St. Louis Post-Dispatch: McCaskill aided by female veterans in military sexual assault fight
St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports:
An epidemic of sexual assaults in the service branches has become an embarrassing problem for the military, one that McCaskill, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a former prosecutor, is spending much of her time on these days.
But after engineering far-reaching changes in how the military responds to these attacks on men and women alike, McCaskill now is combating efforts by other senators and by victim support groups to change the system even more when this year’s defense bill reaches the Senate floor.
The chief difference in McCaskill-backed provisions now in the legislation and a competing proposal concerns the role of commanders. In changes adopted by the Armed Services Committee, commanders retain the power to refer cases for court martial but with review from the highest civilian levels in the service branches if commanders decline to pursue cases.
