The Nation: Temperatures Rising Over Military Sexual Assaults
The Nation magazine talks to executive director of Protect Our Defenders, Taryn Meeks:
McCaskill, a former prosecutor, expressed a lot of faith that the system will fix itself. “We have made massive changes in a relatively short period of time, and without giving them a chance to work. There’s a little bit of a political rush to judgment now,” she said. “There is this notion that this one other piece is the magic elixir that will all of a sudden make the military be perfect when it comes to sexual assault, and it’s naïve and I think frankly comes from not having as much experience as some of us have in this particular arena.”
Taryn Meeks, a former Navy lawyer (judge advocate general, or JAG, in military terms) now the executive director of Protect Our Defenders, disagreed with McCaskill’s assessment. “The public eye is on commanders now, but what happens when the public shifts its attention? The system is so broken it will easily revert back to a time when commanders can sweep these issues under the rug,” she said.
McCaskill is playing defense after a Politico story alleged that the amendment she and Levin pushed over Gillibrand’s was vetted first by the Pentagon, a claim McCaskill denies. “I resent being characterized as a tool of the Pentagon on this,” she said after the hearing, during which she pounded her fist on the table and told Dempsey and Winnefeld, “There is nobody who will be further in front of the line to kick you until you’re senseless if we don’t get this problem under control.”
