Austin endorses major change in how military prosecutes sex assaults
WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Tuesday that he supports stripping commanding officers of the authority to decide whether troops accused of sexual assault should face prosecution.
Austin told the Senate this month that “what we are doing is not working and we need to fix it,” but Tuesday’s statement is his first explicit endorsement of assigning the cases to independent military lawyers, a major change in how the military addresses sexual assault.
“[W]e will work with Congress to amend the Uniform Code of Military Justice, removing the prosecution of sexual assaults and related crimes from the military chain of command,” said Austin, who added that other crimes like domestic violence should also be handled by the same “independent prosecution system.”
“I support this as well, given the strong correlation between these sorts of crimes and the prevalence of sexual assault,” said Austin.
On Wednesday, Austin is scheduled to testify before the House Armed Services Committee.
In his statement, Austin was accepting recommendations from an independent review commission on sexual assault that he appointed. Austin did not express an opinion on proposed legislation that would overhaul the military justice system.
The Senate is weighing a bill that would assign the prosecution of all major crimes to independent prosecutors, fundamentally changing the military justice system.
Reports of sexual assaults in the military have been on the rise since 2006, according to the Pentagon.
There have been a number of changes in the Military Code of Justice over the past decade to add more civilian oversight to the military’s prosecution of sexual assault cases and to beef up assistance for victims. But the military has previously rejected proposed changes that would take legal decisions out of the chain of command.
Austin said Tuesday he would present "specific recommendations about the commission’s findings" to President Joe Biden "in coming days."
As a candidate for president, Biden advocated taking the issue of sexual assault out of the chain of command. “I will order the Defense Department to take urgent and aggressive action to make sure survivors are in fact supported and abusers are held accountable for their crimes,” Biden said in April 2020.
In May, Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he was no longer opposed to taking decisions on sexual assault prosecutions out of the hands of commanding officers.
“We’ve been at it for years, and we haven’t effectively moved the needle,” Milley said in an interview with The Associated Press. “We have to. We must.”
