“Taking the commander out of the loop never solved any problem,” said U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a former Air Force lawyer who is the personnel subcommittee's top Republican. “It would dismantle the military justice system beyond sexual assaults. It would take commanders off the hook for their responsibility to fix this problem.”
Graham, a member of the Air Force Reserves who is an instructor at the service's judge advocate general school, said victims of sexual assault have a far better chance of getting justice than do victims whose cases are handled by civilian courts.
But research by Cassia Spohn, a professor of criminology and criminal justice at Arizona State University, found that civilian courts prosecute sexual assault cases at a higher rate than the military -- 50 percent compared with 37 percent.
Spohn cautioned that comparing the two sectors is a dicey exercise.
State and local prosecutors typically only file charges in cases they have a solid chance of winning. Conversely, the military may be able to secure at least mild punishment, such as a reduction in rank or loss of pay, in a weaker case because they have more options to penalize.
The military leadership's time to solve the crisis on its own has run out, according to Pentagon critics. A string of episodes in which senior officers were caught behaving badly is further proof that serious crimes should be dealt with outside the chain of command, they say.
“There is a perception out there right now that the military is out of control,” said K. Denise Rucker Krepp, a former Coast Guard officer and attorney. “You are not going to attract the best and the brightest if people believe that if you go into the military you are going to be sexually assaulted.”
Mark Russell, a psychologist and former Navy commander who was stationed in Japan, said putting commanders in charge of deciding how to proceed with sex abuse allegations can conflict with the unit's mission.
