[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 5]
[House]
[Page 6366]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1020
 THE TIME HAS COME TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT SEXUAL ASSAULT IN OUR MILITARY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
California (Ms. Speier) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. SPEIER. Mr. Speaker, next to me is a mug shot. It's a mug shot of 
someone who's been charged with sexual assault. This is a mug shot of 
Jeffrey Krusinski.
  Jeffrey Krusinski is a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force. His job 
is to work at the Pentagon as the chief officer of the Sexual Assault 
and Prevention Office within the Air Force. This man is charged with 
the responsibility of preventing and reporting sexual assault in the 
military, in the Air Force. And just this last weekend, he was charged 
with sexually assaulting a woman in a parking lot.
  The best and the brightest the Air Force has to offer to run this 
office, and he's a sexual predator? Is that what we're talking about?
  This is an indictment of the SAPRO office that is supposed to be the 
solution for military rape and assault. It's an indictment of our 
procedures. It's an indictment of everything we have done on this 
issue.
  And Congress is as culpable as the military in not addressing it, 
because we've known about this issue for 25 years. And we are big on 
holding hearings and beating our chests and saying, This has got to 
stop. And the big brass comes up to the Hill, and they say all the 
right words. They say, We have a zero tolerance. And then our chief 
prevention officer is charged with a sexual assault.
  But it doesn't end there. The bad news doesn't end there.
  The military just released today it's Sexual Assault and Prevention 
Office report on how many sexual assaults took place in the military 
last year. And guess what? The numbers have gone up by 30 percent, from 
19,000 sexual assaults and rapes in the military, based on the last 
year's figures, to the most recent year's figures of 26,000 rapes and 
sexual assaults in the military.
  For all the money we've been throwing at this issue, for all the 
prevention and all the rehabilitation and all of the training, the 
numbers keep going up. And now, this most recent report also suggests 
that one-third of the women serving in the military reported that they 
were sexually harassed last year.
  This is an institution of military good discipline, good order?
  It is time for us to roll up our sleeves and do something real about 
this. We have got to stop just kind of nibbling around the edges in an 
effort to try and fix a broken system.
  121 Members have joined me as coauthors of legislation that would 
take the reporting of sexual assault out of the chain of command, keep 
it in the military, but place it in a separate office staffed by 
persons who are experts in investigations, experts in prosecuting these 
crimes.
  And until we do something like this, the numbers of sexual assaults 
will continue to rise in the military. The number of unrestricted 
reports will not rise as fast as the number of restricted reports.
  And why do we have restricted reports? Why would we say to any member 
of the military, Yes, report this, but we will keep it quiet, we will 
sweep it under the rug?
  This, my friends, is time for us to do something. It is time for us 
to say that we are not going to tolerate another scandal. We're not 
going to tolerate a scandal on Lackland Air Force Base, where there 
were 59 victims and 32 military training instructors who were 
implicated. We're not going to tolerate that in Aviano, Italy. We had a 
major general who overturned the decision by five military members of a 
jury who court-martialed a lieutenant colonel and found him guilty, and 
yet the major general overturned the decision and decided to reinstate 
this individual.
  The time, my friends, has come to do something.

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