Military sexual assault in US: About 26,000 people targeted to unwanted sex

Senate Republicans have objected to vote on the military sexual assault amendments putting the future of the defense authorization bill in a standstill, Voice of Russia reported.

The amendments in particular imply that the supreme command of the US armed forces will no longer have the power to independently transfer cases on sexual assault in the army to court. VoR correspondent Ludmila Chernova reports.

- What is the latest on the voting on the bill?

- A debate on military sex assault bill is still ongoing. Last night the Senate failed to reach an agreement on Amendment to the military justice system, although they were discussing it for hours, they discussed it for about 5 hours in a row but Republicans objected to vote on the military sexual assault amendment proposed by both Senators Kirsten Chilibrand and Claire Mccaskill. Senate majority leader Harry Reid tried to schedule the vote last night from about 5 to 8 pm eastern time but Senators objected until Reid gave the assurance that the Senate would vote on the other Amendments to the national defense authorization act but Reid didn’t. So, there is still a standstill on the defense authorization deal. However it looks like Gillibrand proposed bill is getting more and more popular and getting more and more support. So far she has about 53 senators supporting her. However, for the bill to be passed she needs 60 votes. So far each day she gets more and more supporters like yesterday she got the support from Senate majority leader Harry Reid and among the others she has Senator Ted Cruz, Rent Paul from Kentucky and the support of 17 out of 10 women in the Senate. Still there are some 20 Senators who didn’t take any public position and remain undecided while Gillibrand said she would personally call or meet up with those to talk with them about that. But at this point she is hopeful that the voting would occur later today but so far they are debating and still no agreement.

- What is the opposition's proposal?

- The whole scene erupted last spring when the Pentagon released a study that estimates that about 26,000 people are being targeted to unwanted sex. However, only about 3000 people report on that. So, after that the Senators came up with the rewrite of the uniform code of military justice and what they are trying to achieve is that the new proposed deal would end the statute of limitations on cases of sexual assault of rape, strip military commanders of the power to overturn jury convictions in sexual assault and rape cases. That would require that civilians review commander’s decisions, not prosecute certain cases and make a crime to retaliate against victims who report on these cases and require a dishonorable discharge or dismissal of anyone convicted of sexual assault.