Hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee - Markup of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2014

Hearing

Senator CRUZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to thank the committee for its good work in drawing attention to this very serious problem. Sexual assault in the military is a total violation of the obligation we have to the men and women who step forward to defend ourselves and to defend our Nation, defend our liberties.
And I commend the good work of this committee working to improve reporting, to improve prosecution. I commend the chairman for his good work in crafting this amendment, which I think is working to improve the situation. I want to commend the leadership of a number of leaders on this committee, including Senator McCaskill, and Senator Shaheen, and Senator Ayotte.

And in particular I want to commend Senator Gillibrand. I am going to be voting against the chairman's amendment. And I am going to be voting against it because I was persuaded by the arguments that Senator Gillibrand presented in this committee a few
moments ago. I think she made a powerful and effective argument that the lack of reporting is driven by a fear of not having an impartial third party outside the chain of command in which to report a sexual assault. And I think that argument was buttressed by her pointing to our allies that have implemented similar policies and seen significant increases in the reporting that has occurred when there is an impartial actor to lodge that report.

Now, based on the comments of many senators at this hearing, it appears likely that the chairman's amendment is going to be adopted. And I would suggest that if that is the case, it may well prove that this amendment makes material progress in solving the problem. And if it does, I know all of us would celebrate that fact. If it does not, if going forward in a year or two or three we see the data and the reporting is still abysmal, it is still not working, there is still a fear of not having an impartial prosecutor, an impartial tribunal, then I would suggest it may well be in order for this committee to return to Senator Gillibrand's very good proposal.

And I would note that I thought Senator Kaine made a very good point about the breadth of the offenses, and in particular the of defenses not relating to sexual assault that I at least have not heard a predicate that there is the same problem with other offenses that appear to be present with sexual assault. So it may in the future
make sense to consider the approach Senator Gillibrand has presented, but narrowed and focused on those offenses concerning sexual assault, which are certainly the heart of the concern of this committee.

And so I commend the good work of so many leaders around this committee, but I am going to vote no because I think Senator
Gillibrand's proposal is a good one.

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