Gillibrand vows to add sexual assault proposal to defense bill

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) plans another push to take military sexual assault cases outside the chain of command when the chamber takes up its defense policy bill next month.

“Survivors will not be able to get the justice they deserve until we change all of this business-as-usual climate without any real accountability and create a professional, non-biased and independent military justice system,” Gillibrand, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement.

{mosads}She said she would work to pass the Military Justice Improvement Act when the full Senate debates the 2016 national defense authorization act (NDAA) in June.

The renewed vows came the same day Human Rights Watch released a 113-page report that found male and female soldiers who report sexual assault are 12 times more likely to be retaliated against, compared to the chances of his or her attacker being convicted of a sexual offense.

“Mechanisms to protect service members are not utilized, are ineffective, poorly understood, hamstrung by jurisdictional limitations, not sufficiently independent of command structures, and mistrusted because they lead to new incidents of retaliation,” the report states.

Gillibrand has made similar efforts to reform the sexual assault protections in recent years. Her legislation was blocked from being made part of NDAA in the final days of the 113th Congress.

She described the Human Rights report as “shocking” and said it “needs to be read by every Member of Congress who cares about the women and men who put on the uniform to defend this nation.”

Gillibrand highlighted that the Defense Department estimates 62 percent of people who report sexual assault said they experienced retaliation, adding that the figure “has not changed in years.”

“These sickening stories of retaliation against survivors should make every American angry. We keep hearing how previous reforms were going to protect victims, and make retaliation a crime,” she said.