Third Way: The Bipartisan Effort Against Military Sexual Assault

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On April 22, 2020, SPC. Vanessa Guillen was murdered on her base in Fort Hood, Texas. Her disappearance and subsequent murder followed multiple instances of sexual harassment involving one of SPC Guillen’s supervisors. Although she reported these incidents and comments in 2019, a thorough investigation was not conducted until after her death as part of the circumstances surrounding her murder. The investigation found an extremely toxic and harmful climate at the Fort Hood military base, resulting in 14 soldiers being fired or suspended. Her murderer was found to be a fellow officer. While SPC Guillen’s murderer was never found to have sexually harassed her, he had previously harassed another female soldier. These instances are not isolated to only the Fort Hood base, and would likely have been pushed under the rug if SPC Guillen’s family had not been so outspoken about her harassment at the time of her disappearance and death. 

SPC Guillen’s story is not just one of many that demonstrate the sexual harassment and abuse in the military – particularly of women by higher-ranking officers – but illustrates how the military and the government have long tried to keep it under wraps. In 2018, 24.2% of women and 6.3% of men of active duty service members experienced either sexual harassment or assault. The current procedure after an instance of sexual harassment is reported is for the unit’s commanding officer to handle it. The CO has all the power in determining whether to open an investigation, whether to take it to trial and which person is valuable enough to protect. This has created an extremely harmful environment where sexual harassment and assault convictions in the military have decreased by 80% in just three years. Moreover, victims are likely to experience retaliation or discharges instead of justice. This only happens, of course, when an instance is reported, which is why many victims chose not to report at all.

In an effort to combat this toxic environment, there is currently a bill in the Senate to change the way that sexual assault and harassment cases are handled in the military, called the Military Justice Improvement and Increasing Prevention Act. The main difference is to change who is in charge of these investigations and prosecutions from the commanding officer to a military prosecutor. This would hopefully not only change the culture in the military but also increase the number of sexual assault convictions. Given that roughly 1 in 3 victims did not report because they believed that nothing would come out of their report or that it would be unfair, changing the investigator so that it is handled by a military prosecutor instead of someone in their chain of command would hopefully encourage more victims to step forward. 

This measure was spearheaded by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and currently has the bipartisan support of 61 senators, the magic number to end a filibuster if one were to occur. This high bipartisan support for this bill is monumental, especially given the current divide between the parties both in Congress and in the general public.  

This act is not the only measure that the government is taking to regulate sexual assault claims in the military. President Biden and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin have started a commission to review instances of sexual assault in the military. The commission’s first set of recommendations for the Defense Secretary was to do exactly what the Senate bill is already trying to accomplish – take the decision to prosecute cases out of the chain of command. The House has a similar measure as well, sponsored by Rep Jackie Speier, called the I Am Vanessa Guillen Act. This would, similarly to the Senate bill, reallocate prosecution decisions to an independent party. This bill would also establish an independent system to report instances of sexual assault or harassment without the victim fearing retaliation. 

All of these measures are currently receiving strong bipartisan support, which demonstrates a couple of things. First, as a country, we are still capable of coming together on certain issues and recognizing the intolerable acts worth fighting against. Bipartisan support has been hard-pressed to come by for the last couple of years, especially since Trump’s first election and subsequent failure to be re-elected for a second term. With this bill, members of Congress are hopefully reminded of the ways in which they can work together and support the same causes, as a house divided against itself certainly cannot stand. Second, there is almost unanimous agreement that sexual assault in the military is a highly important issue. The few commissions that were established to look into such instances were stacked with Pentagon members who took orders from the military and Department of Defense. With these new pieces of legislation and executive action, there can be a new era of justice for victims rather than ignorance of the problem.

At a time when society is finally starting to take a full stand against sexual assault and harassment, it is sad but not surprising that the military is so far behind in this movement. They have often been the last organization to support progressive policies, such as their insistence on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell for so many years, which ultimately discriminated against LGBTQ service members. Until recently, transgender people were banned from serving in the military just for being trans. The military has a history of following extremely conservative policies that discriminate against and harm several groups of people. Clearly, there needs to be changed within the military to combat this. The measures discussed above are a start but only when they are fully implemented will we be able to see how much still needs to be reformed within the military.

Spc Vanessa Guillen, a soldier who signed up for the military knowing that she was putting her life on the line for her country, did not deserve to die the way that she did. She was far from the first of military women who have been sexually harassed, assaulted, and murdered by others in their unit or chain of command, but hopefully, she can be one of the last. These measures speak to a new governmental understanding that there needs to be reform within the military and hopefully they can be passed and implemented before another woman dies the way that Spc Guillen did.