National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2014

Floor Speech

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Ms. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, yesterday morning I was pleased to be able to come to the floor of the Senate and join with a good, strong, group of women from both sides of the aisle to express our joint commitment--really the commitment of every Member of this body--to address the scourge of sexual assault, sexual misconduct within the military.

I thought it was a good way to start off the debate yesterday on the issue of sexual assault within the military, recognizing that some are in different places in terms of how we deal with these very important issues. But ultimately the goal of each of us is the same. The goal is that we make things right for those who are serving our Nation, and that when it comes to instances of sexual assault, military sexual trauma, sexual harassment, that really there is no place in our military for this.

We use different terminology when we are discussing the issue of sexual misconduct in the military. How we define what we are seeking to eradicate is important. We have used the more generic term sexual assault probably more often to describe the problem that we need to address, but I suggest that definition is probably a bit too narrow. I prefer to use the term military sexual trauma, which is the term that the VA, the Veterans Administration, uses to describe a spectrum of harms. Their term, the VA's term, military sexual trauma, means ``the trauma resulting from a physical assault of a sexual nature, battery of a sexual nature, or sexual harassment which occurred while the veteran was serving.''

I prefer this term because it emphasizes the various traumas that can occur, both with and without physical assaults and batteries. This definition also calls to our attention the fact that whatever the instrument of trauma there are psychological scars that need to be addressed. These are psychological scars that can last a lifetime. I think it is fair to say that this spectrum of scars is broad and it is deep.

I have looked very carefully at the work that came out of the Senate Armed Services Committee. I have looked at Senator Gillibrand's amendment very carefully. I have considered all that is being incorporated in the Defense Authorization Act. Again, as I mentioned yesterday, I am pleased with how in so many different areas we have been working together to address these issues of military sexual trauma.

I am a supporter of Senator Gillibrand's approach to ensure justice for victims of military sexual trauma. Today, I would like to explain some of the reasons why I have chosen to support that approach.

The current system of military justice relies upon the individual decisions of commanders for a decision on whether or not an offense is to be punished, and which charges are to be brought. In our complex military there are many commanders. We all know that.

While our code of military justice may be uniform, I think we are seeing strong evidence that its implementation is anything but uniform.

Senator Gillibrand's approach ensures that charges will be investigated and that the charging decision will be made by disinterested military prosecutors. Decisions will be made by disinterested prosecutors whose only interest is that the perpetrators account for their actions, that victims' interests are protected, and that the integrity of the process is paramount. I think that this is very important. I think this is a breath of fresh air.

The recent experiences I have had, as a Senator from Alaska, with the transparency of decisions made within the chain of command leaves much to be desired. Unfortunately, we have learned about these situations from what we read in the headlines, and it makes you say: Oh my gosh. I cannot believe this is happening in our military.

It makes your stomach turn. We are not hearing this from the chain of command. We are reading this in our newspapers. We are seeing this reported in the media, and that is the first time we hear of them.

Case in point: The 49th Missile Defense Battalion, which operates our Nation's missile defense at Fort Greely. The missile defense establishment at Fort Greely is a very important facility for us in Alaska--as well as for the Nation. Last spring it was widely reported that unlawful fraternization among certain members of the battalion--rising up into the chain of command--was creating an uncomfortable situation for those who were not part of what I would describe as the in-crowd at Fort Greely.

Just when I thought I understood what was going on at Fort Greely--after I was told not to worry and that everything was all fixed--there was a bizarre series of events which showed up on my doorstep. The complainant, who was a member of the Alaska National Guard, was involved in a child custody dispute with another member of the Alaska National Guard. For reasons I don't understand, the complainant's chain of command decided to inject himself into this custody dispute by causing the complainant to be detained in an electrical closet on a secure U.S. military base for a period of days in order to deny him lawful visitation with his children. It is also alleged that DOD civilian police and Fort Greely military police were complicit in these actions.

All of this is detailed in a sworn affidavit, which the complainant submitted to my office.

You just have to shake your head. Are we supposed to call this military justice? Maybe it is frontier justice. Maybe it is military justice in the last frontier. I don't like it, and I don't think we should ever accept it.

I asked the Army CID to look into this incident because it was my impression then that an unlawful denial of one's freedom is a criminal offense. I understand that the complaint my office forwarded was not pursued by the Army CID, but was referred to the Space and Missile Defense Command.

I am most appreciative that an investigation was pursued, but one might legitimately ask the question: How did it end? What was the outcome of this story? I don't know. Alaskans don't know. We don't know. Neither I nor the individual who sought the investigation has been informed of the outcome, just that the chain of command had looked into it. Where is the transparency?

The complainant has been told he needs to file a Freedom of Information Act request in order to get an answer. None of this sits right with me as an example of how the chain of command is an impartial, unbiased, and vigorous protector of victims. I am not able to see that in this instance. In this case it is alleged that the chain of command were either the perpetrators or complicit with the perpetrators.

Think of the message that sends. Fort Greely is a very small installation. Folks pretty much know what is going on at smaller installations. We know of this incident. It has been reported in the papers. We were told the chain of command has looked into it, but then nothing happened after that.

I would like to suggest that this is the only incident that has come to my attention, but that is not the case. Literally, less than a month ago, on October 27, the Anchorage Daily News reported on allegations that were made by senior Alaska National Guard chaplains of pervasive and longstanding sexual assault and sexual misconduct within Guard ranks.

There were allegations of some 26 different sexual assault and sexual misconduct incidents that were reported in the news. The chaplains become aware of these incidents through their own observations and through complaints that were brought to them by Guard members.

I had an opportunity to ask senior leaders of the National Guard Bureau what they knew about this situation. I asked them when they found out about this situation. You know what the answer was? They read about it in the news clippings. Really? I mean, it just stuns me to hear this after we heard about how we have this system--throughout the chain of command--that has been addressing this issue. Somewhere there is a broken link in this chain.

When the media finds out first and reports about it, and the senior leaders here are unaware of 26 different allegations, it just causes one to wonder.

It is a truism of management that if you want a problem managed, you have to know about it. You have to measure it and let your subordinates know that their performance is being evaluated on that measure.

So answer this question: How can the Secretary of Defense and our senior military leaders ever hope to manage the critical problem before us when the deplorable facts--and I am not talking about the number of complaints--are buried within a decentralized and far flung chain of command? How can I develop any sense of comfort that those who were responsible for these hideous activities have been brought to justice and not just simply moved around the military? It does cause one to wonder.

It is a horrible truth that we are still dealing with in Alaska, but we have all heard--and are very aware--of the widespread allegations of child sexual abuse within the Catholic Church. We have come to learn that the Church, in fact, was aware of many of these allegations. Unfortunately, for a period of time, the way they handled the problem was to move the offending clergy to other places. Some of them were moved to the State of Alaska. If they acted inappropriately in an urban community, they were shipped out to a bush community--a very remote place.

Out of sight, out of mind, and free to offend again. That is not responsibility. That is not accountability. That is not how it should be done within the church, and it certainly should not happen within our military.

We have all shared many different victim stories here on the Senate floor. I want to add that the more this issue of military sexual trauma and sexual assault has been discussed on the Senate floor, more victims have come to speak to me.

I was in my home State 2 weeks ago for a big outdoor community event. It was a pretty cold Saturday afternoon. I was approached by a woman who had seen me from across the street. She was attending a conference at the time. She came across the street and into the town square. She was not wearing a coat. She wanted to make sure that I knew she too had been a victim but had not had the strength to report the crime. She just left the service.

She said to me: Don't give up on this because I had to step down from my military career and the perpetrator stayed on, and as he stayed on, he continued to be promoted. Her plea to me was: Please don't let that continue.

I want to share another story that is very personal to me. I think all of us as Members of the Senate know what a privilege and honor it is to nominate qualified constituents to attend our Nation's service academies. The military stands very tall in the eyes of Alaskans, so in my State these nominations are highly competitive.

Last spring I became aware that one of my nominees who was accepted into one of the service academies and did phenomenally well was sexually assaulted at the academy. I was following this young woman because I knew her family.

She graduated and was commissioned, but now the burden of dealing with the fact that she was not protected from the crime has caused her to resign her commission. She put 4 years of very hard work toward a military career, and now that career is in the garbage.

I contacted her recently. She is a strong woman, but her dreams have been completely dashed by what she experienced.

Many of my colleagues know I have taken a keen interest in the work of our service academies. I served for a short time on the Board of Visitors of one of the academies, but I was not aware of the trauma my constituent had suffered until she contacted me long after graduation. I don't recall any substantial discussions about issues like this during my tenure on the Board of Visitors. It needs to be discussed. It not only needs to be discussed but action needs be taken to eliminate instances like that from ever happening.

These issues are all current issues, but not all of these issues are new. Earlier this year I came to know a woman by the name of Trina McDonald. At one point in time she had the opportunity to live in the State of Alaska as a servicemember. So many of our servicemembers who have been stationed in Alaska want to stay for life. They want to retire there because they love it. Unlike many of her colleagues, Trina chose to try to forget everything that had been attached to her service in Alaska. She prefers to forget that experience. That is because she was sexually assaulted while serving in my home state.

Many of you may have seen ``The Invisible War.'' Ms. McDonald speaks of the experiences she had when she was assigned to the Navy and stationed at Adak, which is now a closed naval base on the Aleutian Chain. This happened about 20 years ago. Trina asserts she was repeatedly drugged, raped, and ultimately dumped in the Bering Sea by superior officers.

What did the chain of command do? Trina states that she had no place to turn because both the police and her superiors were the perpetrators. What do you do? Where do you go? Where is the redress?

It pains me to think that the issues, which today are very high in the attention of this body, have been out here for 20-plus years. I have listened to my colleagues on the floor talk about the Tailhook scandal, and we have talked about so many of the other high profile instances where we have heard our military leaders say, Never again; never again; zero tolerance. They are using all the right words.

It really does cause us to ask the question: Are we to attribute this cycle of violence we are seeing to attention deficit on the part of us here in Congress or attention deficit on the part of our military leaders? This is not what zero tolerance looks like. Whatever the case, I think it is going to take some very strong medicine to break through this powerful attention deficit we have seen historically.

Incremental steps, in my view, don't cut it anymore. For the young woman, again, whose military career is no longer; the woman I met out in the cold 2 weeks ago who gave up her dream and has just had to stand by and watch her perpetrator ascend his career ladder, incremental measures don't cut it.

I think it is time for profound change. I think the amendment offered by the Senator from New York, while it is strong medicine, and I acknowledge that, I think it is the right tool for what we are dealing with at this time.

With that, I thank the Presiding Officer and I yield the floor.

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