Washington Post: Breaking the Cycle of Sexual Assault in the Military

Garry Trudeau, Doonesbury creator, and Loree Sutton, Psychiatrist and Founding Director of the Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and TBI, write in the Washington Post:

In our view, the only credible solution is to create an independent special victims unit completely outside the unit chain of command, under civilian oversight. It should be led by a flag-rank officer who has no stake in the reputation of individual commands but a huge stake in doing the only thing that matters — driving down the rate of sexual assault in the military. Any such office would need to ensure leader accountability for the “gateway behaviors” — bullying, humiliation, scapegoating — that set the conditions for violent assault. Another Defense Department study found that the incidence of rape triples in units that tolerate sexual harassment.

Read the full article.