Protect Our Defenders News Blog

 

The Guardian: Senator Kirsten Gillibrand gains support for army sexual assault reform

Protect Our Defenders Advisory Board Member Lt. General Claudia Kennedy is featured in this article from the Guardian:

The new supporters of Gillibrand’s proposals includes Lieutenant General Claudia Kennedy, the first woman to reach the rank of three-star general, and brigadiers general Loree Sutton, formerly the highest-ranking psychiatrist in the US army, and David McGinnis, a former principal deputy to the assistant secretary of defense for reserve affairs.

In a letter to Gillibrand, first published by Politico and seen by the Guardian, Kennedy wrote that the Defense Department’s time to solve the epidemic of sexual assault on its own had “expired”.

“Having served in leadership positions in the US army, I have concluded that if military leadership hasn’t fixed the problem in my lifetime, it’s not going to be fixed without a change to the status quo,” Kennedy said. “The imbalance of power and authority held by commanders in dealing with sexual assaults must be corrected. There has to be independent oversight over what is happening in these cases.”

Read more here.