[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 12]
[House]
[Pages 17035-17036]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                               ARTICLE 32

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
California (Ms. Speier) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. SPEIER. Mr. Speaker, recently, a courageous 21-year-old female 
Naval Academy student was bold enough to report that three men on the 
Navy football team raped her while she was drunk. Little did she know 
that when she came forward, she would be put on trial, forced to 
testify, and be cross-examined for more than 30 hours. She was 
harangued by the defense team and asked humiliating and abusive 
questions for hours, with the clear objective to intimidate her and 
destroy the case.
  What is so unbelievable is that her case hadn't even made it to 
trial. This was only the equivalent of a preliminary hearing, called an 
Article 32 hearing under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. It is 
supposed to be used to determine if a case should go forward to trial. 
The truth is that Article 32s have mutated and now serve to put the 
victim on trial, not the accused.
  Her experience of not only being sexually assaulted but revictimized 
by the judicial system is all too common in the military. In Article 32 
proceedings, it is standard operating procedure for the defense team to 
subject the victim to every irrelevant, indecent, and outright 
degrading question you can imagine.
  In the Naval Academy case, the victim was asked by one of the defense 
attorneys, ``How wide do you open your mouth for oral sex?'' Another 
question was asked of her, ``Did you feel like a `ho' the next 
morning?''
  These questions would simply never, ever be permitted in a civilian 
criminal trial, let alone in a preliminary hearing. None of this is in 
pursuit of the truth, of course. It is all an effort to make victims 
think twice about even coming forward or pursuing a case.
  At one point in the Naval Academy proceedings, the victim asked for a 
recess because of fatigue. Lawyers for the alleged rapists scoffed, 
``What is so stressful about this?''
  In the civilian world, a preliminary hearing is used to determine if 
there is probable cause and if a case should go to trial. Oftentimes, 
the victim is never even called, and the victim is certainly not 
berated for hours about their previous sexual history. These 
proceedings are very brief, and the scope of the hearing is limited to 
the question of probable cause.
  The 5-day, 30-hour proceeding is such a glaring example of the 
difference between what justice looks like in the civilian courts and 
what it looks like in the military justice system. Simply put, Article 
32 hearings are rigged in favor of the accused. The scales are so 
tilted in favor of the accused, the system is upended.
  The proceedings also have a significant chilling effect on sexual 
assault reporting. Although the numbers have climbed, only 10 percent 
of the estimated 26,000 annual assaults are actually reported. Now, 
think about this: 26,000 assaults every year in the military of both 
men and women--and mostly men, I might add--with only 3,000 reported. 
Are we at all surprised that the numbers of reports are so small? Less 
than 1 percent of the offenders are ever convicted. This is called 
military justice?
  After Air Force Lieutenant General Richard Harding testified that 30 
percent of the victims drop out during the investigative process, it is 
time for us to do something meaningful about Article 32 hearings. That 
is why I am introducing the Article 32 Reform Act along with my 
cosponsor, the gentleman from Pennsylvania, Congressman Pat Meehan, 
which will align these proceedings with what happens in a civilian 
preliminary hearing and will give victims the option of whether or not 
to testify at all.
  Ironically, civilian victims are currently afforded this right in 
military courts but not servicemembers. That is right. We allow 
civilian victims not to testify in Article 32s but force the brave 
servicemembers who are victims to be subjected to this abusive process.
  This bill has bipartisan support in both the House and the Senate and 
will finally put an end to these open-ended, abusive hearings that 
revictimize those who come forward and prevent others from reporting 
for fear of being savaged by defense attorneys who have only one goal: 
to shut up the victim and sully their reputations. The proposed reform 
will put prosecutors in charge. It will shift the focus to probable 
cause, and the threshold will be what it should be: whether there is 
sufficient evidence to go to trial.
  It is time that we give the same rights to brave servicemembers who 
come forward to report a crime, the rights that the rest of us have in 
civilian society. If we are serious about addressing the epidemic of 
sexual assault, we must stop treating the victim as the criminal and 
stop protecting the sexual predators. It is time for us to clean up the 
military justice system.

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