Protect Our Defenders News Blog

 

Kirsten Gillibrand Wants Meeting With Obama To Revive Military Sexual Assault Bill

The Huffington Post reports:

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), who spearheaded a ferocious, ultimately unsuccessful public fight to revamp how sexual assault is reported and prosecuted in the military, said on Wednesday that she would personally petition the president to reconsider the issue.

“I’m going to ask for another meeting,” Gillibrand said at a lunch organized by Bloomberg News. “I’m going to ask for an opportunity for victims to meet with him. I also want the benefit of the data that I’ve been waiting for from the Secretary of Defense [on records of sexual assaults at major bases] and the Department of Defense, because whatever we did, we didn’t persuade them enough.”

Gillibrand’s pledge to bring the issue of sexual assault in the military to the White House doorstep is the latest in her ongoing effort to resuscitate a debate that was recently put on pause.

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