sexual assault and harassment claims. In the 2017-18 academic year, the number of unreported sexual assaults surged by nearly 50 percent from the previous year. |
Gillibrand said the unreported cases were "a clear sign" that sexual assault victims did not "feel confident in the military's ability to adjudicate and prosecute these crimes without retaliation." |
When Lloyd J. Austin III became secretary of defense in January, his first act in office was to order a review of how the Pentagon has been handling sexual assault cases. The panel that was convened to study the issue submitted its recommendation to Austin in April, proposing that prosecutions of such cases be handled by independent investigators. Though Austin, a retired Army general, has not publicly commented on the panel's report, he has said that he would seek input from senior leaders like Milley before making a formal decision on the panel's recommendations and whether or not to endorse the changes Gillibrand is seeking. |
While there is momentum behind such a policy change compared with years past, it's unclear when Congress might take up the issue and put it to a vote. |
John Ismay is a Pentagon correspondent in the Washington bureau, and previously served as the At War reporter covering armed conflict for The New York Times Magazine. |
Afghan War Casualty Report: May 2021 |
 | | Afghan security officials inspect the scene of a bomb blast on April 29 that targeted a vehicle of the electricity supply department in Jalalabad, Afghanistan.Ghulamullah Habibi/EPA, via Shutterstock |
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At least 139 pro-government forces and 44 civilians were killed the past week, the highest death toll in a single week since October. [Read the casualty report.] |
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Here are four articles from The Times that you might have missed. |
 | | An American soldier aboard a Chinook helicopter over Kabul, Afghanistan, on Sunday.Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times |
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Day 1 of the end of the U.S. war in Afghanistan. The scenes over the weekend at Kandahar Airfield were almost as if a trillion-dollar war machine had morphed into a garage sale. Half-demolished outdoor gyms and empty hangars were filled with nearly 20 years' worth of matériel as the U.S. began pulling out. [Read the article.] |
"That tells me they may want to come back later when timing and circumstances are more advantageous to Russia." The Kremlin has withdrawn only a few thousand troops from the border with Ukraine, senior Biden administration officials said, despite signals from Moscow last month that it was dialing down tensions in the volatile region. [Read the article.] |
"This debate and our core principles of valuing innocent life, while taking only the most evil, should always be open to the light of day." The Biden administration has disclosed a set of rules secretly issued by President Donald Trump in 2017 for counterterrorism "direct action" operations — like drone strikes and commando raids outside conventional war zones — which the White House has suspended as it weighs whether and how to tighten the guidelines. [Read the article.] |
"Wherever we can earn money to send back to our families who are hungry, we will stay." Afghans make up the second-largest migrant group in Turkey, after Syrians, and are the most impoverished, doing the lowliest jobs while risking frequent detention and deportation by the Turkish police. [Read the article.] |
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