Riverfront Times: Claire McCaskill Responds to Critics of Her Efforts to Combat Military Sexual Assault
The Riverfront Times reports:
Last month, Senator Claire McCaskill, who has been outspoken about the problem of sexual assault in the military, faced accusations that she is leading a “war on men” from a conservative Wall Street Journal columnist. And this week, she’s responding to the Weekly Standard‘s Bill Kristol, who calls sex assaults in the military a “pseudo-crisis” in an editorial.
McCaskill fired off a statement yesterday — on view below — slamming Kristol’s comments, but that’s not the only commentary on this topic she is addressing.
On A7 of yesterday’s Post-Dispatch, a half-page advertisement goes after McCaskill for her work on this very issue. The critic behind the ad, however, is a military rape survivor.The ad is sponsored by Washington, D.C., advocacy group Protect Our Defenders, a victims’ advocacy organization, and features a letter from Terri Odom, a St. Louis resident who says she was “violently raped and left for dead by a superior” when she was serving in the military 26 years ago.
Riverfront Times published a statement from Protect Our Defenders’ Communications Director, Brian Purchia:
Senator McCaskill has been a champion for veterans – that’s why it is so incomprehensible that she would stand in the way of reforms that victims themselves have been calling for. We felt it was necessary to speak out for all those current and past victims going through this ongoing national disgrace. The nation needs Senator McCaskill to be a leader for fundamental reform not opposition.
The Senator from Missouri is being singled out because of her recent statements:
-On Friday, Sen. McCaskill voiced her support for the status quo when she told The Nation that she wants to give widely condemned half measures five more years before considering common sense reforms that our top allies have already implemented, “If five years from now we’re having fewer sexual assault convictions, if we have fewer reports of sexual assault that appear to be an anomaly in terms of the overall incidents coming down, I’ll be first in line,” McCaskill said. Sen. McCaskill has set the bar ridiculously low. She in essence is saying that, if five years from now, this epidemic is worse than it is today she will support fundamental reform.
-Furthermore, Sen. McCaskill also said, “if everybody in the unit knows the commander has said ‘this needs to go to court,’ that gives you (the victim) a level of protection you will never have when everyone knows a bunch of outside lawyers have bought your bull.” Bull? She is not only attacking the competence and credibility of military prosecutors, her words seems to imply that a large percentage of the victims who report are lying.
-Last month, Sen. McCaskill incorrectly alleged on MSNBC that the Pentagon’s Unwanted Sexual Contact statistics includes “somebody looking at you sideways and saying something about how nice you look in a sweater.” This is not true. [Read DoD definition of unwanted sexual contact].
Sen. McCaskill is wrong regarding the reforms most urgently required to end the crisis of military rape. We have spoken to hundreds of survivors and they all say the same thing: their Chain of Command shut down the complaint, didn’t believe them, threatened them with collateral misconduct, or discharged them with errant medical diagnoses such as “personality disorder. We are asking Senator McCaskill to reconsider and stand with victims and not the military leaders that have failed for decades to address the epidemic of military sexual assault.
