PolicyMic: Military Sexual Assault is a Growing Problem, But We’re Not Doing Anything About It
Protect Our Defenders Policy Director Miranda Petersen is featured in this PolicyMic article:
In an op-ed she wrote for Huffington Post this May, Gillibrand explained that the bill would take the jurisdiction over serious crimes outside of the victim’s chain of command and given to a trained military prosecutor. “Only when there is real accountability in the military justice system will more survivors of these crimes have the confidence to report them, and only then will these survivors get the justice they deserve,” she wrote.
Petersen, who is also a policy adviser at Protect Our Defenders, a human rights organization that works with victims of rape and sexual assault in the military, told PolicyMic that these crimes have “absolutely devastating” consequences. “These are your brothers-and-sisters in arms — you have been trained to trust these people with your life. When a sexual assault occurs it is the ultimate betrayal of that trust and that bond, and it compounds the trauma associated with the assault,” she added.
