Circus Trial Looms Over Military Sex Assault Reform
Protect Our Defenders President Nancy Parrish is featured in this article from VICE:
The trial has become a sideshow to a more important event that could take place as early as 2 PM on Thursday: a Senate vote on the Military Justice Improvement Act (MJIA). Sponsored by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), the bill seeks to shift authority over reports of sexual assault in the military from the chain of command to independent military prosecutors, in order to eliminate any conflict of interest.
“In the military, the accused’s commander serves as the Convening Authority, the person with the ultimate power to decide whether a case should go to court-martial and appoint the jury,” Nancy Parrish, the head of Protect Our Defenders, which supports victims of sexual assault in the military, told VICE News. “This is an inherently conflicted, often biased, and inefficient system.”
