Political Quotes

“Recently, a courageous 21-year-old female Naval Academy student was bold enough to report that three men on the Navy football team raped her while she was drunk. Little did she know that when she came forward, she would be put on trial, forced to testify, and be cross-examined for more than 30 hours. She was harangued by the defense team and asked humiliating and abusive questions for hours, with the clear objective to intimidate her and destroy the case. What is so unbelievable is that her case hadn't even made it to trial. This was only the equivalent of a preliminary hearing, called an Article 32 hearing under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. It is supposed to be used to determine if a case should go forward to trial. The truth is that Article 32s have mutated and now serve to put the victim on trial, not the accused. Her experience of not only being sexually assaulted but revictimized by the judicial system is all too common in the military. In Article 32 proceedings, it is standard operating procedure for the defense team to subject the victim to every irrelevant, indecent, and outright degrading question you can imagine. In the Naval Academy case, the victim was asked by one of the defense attorneys, ``How wide do you open your mouth for oral sex?'' Another question was asked of her, ``Did you feel like a 'ho' the next morning?'' These questions would simply never, ever be permitted in a civilian criminal trial, let alone in a preliminary hearing.…”