Lt. Col. Darin Haas, the head of the sexual assault response program at Fort Campbell, Ky. was removed from his position, after violating his ex-wife’s restraining order. An unnamed Sergeant First Class (misnomer?), responsible for sexual assault prevention at Ford Hood Tx. is under investigation for abusive sexual contact. Lt. Col. Jeffrey Krusinski, who managed the sexual assault prevention program for the Air Force, has been charged with groping a woman in a parking lot.
The face of the Air Force’s fight against sexual assault – Lt. Col. Jeffrey Krusinski
The military’s dirty little “culture of rape” secret is now not so secret – nor so little. The Commander-in-Chief, President Obama, has taken umbrage and called for a “sustained effort” to “leave no stone unturned” in the effort to root out abuse in the military.
Chuck Hagel, Secretary of Defense, has said that he will hold weekly meetings on the subject.
It all sounds very responsive. But this is just bureaucratic jargon for “We’ll keep talking the talk until the media moves on to the next thing”.
Anu Bhagwati, former Marine captain and executive director of the Service Women’s Action Network, is pessimistic about the chances of cleaning up the Armed Forces. She said, “There is not a quick fix. The military can’t train its way out of this problem.”
But there is path that might hasten a solution to the problem. One politician got it half right. Sen Kristen Gillibrand (D-NY) has introduced a bill that would transfer investigation of serious sexual assault away from the military if the potential sentence amounts to more than a year in prison — the equivalent of a felony in a civilian court.
But that still leaves the military to decide what is a serious offense and what should be dealt with “in-house”. Why not subject all crime in the military to the civilian justice system?
There are actions that are against military rules – such things as being AWOL or insubordinate – that are unique to the military and should be left to the military to deal with. But crimes like murder, rape, burglary etc. should be subject to one standard regardless of whether they were committed by soldiers or civilians.
Domestically crimes should be investigated by the police. Abroad criminal justice should be administered by civilian authorities using the same rules as in the US.
It is absurd that an enlisted serviceperson has to report a crime to go to his or her sergeant, who then kicks it up the chain of command until a commanding officer determines if it should be prosecuted. Our warfighters should have the same right to go directly to the police as any other citizen does.
The hostile environment that victims of sexual assault face leads to most assaults going unmentioned. In 2012 there were 3374 rapes reported. But anonymous interviews suggest that the actual number of assaults may be more than 26,000. And less than 20% of reported rapes lead to a guilty verdict.
Even after guilty verdicts, convictions can be overturned on the whim of senior officers. Last month, the commander of 3rd Air Force, Lt. Gen. Craig Franklin, threw out the conviction of Lt. Col. James Wilkerson on aggravated sexual assault. He reinstated the Colonel despite a jury sentencing him to a year in jail, forfeiture of all pay and dismissal from the service.
Lt. Gen. Craig Franklin thinks he knows better than a jury.
Incredible.
And it’s not just a guy thing. It turns out that the President Obama’s nominee for vice commander of the Air Force’s Space Command, Lt. Gen. Susan Helms, overturned the sexual assault conviction of a fellow pilot. So much for the President’s zero tolerance of rape in the military.
There is precedent for stripping an institution of its separate system of justice. In medeval Europe most countries had parallel systems of religious and civil courts. Eventually, of course, the Church’s role in criminal justice was eliminated.
The Church - specifically the Catholic Church – provides one more useful contribution to the conversation on sexual assalut in the military. It illustrates what happens when an organization protective of itself also takes charge of its own policing.
Justice in the military will be unrealized as long as justice is dispensed by the military.
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