Did the Pentagon mislead Congress about sexual assault?

April 18, 2016 1:58 PM

Protect Our Defenders, a victim advocacy group, uses FOIA to fact check military claims on sexual assault.

In an attempt to prevent support for sweeping changes to the military justice system, members of the military and its Congressional supporters argued that military commanders were more likely to take sexual assault cases to trial than civilian jurisdictions. POD questions the reality of this statement, or, at a minimum, questions the facts that the military and its supporters relied on when making this claim.

posted by youdontmakefriendswithsalad (4 comments total)

I just saw this from Vox, as well, and have followed the issue for over a decade as the Pentagon has tried to fight reality. The latitude given to Convening Authorities (those high-up Generals and Admirals that determine whether a Courts Martial will happen) to decide whether to allow sexual assault cases to proceed, which is independent of the legal merits of the case, has been a continued embarrassment to the military as even in strong cases offender after offender gets let off the hook (or has their sentence reduced or even commuted). The harassment and intimidation of the reporting victims by the commands thereafter is even worse. It's long past time to shine a heaping helping of sunshine on this topic, and remove military commanders from the prosecutorial equation of these cases altogether.
posted by mystyk at 2:16 PM on April 18, 2016 [5 favorites]

If the question starts "Did the Pentagon mislead..." the answer is likely yes. See also The CIA.

I'm a veteran, and the amount of misogyny in the entire military system was shocking even to an awws shucks boy out of Southern Illinois. One of the key levers pulled to manipulate young infantrymen (my occupational specialty) to get tougher was challenging their "manhood." Whether this was calling lagging troops "fags" or asking if their "pussy hurt," it was unrelenting. I strongly believe this hyper-male environment, coupled with lowering entry requirements to staff for the Bush wars lead directly to the current military rape culture.

How the military moves past this with new female commissions in the infantry on the horizon, I don't know. But the whole system needs to grow up, as this has very real and tragic consequences.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 2:39 PM on April 18, 2016 [7 favorites]

Higher-ups and career men in organizations will always protect the organization.
posted by resurrexit at 2:41 PM on April 18, 2016

Mod note: One comment deleted. I can't believe I need to say this but how about we skip the hilarious pussy jokes in a thread about sexual assault?
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 3:25 PM on April 18, 2016 [2 favorites]