Political Quotes

“About 5 years ago in my community, we were saddened to hear of the news of the tragic death of Marie Lauterbach. Marie Lauterbach was a marine who came forward to report the sexual assault that she had endured and came forward and reported her belief of a subsequent pregnancy from that sexual assault, only to have the Marines inform her and the accused in the sexual assault, the perpetrator, that they would wait until her baby was born, and when the baby was born, they would do DNA testing. And if the DNA testing showed, in fact, that the baby was the accused's, then they would move forward with the prosecution. Until then, they left the two in close proximity until the accused murdered Marie Lauterbach in her eighth month of pregnancy and burned her in her backyard in a bonfire. It was at that time that I saw that the issue of sexual assault in the military was not just one of unacceptable numbers, it was an issue of an environment where victims were re-victimized and perpetrators felt safe. Mr. Speaker, a recent survey in the military indicated that 28,000 servicemembers have indicated that they were sexually assaulted, but less than 3,000 of those were willing to actually report it in a manner that would result in charges against their accused. We think we know why: because 62 percent of the slightly less than 3,000 indicated that they felt that they were persecuted in the workplace for having done so. They were re-victimized.…”