The current and past Secretaries of Defense are being sued over their failure to deal with cases of rape and sexual assault in the military:
A group of U.S. veterans who say they were raped, insulted and otherwise abused by their comrades want to force the Pentagon to change how it handles such cases.The complaint can be viewed here. The details we're learning are shocking. This is the kind of thing that should not be happening in the U.S. military (or anywhere.) But, the fact that these crimes did occur and aren't dealt with shows a stunning lack of leadership. It sounds like what we've come to expect from the Catholic Church.
More than a dozen female and two male current or former service members say servicemen get away with rape and other sexual abuse and victims are too often ordered to continue to serve alongside those they say attacked them.
In a federal class-action lawsuit to be filed Tuesday, they want an objective third party to handle such complaints because individual commanders have too much say in how allegations are handled.
The force behind the lawsuit is Service Women's Action Network (SWAN):
Anuradha Bhagwati, 35, executive director of the Service Women's Action Network, said the Defense Department's own statistics show that fewer than one in five of these cases are even referred for court martial. She said unit commanders are the judge and the jury in these types of cases. Too often, she said, perpetrators are given non-judicial punishments.Bhagwati and SWAN were strong advocates for the repeal of DADT, too.
"A lawsuit like this is needed because change cannot happen on the inside. DoD has had literally decades, perhaps more, to change the culture within the military. They've proven that they can't, and even the minor changes they've made the last few years are so superficial," Bhagwati said.
NBC's Michael Isikoff interviewed several of the service women for a piece that appeared on the TODAY Show this morning:
