On the recordNovember 20, 2013
Madam President, yesterday morning I was pleased to be able to come to the floor of the Senate and join with a good, strong, group of women from both sides of the aisle to express our joint commitment--really the commitment of every Member of this body--to address the scourge of sexual assault, sexual misconduct within the military. I thought it was a good way to start off the debate yesterday on the issue of sexual assault within the military, recognizing that some are in different places in terms of how we deal with these very important issues. But ultimately the goal of each of us is the same. The goal is that we make things right for those who are serving our Nation, and that when it comes to instances of sexual assault, military sexual trauma, sexual harassment, that really there is no place in our military for this. We use different terminology when we are discussing the issue of sexual misconduct in the military. How we define what we are seeking to eradicate is important. We have used the more generic term sexual assault probably more often to describe the problem that we need to address, but I suggest that definition is probably a bit too narrow. I prefer to use the term military sexual trauma, which is the term that the VA, the Veterans Administration, uses to describe a spectrum of harms.…
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