[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 4]
[House]
[Page 5189]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         HAZING IN THE MILITARY

  (Ms. JUDY CHU of California asked and was given permission to address 
the House for 1 minute and to revise and extend her remarks.)
  Ms. JUDY CHU of California. Mr. Speaker, this month marks the fifth 
anniversary of the death of my nephew, Harry Lew. While deployed in 
Afghanistan, Harry was hazed and brutally assaulted by his fellow 
marines for almost 4 hours. Twenty minutes later, he took his own life. 
He was 21 years old.
  Harry's story is not unique. I have now heard from families and 
servicemembers across the country who have their own tragic stories and 
tried to seek help, but many are at a loss of where to turn. That is 
because the Pentagon's guidance on hazing is unclear, inconsistent, and 
imperfectly applied. Without an accurate system of tracking hazing 
incidents, we have no way to actually know the full extent of the 
problem. This failure costs lives.
  It is time the military treat this problem seriously. My bill, the 
Harry Lew Military Hazing Accountability and Prevention Act, would 
require the Department of Defense to track and report annually on the 
problem of hazing in the military.
  Our men and women in uniform protect us. We must do what we can to 
protect them.

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