[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 9]
[House]
[Pages 11768-11769]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           STOP MILITARY RAPE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
California (Ms. Speier) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. SPEIER. I rise again today to talk about military sexual trauma. 
It's a cancer, it's ubiquitous, it's unabated, and regretfully, 
unaddressed.
  There was Tailhook in 1991. There was Aberdeen in 1996. There were 
scandals at the military academies. There were hearings, there were 
reports, there were toothless recommendations. So here we are, again, 
with yet another scandal.
  At this very moment, military training instructor Luis Walker stands 
before a court martial for raping and assaulting recruits at Lackland 
Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. Walker's job is to train freshly 
minted new Air Force recruits, many of them still in their teens. In 
all, there are 28 charges against him and 10 victims. Walker is a 
sexual predator.
  On Tuesday, a victim testified that right after graduating from boot 
camp, Walker approached her while she sat outside on a bench waiting 
for a bus that would take her to technical training school. Walker came 
up and ordered her to get some bleach from a supply room, and then he 
followed her. Once inside, he closed the door and took off his training 
instructor's hat. ``I'm not here for bleach, am I,'' she asked. While 
Walker had intercourse with her on a couch, she wondered, ``My God, I 
hope he has a condom on.''
  On Wednesday, another victim testified that while on laundry detail 
one day, Walker showed up and told her to follow him to get some 
towels, but to wait 5 minutes so the surveillance cameras would not 
capture them going up together. Once inside a dorm, he pulled her into 
a flight office, kissed her, and told her to perform oral sex on him. 
She said she did what she was told.
  Walker's defense attorneys argue that because the women never 
forcefully resisted, the sex was consensual. The defense also argues 
that because the women never came forward to report the incidents, they 
must not have felt victimized.
  If this happens in any high school in this country--if the prized 
English teacher, band instructor, or football instructor had sex with 
his student, we would be outraged and we would demand action. That 
teacher would be fired. Yet at Lackland, where some of the recruits are 
just 18 or 19 years old, we rationalize the behavior of the perpetrator 
and we blame the victim. Apparently, we have a different definition of 
zero tolerance for sex offenders in the military world than we do for 
them in the civilian world. What does zero tolerance mean in the 
military? Is that just a catchphrase?
  The 35,000 Air Force recruits who funnel through Lackland each year 
are mostly confined to the base for 6\1/2\ weeks of training. They get 
one 3-minute phone call once a week. Recruits live and breathe basic 
training and follow each and every order of their instructor. One rape 
victim at Lackland said, ``Nothing a military training instructor says 
ends with a question mark.''
  Walker is not the only predator charged at Lackland. Seven additional

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training instructors have been charged with sexual misconduct with 
trainees. At least another five are under investigation. One 
instructor, Staff Sergeant Craig LeBlanc, bragged about his conquests 
to his colleague, who waited a month before he reported the incidents. 
Out of loyalty, the colleague stayed quiet. Once he finally reported 
LeBlanc's misconduct with recruits, that instructor was ostracized by 
fellow training instructors for being a tattletale. Is this really a 
culture of zero tolerance?
  Congress needs to investigate and to hold an independent hearing on 
the widespread sex abuse at Lackland Air Force Base. In the last 3 
years since Luis Walker started working at Lackland, roughly 21,000 
female airmen have cycled through basic training. Have they been 
interviewed by investigators to determine if they, too, have been raped 
and sexually assaulted at Lackland? How widespread is this epidemic?
  At Lackland, out of the 31 identified victims, only one has reported 
the crime. Why are victims scared to come forward? Internal 
investigations will not get to the bottom of this. Congress needs to 
act. I called for a hearing in June, and received no response. Last 
week, I was joined by a bipartisan group of 77 Members of Congress 
calling for a hearing. We've received no response. I'm sick of waiting 
for action. The 19,000 members of our military who are raped each and 
every year deserve better than catchphrases. They deserve justice.

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