Advocacy Letter - 06/10/15
Source: The Leadership
Conference on Civil and Human Rights
Recipient: U.S. Senate
Recipient: U.S. Senate
Dear Senator:
On behalf of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human
Rights, a coalition charged by its diverse membership of more than 200 national
organizations to promote and protect the civil and human rights of all persons
in the United States, we urge you to support Amendment 1578, which incorporates
the provisions of the Military Justice Improvement Act (MJIA). Despite repeated
promises from the Department of Defense and modest reforms made in the 2014
National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), recent documentation from the Rand
survey demonstrates that the current system still fails to result in adequate
prosecution of sexual assault crimes or any punishment for retaliation against
survivors of sexual assault.[1] The
fundamental shift in decision-making authority away from commanders to
professional military justice prosecutors mandated in this amendment is
necessary to ensure that appropriate legal action is taken to prosecute and
prevent future incidences of sexual assault.
The Leadership Conference believes it is critically
important for Congress to support removing from the military chain of command
the prosecution and other key decision-making in military cases involving most
serious crimes punishable by one year or more in confinement, including sexual
assault. The recent Rand Corporation study found that the sexual assault rate
remains the same as in 2010.[2] Moreover,
1 in 7 victims were assaulted by someone in their chain of command.[3] Perhaps,
most importantly, this independent Rand survey found that 86 percent of victims
did not report the crime in 2014. They believe that reporting would hurt their
career; that the process would be unfair; or that nothing would be done and feared
retaliation from their chain of command or coworkers.[4] And given
that the retaliation rate against victims remains at 62 percent, the same rate
as in 2012,[5] these
service members appear to have good cause for their concern that reporting
could hurt their career. A recent report from Human Rights Watch corroborates
these findings. Both male and female military personnel who report sexual
assault are 12 times as likely to experience some form of retaliation as to see
their attacker convicted of a sex offense.[6] Additionally,
of the female service members that did not report a sexual assault incident, 47
percent listed fear of retaliation as a reason for not reporting.[7]
Significant efforts to decrease sexual assault incidents
through training and survivor assistance programs have been undertaken;
however, these have proven insufficient in preventing the high incidents of
sexual assault. Similarly, we believe the modest reforms in the NDAA clearly
are insufficient to address the magnitude of this persistent problem. It is
critical that decision-making in cases of sexual assault, retaliation, and
other serious crimes except those offenses that are uniquely military in
nature, be removed from the military chain of command as proposed by Amendment
1578, the Military Justice Improvement Act, to the NDAA.
There is broad agreement that victims of unwanted sexual
contact should not have to live in fear of coming forward. Our military service
members risk their lives for this country, and it is time that meaningful
structural changes are made within the military justice system to ensure their
safety. The MJIA will provide a fair and objective system so that victims can
come forward and be provided an impartial hearing without fear of retaliation.
For these reasons, we urge you to vote for Amendment 1578 to
S.1376. We look forward to working with you on this important legislation. If
you have any questions, please feel free to contact June Zeitlin, Director of
Human Rights Policy at zeitlin@civilrights.org or (202)
263-2852. Thank you for your consideration of this critical issue.
Sincerely,
Wade Henderson
President & CEO
President & CEO
Nancy Zirkin
Executive Vice President
Executive Vice President
[1] RAND Corporation, Sexual
Assault and Sexual Harassment in the U.S. Military, Volume 2. (2015). http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR800/RR870z2/RAND_RR870z2.pdf
[2] Id. at 69
[3] Id. at 22
[4] Id. at 53
[5] Id. at 73
[6] Human Rights Watch, US:
Military Whistleblowers at Risk, (May 18, 2015). http://www.hrw.org/news/2015/05/18/us-military-whistleblowers-risk
[7] Human Rights Watch, Embattled:
Retaliation against Sexual Assault Survivors in the US Military (2015),
http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/usmilitary0515_web.pdf, pg. 27.
