WASHINGTON — A Republican senator’s revelation of her sexual assault while serving in the Air Force is likely to renew debate over how to best get justice for victims, an issue that seemed settled several years ago when Congress adjusted conduct codes that dictate military justice.

Long before the #MeToo movement brought sexual violence and harassment to the fore, women in the military and their advocates had highlighted such misconduct in the armed forces. In 2005, Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine and at the time a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, questioned a top Army official about the issue, and he dismissed her with annoyance.

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In the intervening years, Congress has sought to address the matter, which leaves a large number of veterans — women and men alike — in despair long afterward.

But it stopped short of a plan championed in 2013 by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, that would have taken sexual assault cases outside the military chain of command. Military prosecutors, rather than accusers’ commanders, would have the power to decide which cases to try.