© Win Mcnamee/Getty ImagesSeveral former servicewomen testify about being sexually assaulted in the military during a Senate hearing in Washington.
The military justice system is broken, riven with inherent bias, conflicts of interest and a hierarchical structure that ensures perpetrators go unpunished, survivors of military sexual assault told Congress on Wednesday.
At the first Senate hearing into sexual abuse in the armed forces for a decade, victims said the system helped encourage predators in uniform, and urged senators to change the law to give survivors the same protections as civilians - namely an independent justice system.
Rebekah Havrilla, a former army sergeant who suffered post-traumatic stress disorder after being raped by another service member while in Afghanistan, told the Senate armed services committee that she found a "broken" criminal justice system.
Havrilla, who described an interview during the military investigation into her case as being the "most humiliating thing that I have ever experienced", said it was eventually closed after senior commanders decided not to pursue charges.
"What we need is a military with a fair and impartial criminal justice system, one that is run by professional and legal experts, not unit commanders," Havrilla said.
The US Department of Defence estimate that 86.5% of violent sexual crimes go unreported, of the approximately 19,000 that occur every year.
Brian Lewis, the first male survivor of military sexual abuse to testify before Congress, told lawmakers that sexual assault and rape was an "epidemic" in the military which remained untackled because of the existing reporting and prosecution system.
Lewis, who was raped by a non-commissioned officer on board a ship as a 20-year-old navy fire control technician, told lawmakers of the conflict of interest inherent in the system: "Service members must report rape to their commanders. However, if their commanders take action and prove that rape occurred, they also prove a failure of their own leadership."
Congress had, through laws like the Uniform Code of Military Justice, put commanders in charge of violent sexual crime, he said, but they had "failed to end this long-standing epidemic".
The decisions of commanders, he said, was why 86% of victims do not report abuse.
When asked, by Senator Kirsten Gilibrand, the chair, if an independent prosecutor would have made a difference in his case, Lewis, who said he was a victim of a repeat sexual abuser, said: "I would have been able to get some form of justice."
He told the committee: "It feels like your heart breaks" when your commander tells not to report the abuse.
He told the committee that 56% of estimated victims of sexual assaults in the US military are men and 44% women, and urged them not to ignore men as the "invisible and ignored" survivors of military sexual trauma.
Brigette McCoy, a former army specialist and a Gulf war veteran, was 18 when she was raped, she told lawmakers. She did not report it, but three years later, she reported being sexually harassed by a different service member. This time, she filed a formal complaint, but got no official response.
"They did remove me from his team and his formal apology consisted of him driving by me on base and saying 'sorry' out of his open car-door window," McCoy said.
She became suicidal and was made homeless - "two of the big issues in military sexual trauma" - after losing faith in the military chain of command, she said.
Had there been an independent system of prosecution, she said she would have pursued her case. "Utlimately I would still have my career. I would still have been serving, not fear for my life."
She urged the committee to act. "Let's not allow sexual predators who wear a uniform to become highly trained and decorated," she said. "Let's not just pluck a few leaves and trim the branch from the roots. Let's make it stop."
The subcommittee's hearing comes amid a furore over a decision by Lieutenant General Craig Franklin, a US air force commander, to overturn a guilty verdict in a sexual assault case. Under military law, a commander who convenes a court-martial is known as the convening authority and has the sole discretion to reduce or set aside guilty verdicts and sentences or to reverse a jury's verdict.
Defense secretary Chuck Hagel has ordered a review of Franklin's decision to overturn the conviction against Lieutenant Colonel James Wilkerson, a former inspector general at Aviano air base in Italy.
Gillibrand said she was "shocked" by the case and expressed support for an examination of legislation that would prevent commanding officers from reversing jury rulings. Nearly 2,500 sexual violence cases in the military services were reported in 2011, but only 240 made it to trial, Gillibrand said.
Senator Claire McCaskill, a Democrat, plans to introduce legislation soon that would change the UCMJ by preventing a convening authority from overturning a decision reached by a jury.
Lewis, who read from a statement of the victim in the case, said Franklin's decision was yet another example of an action that would have a "chilling effect" on military judges and prosecutors and could inhibit victims from coming forward.
The committee listened as victims and support groups spoke about the military culture that showed a "lack of understanding" about rape and sexual abuse.
Havrilla, who told the committee she was deployed 99% of the time as the only female, said: "The hostility is not towards women. The hostility is towards the feminine, towards the weak. It was not a gender issue. They are targeting what they see as less than."
She said that while she was well-treated and respected by some units, in others she found that "I can't tell you a single day that didn't go by without a rape joke or a sex joke. So in my mind it comes down to what was allowed by leaderships."
Anu Bhagwati, a former Marine corps captain, of the Service Women's Action Network, told the panel that commanders should not be in charge of decisions to prosecute because of their professional relationship with the accused.
Bhagwati said the military subscribed to myths about rape, including that it was about a "lapse of professional judgment", or that "inappropriate" use of alcohol were common.
"So let's be clear," she said. "Rape and assault are violent, traumatic crimes, not mistakes, leadership failures or oversights in character. Rape is about power. Control. Intimidation."
Bhagwati said that a two-pronged system was necessary to overcome the "entrenched" culture when it comes to sexual abuse.
It needed independent "trained professional disinterested prosecutors" in charge of prosecutions and military victims who did not get justice had civil courts available to them.
She recommended the committee take a close look at the UK and Canadian militaries, which have independent prosecutors.
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