To the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security: Our sons and daughters won’t be answering the call to serve until you get this right once and for all!

Despite over thirty years of “attention” and millions of taxpayer dollars invested, the men and women who serve our country remain incredibly vulnerable to abuse and harassment.  Even after three decades of alleged reforms, our DoD and DHS still prioritize maintaining an institutional wall of silence over protection of your sons and daughters, sisters, brothers, uncles, mothers, and all those who volunteered to put on a uniform in defense of our Nation.  

Programs such as the Equal Opportunity and Anti-Harassment/Hate Incident complaint systems are a farce, in place only to placate our Congress while not affording avenues for true, timely, and unbiased justice for our service members of the Military and Coast Guard.

Further, the number of gaps and loopholes in the current systems is deplorable.  Countless allegations are not even investigated due to the sieve-like intake mechanisms in place (inter-service complaints, complaints against senior officials, etc.)  The dysfunction in these systems is causing a significant trust deficit in our Military and Coast Guard that is resulting in declining recruiting and retention, and is costing the American taxpayer millions of dollars while rarely achieving true justice for victims.

Worse yet, we know that the deplorable state of these systems is causally linked to the military’s ongoing mental health and suicide crisis.  Take, for example, the junior enlisted person whose restricted sexual assault complaint was illegally shared with others in their unit: after enduring over a year of organizational reprisal and character assassination, the victim was involuntarily separated from the Service without ready access to medical care despite suffering physical and emotional trauma.  Or the warrant officer whose family suffered from paranoia and anxiety following the officer’s spouse receiving threatening phone calls for reporting sexual harassment.  Or, heartbreakingly, the senior non-commissioned officer whose leadership rewarded the victim’s courage to report a sexual assault by launching a retaliatory investigation that led to the victim’s involuntary administrative separation as an E1: the victim died six months later from total emotional, mental, and physical exhaustion.

In response, we call for the following:

1.     Allowance of at least 6 months for victims to file a complaint after the incident,

2.     Mandatory investigation completion timelines,

3.     Prohibition on investigators being in the chain of command of the complainant or subject,

4.     EVERY complaint vetted by a competent authority,

5.     Publication of all vetting processes and procedures.

These are the stories of your family members, your friends, and your neighbors.  By signing this petition, you are demanding better for your uniformed service members.

If you feel that the ideas highlighted here are unjust, please contact your Representative and your Senator and tell them that you demand better for our uniformed service men and women.

 

This petition proudly brought to you by the Walk the Talk Foundation