Susan Burke on MSNBC / Interview Transcript
TRANSCRIPT OF MSNBC SUSAN BURKE INTERVIEW 05/07/2013
MSNBC
May 7, 2013 Tuesday
SHOW: ALL IN with CHRIS HAYES 8:00 PM EST
ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES for May 7, 2013
BYLINE: Chris Hayes, Goldie Taylor
GUESTS: Connie Schultz, Anita Wooldridge, Louise Slaughter, Susan Burke, Amy Klobuchar
SECTION: NEWS; Domestic
LENGTH: 7843 words
HIGHLIGHT: Three different women missing for a decade all found alive about five miles from where they disappeared, in a Cleveland home where they`ve been held captive under unimaginable conditions. A new Pentagon study is released showing an epidemic of sexual assault in the military.
CHRIS HAYES, HOST: Good evening from New York. I`m Chris Hayes. Thank you for joining us on ALL IN tonight.
One day after we told you of the shocking arrest of the lieutenant colonel in charge of curbing sexual assault in the United States Air Force, a new Pentagon study is released showing an epidemic of sexual assault in the military.
Plus, you know a civil war on immigration is underway in the Republican Party when Grover Norquist testifies in favor of immigration reform.
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HAYES: The president says he expects consequences after the Pentagon released a shameful new report on sexual assault in the military. That`s next.
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HAYES: All right. This is a brochure distributed at the Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina on how not to be raped on an Air Force base. The brochure obtained by “Wired” magazine is believed to be current and advises women on base to walk facing oncoming traffic, be suspicious of vehicles parked close and be careful when people stop you for directions.
It warns women that rapists are not easy to pick out, meaning they don`t like a rapist, and they tend to have hyper-masculine attitudes.
But if all of those pearls of wisdom don`t prevent an attack, it tells women to consider rolling under a nearby auto and scream loud. And if all else fails, it may be advisable to submit than resist.
Now, if those set of tips of how not to get assaulted on an Air Force base by watching your back at every single moment, if that creates a nightmarish scenario of moment teeming with attackers — well, they are even more disturbing in the context of the shocking numbers released today by the Pentagon about sexual assault in the military.
The Pentagon study estimates that 26,000 people in the military were sexually assaulted in 2012, from 19,000 in the same period a year before. We are seeing epidemic levels of sexual assault in the military and it is getting worse.
At the very moment we were supposed to be making progress integrating women more and more into the armed forces, it is getting worse. So today we are witnessing somewhat of a perfect story, horrifying numbers out of the pentagon coupled with the arrest we told you about last night of Lieutenant Colonel Jeffrey Krusinski who until yesterday headed the program to curb sexual assault in the U.S. Air Force and is himself accused of sexually assaulting a woman over the weekend. His mug shot reveals apparent scratches by the woman he allegedly assaulted who appears did not submit.
Today, while questioning Air Force General Welsh, New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand captured some of the profound exasperation felt by many about the military failing to deal with or comprehend the enormity of the problem they face.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND (D), NEW YORK: The man in charge for the Air Force in preventing sexual assault is being alleged to have committed a sexual assault this weekend. Obviously there`s a failing in training and understanding of what sexual assault is and how corrosive and damaging it is to good order and discipline, and how it is undermining the credibility of the greatest military force in the world.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Joining me tonight, Congresswoman Louise Slaughter of New York, who`s been a leader on this issue; former U.S. Marine Goldie Taylor, who`s a contributor at MSNBC and TheGrio.com; and Susan Burke, an attorney representing survivors of rape in the military.
And, Ms. Burke, I think I want to begin with you. I guess my question to you is, were these numbers surprising to you, A, and, B, how are we to understand the increase? I mean, we can talk about the culture that exists and institutional problems and the problems of the chain of command.
But looking at these numbers and seeing an increase between 2011 and 2012, what are we to make of that?
SUSAN BURKE, ATTORNEY FOR MILITARY VICTIM: Well, the numbers actually aren`t surprising at all because what you have is you have a two-decade long period when the military has simply failed to prosecute and convict rapists. And since the reality is that most rapists are serial rapists. If you don`t catch them, lock them up, put them in jail, they`re going to have multiple victims.
So, I viewed the numbers as almost inevitable rise that just demonstrates that the military has woefully failed on their task of public safety, on prosecuting rapists.
HAYES: Congresswoman, does that — does that essentially jive with the way you understand the numbers we`re seeing today?
REP. LOUISE SLAUGHTER (D), NEW YORK: Not really. I`ve been working in this for over 20 years, Chris, and I first got interested in it reading about nurses who served in Vietnam. They were not in the military and combat area, but all of them in this one unit came back — this story appeared when they were putting up the statue of nurses over by the Vietnam memorial.
All of the people — all those women had been raped. One by the chaplain, they had no place to go, no one to talk to and not even discussed it until this honor was coming up and they talked to a reporter about it.
I`ve seen this over and over again, it`s a matter of culture. And if we`re going to think it`s someone who is a bad apple, we have to think about the academies, you know, members of Congress send students to the academies. And we pick the cream of the crop.
We get the top intelligence — the top students, we get the people who do lots of community service, boy and girl scouts, people who have lived exemplary life up to about 18, we send them to the academy and many times, we see the sexual assault.
So, there`s something in the culture. And I think if we don`t finally learn what that is, we`re never going to do it.
HAYES: OK. So —
SLAUGHTER: But over the years, I have had more generals traipsing through my office, colonel or someone in tow, somebody of that rank, telling me it`s going to be OK. It`s not going to be OK.
HAYES: So there`s a cultural aspect to this from what I`m hearing from you, Congresswoman.
SLAUGHTER: Has to be.
HAYES: There`s a legal — there`s an accountability aspect I`m hearing from you, Susan. Goldie, as a marine who served at a moment that isn`t the current 10-year period where we`ve had the highest percentage of women serving in the military`s history, what is your reaction to the news? How does it resonate with your service when you were serving?
GOLDIE TAYLOR, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR: Well, number one, Chris, thanks for having me.
I am frankly not surprised. When I first enlisted 26 years ago, you know, myself and others were confronted with this very thing. Not only is this an allowable thing, it is rewarded, I would say.
The women who are victims are often pressured not to go forward with charges. And if they decide to go forward with charges, the credibility is attacked. They are re-victimized.
Many of them are sent for lie detector tests. They`re sent for psychological exams. Many of these women`s careers are ended, they are sent home without benefits.
Meanwhile, the men are never prosecuted, by and large. They are traded from duty station to duty station, where they can re-victimize other women. They never serve a day in jail and those most egregious cases where they do decide they need to discharge someone dishonorably and send them home, they don`t spend a day in the brig and certainly aren`t punished by civilian law.
And so, they`re simply allowed to go home, out into the civilian communities, and re-victimize other women.
HAYES: Right.
TAYLOR: And so this is the culture that we`re dealing with. If I write a bad check at the commissary, my commanding officer is going to call me up and threaten a court-martial for me. If, however, I am raped, my rapist will likely get away with it.
HAYES: So, I — there`s some numbers — Congresswoman, there`s numbers on this that I want to show because I think they show exactly the problem and I`d like to get your reaction to them, Susan. I`d like to talk about how — because this sounds to me. I did a lot of reporting on the child rape scandal in the Catholic Church, and there`s a lot of institutional similarities.
So, I want to talk about solving this, actually bringing some accountability to bear and look at these hard numbers, right after we take this quick break.
HAYES: We`re talking about the shameful number of sexual assaults in the military which we learned today is up 35 percent since 2010.
And, Susan Burke, an attorney who represents survivors of sexual assault in the military, I want to look just walk through these numbers very quickly.
This is from the report that we got from the Pentagon today: 26,000 people in the military were sexually assaulted. That`s estimated based on anonymous surveys. Over 3,000 reports of sexual assault, 2,600 completed investigations, 594 court-martials, 302 cases went to court, all the way down to 238 convictions.
So, our top line, you`ve got 26,000 people who reported being sexually assaulted and you have 238 convictions.
What is breaking down there?
BURKE: What`s breaking down is the system. The Uniform Code of Military Justice, the way it is currently structured allows the chain of command. So people who are the boss of the alleged rapists or the boss`s boss. It allows them to step in and make an adjudicatory decision.
So, for example, there`s a recent case in which a Lieutenant Colonel Wilkerson (ph), he was convicted by a jury of his peers of other lieutenant colonels and colonels in the Air Force and he was found to have raped a woman. Yet, General Franklin, his superior took a look at the jury verdict and said, oh, I don`t agree, I really think Lieutenant Colonel Wilkerson is a good guy and set it aside.
That`s a broken judicial system. It doesn`t work. You`ve got to change that. Congress has to act to change that.
HAYES: So, congresswoman, there`s — this is where it looks like this is heading in terms of the debate legislatively and policy-wise. Secretary of Defense Hagel today seemed unenthusiastic about the idea of Congress asserting authority to move this out of the chain of command. What is your feeling about that?
SLAUGHTER: Well, let me give you another statistic for a second; 62 percent of the persons who — men and women, who reported sexual assault were retaliated against. Now, I wrote legislation against that, that allows them to go back and appeal to a board that can change military records, and change it so that they can get their pension and have a future, maybe paid for promotions they were not allowed to have.
It is a wonderful piece of legislation, passed, signed and in effect. But I don`t even know if military people now about it. I don`t know if it`s ever been used. I`m not sure legislation is really the thing that`s going to do it. But lord knows, I`ve written plenty of it. And I`m not going to give up.
But I would have to say that waking up this morning to find a six percent increase in the numbers was horrifying to me. I met young Women who told me that when they reported, people would say to them, you don`t want to ruin that young man`s career, do you? I even wrote the legislation that allowed them to be transferred because a soldier told me that every morning she had to salute her rapist.
It`s far more difficult and intricate than I think we realize. There are no easy answers here. But I do believe still that the culture of the military and all the power that goes with high command and persons in higher echelons of officers really has a lot to do with it.
HAYES: So on that culture, Goldie, I want to show you this video. We were looking at this video yesterday when the news came out about Lieutenant Colonel Kosinski. This is an ostensibly anti-sexual assault video that`s on the Air Force page. But it just doesn`t seem like it captures the problem. It seems to show to me a culture there that is not quite getting it.
I want to get your reaction, Goldie. Just take a look at this video.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let me be real clear, every Airman, every single one of you, deserves to be treated with respect. All of us are responsible for creating a climate where that`s the expectation.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This begins with adhering to standards and living by our core values. It means showing respect for our teammates and for ourselves.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It also means exercising personal responsibility and moral courage, maybe choosing not to have one more drink and then do or say something stupid. Airmen share a special bond. We have to be able to trust each other.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: To me, that means protection from bad situations and sometimes from ourselves. A good wingman looks out for us, on and off duty.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And real wingmen intervene before their friends do something stupid.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: I got to say, Goldie, sexual assault is not something stupid. It`s not something that happens after someone has a few drinks, right? It is a crime. It is an act of violence. It is an act of domination. And this to me, in referring to it as something stupid euphemistically twice, makes me feel like they are not getting it.
TAYLOR: Sounds to me like they`re pulling the responsibility on the victim to keep themselves out of these situations when actually this is a violent crime. This is in the culture. It is a metastasized cancer. It is down to the bone. And I applaud Congresswoman Gillibrand and Congresswoman Slaughter for the work that they`ve done over the many years to help root out these issues. The solution here is investigation and prosecution.
HAYES: Right.
TAYLOR: There is no fear and punishment. There is no real fear that you`re going to be punished if you rape a fellow service member. There is real fear that if you report it, that something`s going to happen to your career. And you`re certainly not going to get the support and the help you need. That is the issue.
The military`s built on assets, whether it be the weaponry that we have or the house — the barracks that we live in or the men and women who serve. It seems to me that our nation`s military has placed more value on the male asset than they have on the female asset. And they`ve decided which one they want to keep.
HAYES: I should note something in the numbers of the anonymous survey. A very surprisingly high number, at least I thought surprisingly high number, of the people who report having been sexually assaulted are men.
TAYLOR: Absolutely.
HAYES: This is not —
SLAUGHTER: One point two percent.
HAYES: And this is not just —
SLAUGHTER: It`s not just a women`s issue.
HAYES: Not just women. Congresswoman Louise Slaughter, MSNBC contributor Goldie Taylor, and attorney Susan Burke, there`s a lot more to talk about this. We`re going to be revisiting it in the days to come.
SLAUGHTER: That brochure is important. If that brochure still exists, then we haven`t come very far.
HAYES: I agree. Thank you all for joining me and thank you for the next time we talk about this.
