Poughkeepsie Journal Editorial Board

The military’s job is to serve and protect the nation from harm. But what happens when serious crimes like sexual assault permeate the ranks?

U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., along with a supporting cast of senators including Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, are rightly pushing for another vote on the Military Justice Improvement Act, a measure that would grant experienced military prosecutors — not military commanders — the authority to move these alleged crimes to trial.

Too often, allegations of sexual assault are never dealt with appropriately. Too often, those who go through the proper channels to report these crimes can be subjected to unwarranted retaliation. The U.S. military — the strongest, most skilled and diverse in the world — has developed a culture of silence when it comes to addressing these issues, and the time for reform is well overdue.

The bill, first introduced in 2013 by Gillibrand, a member of the Senate Armed Services personnel subcommittee, won the support of more than 50 senators, but has since failed twice to exceed the Senate floor’s 60-vote filibuster requirement — an intolerable disservice to the victims of sexual assault.

Further muddling matters is the Department of Defense’s apparent ploy to mislead Congress regarding the facts involving 93 sexual assault cases within the military — an assertion brought to the table by Gillibrand and several other senators, and covered in an in-depth report by the Associated Press.

“Our military justice system is broken and it’s failing our military service members,” Gillibrand said in a recent conference call with media members throughout New York state.

The numbers are telling. Twenty-thousand military members were assaulted last year, according to Gillibrand. Of those servicemen and women, a mere 6,000 reported the crime. Why such a small minority, you might ask? Well, as documented in a recent Department of Defense survey, three out of four service members didn’t exude enough trust in the system to report the assault.

Even more alarming, one in seven survivors were actually assaulted by a peer in their chain of command.

Though the Pentagon, Congress and President Barack Obama have made some positive strides, including establishing a victim-advocacy program and the passage of an act ending the statute of limitations for sexual assault cases, it’s not nearly enough to eradicate this longstanding quandary.

Victims of sexual assault — especially our brave men and women who don military garb — deserve the utmost respect, candor and consideration when reporting these crimes. It’s simply unfair, and cruel, for them to be subjected to ridicule, threats and disenfranchisement for speaking up for themselves.