Bloomberg News: Marine Says Her Rapist Went Free as Senator Demands a Crackdown
Bloomberg News reports:
Stacey Thompson said she was a young Marine lance corporal stationed in Okinawa, Japan, when her sergeant drugged her, raped her and pushed her out of a car in front of a nightclub at 4 a.m. on December 10, 1999.
Thompson, now a 32-year-old mother of three in San Clemente, California, said her assailant was allowed to leave the military without prosecution, while months after the incident she was given an “other than honorable discharge” based on what she said were false drug charges.
Thompson appeared at a press conference today in Los Angeles with Senator Barbara Boxer, who amid an uproar over the military’s failure to crack down on sexual assaults and harassment is co-sponsoring the bipartisan Military Justice Improvement Act of 2013. The legislation would let military prosecutors outside the chain of command decide whether to take cases to courts-martial.
