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Pentagon misled Congress about militarys handling of sexual assault cases, report says
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of Washington Post/Associated Press
Posted: April 24th, 2016
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2016/04/19...
Since 2013, lawmakers have tried to pass a bill that would reform key parts of how the military justice system deals with sexual assault, but during key stages of the legislative debate, the Pentagon misled Congress by cherry picking information, later disproved, about a hundred cases, according to a report released by a watchdog group Monday and provided to the Associated Press. At issue is the Military Justice Improvement Act, or MIJA, [which] aimed to change how the military treated sexual-assault cases by basically removing unit commands from the judicial process that decided whether cases should move forward. During testimony to Congress, Navy Adm. James Winnefeld, then the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that if the bill passed, fewer sexual-assault cases in the military would go to trial. He claimed that between 2010 and 2013 there were 93 instances of civilian prosecutors refusing to take certain sexual-assault cases, prompting military commanders to insist on taking them to court-martial. Winnefelds claims, echoed by at least four senators, were largely untrue. Out of 81 of the 93 cases, there was not one example of a commander insisting a case be prosecuted, the report says. In each case, military investigators or military attorneys requested the case from civilian authorities. The report goes on to say that in two-thirds of the 93 cases, there was no sexual-assault allegation, civilian prosecutors never declined the case, or the military failed to prosecute for sexual assault.
Note: A 2015 Associated Press article states that: "the true scope of sex-related violence in the military communities is vastly underreported." The above article shows that corrupt military officials have lied to Congress to keep it that way. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing sexual abuse scandal news articles from reliable major media sources.
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