AP: Sex assault victims find help navigating military justice system
The Associated Press reports:
As an Army general faced court-martial for sexual assault this month, a military lawyer sat each day in the front row of the gallery, a few feet behind the prosecutors.
Unlike lawyers trying to win a criminal conviction against Brig. Gen. Jeffrey A. Sinclair, Capt. Cassie L. Fowler’s sole mission was to protect the woman at the center of the case — a captain who said her commander twice forced her to perform oral sex and threatened to kill her if she told anyone about their three-year affair.
Known as a special victims counsel, or SVC for short, Fowler is part of a program started by the Pentagon last year after long-standing complaints that the military has too often treated those reporting rapes and sexual assaults as if they were the ones who did something wrong.
