Three female Democratic members of the U.S. House Armed Services Committee on Tuesday called for broad changes to end what they say is an epidemic of sexual assault in the military that goes beyond the sex-with-recruits scandal at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas.
The comments by U.S. Representatives Loretta Sanchez, Susan Davis and Jackie Speier came after the California Democrats visited the San Antonio base and spoke with victims of the scandal.
Dozens of female trainees have complained that they were victims of improper sexual contact by military training instructors at Lackland, where some 35,000 Air Force recruits are trained each year.
The lawmakers are calling for stricter abuse reporting requirements, embedding sexual abuse counselors into the ranks of trainees and teaching instructors that it is their duty to prevent abuse. Speier said she will consider introducing a measure to make it a crime for a military supervisor to know about sexual abuse and not to report it.
“We must have enough in place institutionally for people to be able to see problems and dangers, and be able to act on them,” Davis said.
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