[AUDIO] Despite increased reporting of sexual assaults, DoD still struggles to tackle issue
Protect Our Defenders Board of Directors Member Paula Coughlin is interviewed by Federal News Radio:
Twenty-three years ago, Paula Coughlin, now a board member of Protect Our Defenders, was a Navy officer and one of the victims and whistleblowers of the Tailhook scandal.
In an interview for Federal News Radio’s special report, Trust Redefined: Reconnecting Government and Its Employees, Coughlin said she believes the military has done very little in the 23 years since Tailhook to prevent sexual assaults in the military from occurring.
“By prevention, I mean actually prosecuting those people who are the perpetrators of these crimes,” she told Federal Drive hosts Tom Temin and Emily Kopp. “When the crimes continue to become exponentially prevalent among our ranks and military members start to connect that what happened to them happened to somebody else happened to somebody else, and the numbers become more and more outrageous, I think it bears out that there really is no progress in fighting this epidemic and there’s no reason why any military member should feel like they could trust their command to take care of this issue.”
