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News Analysis
WASHINGTON >> Sexual assault in the military has plagued the Pentagon in recent years as a series of high-profile cases, and new data, revealed the extent of the problem. In response, President Barack Obama and members of Congress demanded that military officials more aggressively address the threat and its causes.
Yet few military experts went as far as Donald Trump did Wednesday, when he suggested that the integration of women into the armed forces was an underlying cause of sexual assault.
Speaking at a candidates’ forum, Trump defended one of his Twitter posts from 2013 concerning the high number of sexual assaults in the military, and he said that he had been “absolutely correct” in sending out a message that said, “What did these geniuses expect when they put men & women together?”
The remarks drew criticism Thursday from lawmakers and military experts, who said Trump had displayed ignorance of the Pentagon’s decades-long struggle to curb such assaults and the military justice system that is already in place to prosecute them.
“That’s more than victim blaming, and it misunderstands the historical role of women in the military,” said retired Col. Don Christensen, a former chief prosecutor of the Air Force.
American women in the military have taken on expanded roles in recent years as the Pentagon has integrated them into more combat positions. But they have worked alongside servicemen since the Revolutionary War, and in significant numbers since World War II, something Trump did not acknowledge.
Their roles have grown over the centuries from nurses, cooks and seamstresses, who maintained the camps of the Continental Army, to fighter pilots, soldiers, sailors and Marines who are battling the Islamic State in the Middle East and Afghanistan.
“We couldn’t run a military without women,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. He noted that an argument that the proximity of women is to blame for sexual assault could be applied to women on college campuses and in workplaces, where they are also assaulted. “Quite frankly, it’s absurd,” he said.
As the Pentagon has released more detailed records on the problem, the statistics reveal that sexual assault in the military is not just a problem faced by women. In 2014, the latest numbers available, the Pentagon estimated that 20,300 servicemen and servicewomen were assaulted that year.
“Over half the victims are men,” said Christensen, who is now the president of Protect Our Defenders, an advocacy group. Of the estimated 20,300 attacks in 2014 recorded by the Pentagon, roughly 10,600 of the victims were men, though women faced a higher rate of assault because of their lower overall numbers in the armed forces.
Trump’s proposed solution of creating a military justice system to deal with sexual assault also puzzled national security experts. A military justice system has been in place in some form since the 1774 British Articles of War. It is an essential and distinct part of the military.
“George Washington beat him to it!” said Graham, who has served as a military lawyer.
That system and its laws, known as the Uniform Code of Military Justice, have in fact been at the center of a protracted battle in Congress over its role in adjudicating such crimes.
One solution was first proposed by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y. She has pressed for a measure — opposed by top Pentagon leaders — that would take sexual assault cases outside the military chain of command and give military prosecutors the power to decide which cases to try, rather than keeping that authority with the accuser’s own commander, as is the policy now.
Gillibrand’s logic — and that of her supporters, including a number of victims’ groups — is that more men and women in the military would come forward to report crimes if they did not fear retaliation by those supervising them.
The Pentagon’s newest statistics also showed a majority of victims do not report attacks. The Defense Department reports that in 2014, only 6,131 — or about under third — of attacks were actually reported.
The 2014 statistics, which were based on a study conducted for the Pentagon by the RAND Corp., a think tank, found that 62 percent of women who reported sexual assault said they faced retaliation for doing so. The study, released in May 2015 and endorsed by the Pentagon, offered no comparable statistic for men.
Gillibrand’s efforts have been rebuffed in favor of more modest efforts, including those written by Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., that stripped commanders of their ability to overturn jury verdicts and mandated dishonorable discharge or dismissal for anyone convicted of sexual assault.
Other recent legislation guarantees that every sexual assault victim in the military receives an independent lawyer — known as a special victims council — and assures a civilian review of any case in which a commander overrules a prosecutor seeking to court-martial an accused offender.
“Donald Trump displayed a stunning lack of knowledge about how the military justice system works, the nature of sexual assault in the military or the dozens of systemic reforms that Congress has made to curb such crimes,” McCaskill said Thursday.
Trump, pressed on Wednesday about whether his 2013 Twitter post was meant to suggest women should not serve, said the solution was “not to kick them out.”
“Right now, part of the problem is nobody gets prosecuted,” he said. “You have the report of rape, and nobody gets prosecuted.”
Trump’s remarks on sexual assault in the military, like so many uttered by him on other topics, became instant campaign fodder.
Matt Heinz, who is challenging Rep. Martha E. McSally, R-Ariz., a former Air Force combat pilot, issued a news release Thursday morning that said, “Voters deserve to know if McSally will stick to her principles and denounce Donald Trump and his campaign.”
How is Trump’s remark about sexual assault in the military “mistaken”. His remark is politically incorrect, but the point he made is valid.