Senator Susan Collins, a member of both the Senate Armed Services Committee and Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, and Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) today introduced bipartisan legislation to strengthen protections for service members who are victims of sexual assault. The Defense Sexual Trauma Response, Oversight and Good Governance Act (The Defense STRONG Act) would strengthen legal protections for sexual assault victims and improve the systems to prevent and respond to sexual assault in the military.
“The STRONG Act will help ensure that many of the recommendations made by the Defense Task Force on Sexual Assault in the Military are enacted to truly build a culture of zero-tolerance towards sexual assault. If we provide the legal protections for victims and their advocates, and if we guarantee support for the victims of sexual assault, we can take the fragile and reversible gains in the fight against military sexual trauma and turn them into sustainable and irreversible progress,” said Sen. Collins.
“Sexual assault has no place anywhere, but especially not in the military where brave men and women live by a code and rightly pride themselves on honor,” said Sen. Kerry. “As a prosecutor, I saw with my own eyes the ravages of sexual assault on its victims. We have to work to stop this from happening and act swiftly when it does, and by advancing the key recommendations of the Defense Task Force on Sexual Assault in the Military, this legislation is an important step in the right direction.”
While 1 in 6 women will experience sexual assault in her lifetime, as many as 1 in 3 women leaving military service report that they have experienced some form of sexual trauma while serving in the military. The military has made strides in addressing this problem, but victims of sexual assault in the services still report problems including a lack of confidentiality, protection, support, and access to legal counsel once an incident is reported because it lacks a concrete system for dealing with sexual assaults.
The Defense STRONG Act strengthens the legal protections for victims of sexual assault in the military by:
• Ensuring that victims have access to a military lawyer and maintaining their option of confidential reporting even if they seek legal counsel.
• Ensuring that conversations between victims and Victim Advocates as well as DOD Safe Helpline counselors are confidential and immune from discovery by military lawyers if a case goes to court.
The Defense STRONG Act also strengthens the systems in place to prevent sexual assaults and provide support and guidance for victims by:
• Providing victims of sexual assault with expedited consideration for a base transfer if they ask for one.
• Standardizing the training of service members, commanders, Victim Advocates, and Sexual Assault Response Coordinators throughout DOD.
• Requiring service members to receive training on how to prevent and respond to sexual assault incidents as they move up in the military structure.
• Requiring Victim Advocate and Sexual Assault Response Coordinators to be full-time positions, and prohibiting DOD contractors from fulfilling those roles.
• Requiring DOD to permanently store records relating to sexual assault and give service members lifetime access to those records.
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