Unanimous Consent Request--S. 1520

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mrs. GILLIBRAND. Madam President, I rise to once again call for this entire body to have the opportunity to consider and cast their votes on the Military Justice Improvement and Increasing Prevention Act. This commonsense reform would ensure that people in the military who have been subjected to sexual assault and other serious crimes get the justice they deserve.

I have been calling for a full vote on the floor on this bill since May 24. That was 23 days ago. Since then, an estimated 1,288 servicemembers will have been raped or sexually assaulted. Two in three of the survivors will not even report it because they know they are more likely to face retaliation than to receive justice.

Today I want to share the story of the kind of offender our bill would address.

On March 30 of this year, SSG Randall Hughes pled guilty to a series of rapes dating back to 2006 that he committed while the Army looked the other way. Staff Sergeant Hughes was only brought to justice after his brave daughter decided to come forward. Had the Army prosecuted him the first time one of his victims had come forward, his daughter may have been spared.

At a Super Bowl party in 2017, Staff Sergeant Hughes fed drinks to his host, a soldier under his care, until the host passed out. He then approached his host's wife while she was outside the house. He propositioned her for sex, and when she refused, he forced himself on her against their grill outside their house and then dragged her inside their house, where he raped her--all while the husband was passed out in the next room.

The survivor hid in her bathroom until she could report the ordeal to CID the next day. CID took a year to investigate a relatively straightforward rape allegation. The command did nothing to expedite the investigation or hold CID's feet to the fire.

CID determined that the allegations were credible, but the command did nothing. Instead of prosecuting him, the command put Staff Sergeant Hughes on the sergeant first class promotion list.

Hopeless, the survivor asked that something, anything, be done. The command reacted by putting an administrative remark in his record.

Staff Sergeant Hughes was transferred to a new duty station, Fort Dix. While at Fort Dix, after years of sexual abuse, his daughter bravely came forward to report that abuse. CID at Fort Dix then noticed the administrative remark in his record from the previous rape and began making inquiries. They learned he had raped two other women and physically abused his wife.

The command had every tool available to stop Staff Sergeant Hughes from his serial rapes, including the abuse of his own daughter, but instead they turned a blind eye and did nothing. Even after he admitted to his crime and pled guilty, the Army offered a plea deal of 13 years of confinement--13 years of confinement despite sexually assaulting three women, including a minor. This serial offender avoided justice for 15 years. Even when the command was forced to administer justice, he received a sentence less than we would give a drug offender.

This case is why we need a professional military justice system worthy of the sacrifices the men and women in our military make every day. Having leadership at the top that truly cares and that is truly passionate about prosecuting sexual abuse will have repercussions down the chain. Our bill does exactly this.

We have 66 Senators who have cosponsored this bill. It deserves a vote on the floor.

1520 and the Senate proceed to its consideration; that there be 2 hours of debate equally divided in the usual form; and that upon the use or yielding back of that time, the Senate vote on the bill with no intervening action or debate.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mrs. GILLIBRAND. As you heard from the chairman of the committee, he only intends on taking one crime out of the chain of command, and that is sexual assault. And the reason why that is so problematic is, No. 1, it will continue to undermine women in the military, marginalize them and isolate them, creating a ``pink court'' that all legal experts have agreed would be highly ineffective and would harm the military justice system.

Second, our allies have already made this move. They have taken all serious crimes out of the chain of command and given it to trained military prosecutors in the UK, Israel, Germany, Netherlands, and Australia. In those instances, they did it specifically for defendants' rights. And we have a similar problem in this country because right now we have a great deal of racial bias in who gets punished.

If you are Black or Brown in the U.S. military today, you are 2.5 times more likely to be punished. And most commanders are White commanders. There is further data that shows most Black and Brown servicemembers have either experienced or witnessed racism within the ranks.

If we want to fix this criminal justice system, you need a bright line, and it should be at all serious crimes. That is how we fix the military justice system. That is how we give justice to sexual assault survivors.

And for the chairman to say today that it would cost too much money or that they don't have sufficient resources or sufficient lawyers, it isn't true. And those are the same arguments that were used over the last 8 years about excluding sexual assault from the chain of command as well.

So I don't think these are legitimate arguments. I think they are brought up year after year as just a way to put an impediment in front of the reform that is needed to fix the system.

I now yield the floor to my colleague Senator Grassley.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source