As the military continues to argue that its leaders should be allowed to continue deciding when and how to prosecute sexual assault, two Marine veterans spoke at a press conference in support of Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand's bill putting those prosecution decisions in the hands of legal experts. According to Ben Klay, the current system "gives commanders who do not have an interest in proving the worst failures of their commands the authority to decide whether those failures happened. They cannot be impartial nor can those who work for them be."
Klay's words vibrated with rage, and for good reason. His wife Ariana, was raped in 2009 after being transferred to what she described as "a command where harassment was common and condoned." She continued that her commander's:
... incentives were as much to deny the problem as they were to retaliate against those who might choose to report [...] He decided, in writing, that calling officers sluts and whores was not harassment, and that any harassment was deserved because of what I wore or that I'd complained about it. It was the retaliation and condoning of harassment that I believe made those who harmed me feel protected and encouraged.
Ariana Klay was retaliated against when she reported being assaulted; she said "the humiliation of the retaliation was worse than the assault, because it was sanctioned from the same leaders I once would have risked my life for." As for the prosecution of her rapists, according to her husband Ben it was treated as "a distraction," a characterization the gruesome details he relates fully support. What's more:
It is organized to be that way. Military justice is a secondary duty for a commander. Something he didn't sign up for and a distraction from his mission to fight wars. Imagine a business executive who runs a company and has to oversee the prosecution of felons who perform valuable work for him. He'd be as interested in prosecuting as commanders are, and his workers would be confident about what they could get away with.
The military leadership's response to Gillibrand's effort to get these decisions put in the hands of people trained in the law, tasked specifically with dealing with sexual assault and other crimes, and not implicated in the environments that embolden rapists, is
this:
Pentagon and service leaders would rather "address this problem inside the institution," according to Defense Department spokesman George Little.
"We think we can work this internally," Little told reporters at the Pentagon on Friday.
No. You've proven you cannot "work this internally." You've proven that all the promises you've made over
decades now were, if not entirely and intentionally false, at the very least weak, sitting at the bottom of the priority lists of the generals and admirals and, yes, the civilian leadership too. The military has failed to protect its own, and it has punished them for seeking justice. It's beyond clear that the only way to serve justice is to take its enforcement out of the hands of the commanders.