You are here: Home » Featured » Rep Tsongas Battles To End Sexual Assaults In The Military

Rep Tsongas Battles To End Sexual Assaults In The Military

01/16/11-by Bridgette P. LaVictoire
Lowell Democrat Niki Tsongas has been at the fore in trying to get the Department of Defense to be more aggressive with regards to responding to reports of sexual assault in the military and to do a better job of tracking them. This began in 2007, when the widow of former US Senator Paul Tsongas was visiting wounded veterans and met a soldier who said she was more afraid of her fellow soldiers than she was of the enemy. The woman, a former military nurse who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, also knew of other female service members who had been sexually assaulted while in the service.

Tsongas stated “As she would travel around to different bases, she always made sure she had whatever she needed to defend herself.” Tsongas serves on the House Armed Services Committee, and had said that she was well aware of the statistics, but that hearing this nurse’s story gave the problem a personal feel. She also stated “All the statistics were made very real.”

She recently scored a victory for those who are victims of sexual assault in the military when President Obama signed into law the Defense Authorization Bill which included a provision to better protect veterans who had been victims of sexual violence.

According to the Lowell Sun:

The law requires the Department of Defense to appoint one official to oversee all complaints of sexual assault for all the branches of the military. The department also will have to implement minimum training standards for sexual-assault responders and advocates, and devise a more comprehensive policy for addressing sexual-assault prevention and response.

“It is very difficult to engage in serious oversight because each branch of the military deals with this differently,” Tsongas said. “We felt there should be a consistency.”

Furthermore, the Department of Defense will have to consider providing a military lawyer to all victims of sexual trauma. The original language in the House defense bill required the military to provide all sexual-assault victims with a lawyer, but the Senate tweaked the language. The Defense Department’s report on providing lawyers to victims is due in 2012, and Tsongas said she will hold their “feet to the fire” on the issue until then.

Awareness of sexual assaults on women in the military were raised by author and cartoonist Gary Trudeau in his strip Doonesbury with the introduction of Sergeant Melissa Wheeler, whose story involved her recovery from sexual assault.

The recent endorsement of women in combat roles means that the need to prevent sexual assaults in the military are an absolute, and that getting those reported and treated properly are equally important. Currently, the Pentagon believes that around ten percent of sexual assaults are reported, and this likely has to do with the fact that conversations between victims, military lawyers and victim advocates are not considered privileged. If they were kept private, then it is likely that the number of reports would increase.

Tsongas told the Lowell Sun:

“We would be shocked if conversations between a client and their attorney were not privileged in the civilian world, and similar rights must be afforded to service members who may be the victim of a crime. Similarly, while victims have a right to speak to a victim advocate in confidence, until those conversations are privileged, this confidentiality is virtually meaningless.”

There was an 11 percent increase in reported sexual assaults in the military from 2008 to 2009 according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. The Department of Defense has argued that the increase in the number of sexual assaults stems from victims feeling more at ease about coming forward to their superiors. The Pentagon created the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office in 2005 to try and provide sexual-crime prevention programs.

Some sexual assaults, such as those perpetrated in a same-sex setting have often been kept quiet due to the existence of the law known as Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Situations such as the assaults perpetrated by former Representative Eric Massa, who has been accused of “snorkeling” subordinate officers, showed the dangers of having DADT remain in place when it came to reporting sexual assaults.

Service Women’s Action Network policy director Greg Jacob has said that sexual trauma in the military is a “crisis, if not an epidemic.” SWAN is an advocacy group centered around active duty and veteran women service personnel. According to Jacob, sexual crimes are the number one cause of post-traumatic stress disorder for women veterans. What is more, he maintains that the situation is worse than the statistics indicate ‘because victims feel that no action will be taken by their superiors against the alleged perpetrators and worry that they will be harassed – so they often don’t report sexual crimes to superiors.’ Jacob said “Until the military prosecutes perpetrators and provides protection to victims, survivors will be unlikely to come forward.”

Tsongas still draws motivation from what that nurse said in 2007. She went on to say “We ask those who serve in the military to put their lives on the line for our country, and they shouldn’t fear harm from their fellow service members. There is still work to be done.”