On the recordDecember 7, 2011
I thank the gentlelady from Massachusetts for yielding me the time. I would just like to say to the gentleman from California and to my colleagues on the Armed Services Committee, I am very grateful that this language is in the motion to instruct the conferees. My only point is that until we create an independent office to handle these cases, we continue to place the unit commanders and the base commanders in a conflict of interest. What happens when the unit commander is, in fact, the assailant? That means that the rape victim has to go to her rapist and seek to have help and to report that rape to her unit commander. {time} 1310 What we need to do is create an independent authority that will have the expertise, which a unit commander is not going to have, regarding sexual assault and rape and have investigators who have, again, the expertise to look at these cases so that the unit commanders and the base commanders are not flummoxed by the various issues surrounding this very, very serious subject.
