Report: Pentagon misled Congress on sexual assault cases

The Pentagon misled Congress when it said civilian prosecutors refused to prosecute 93 cases of sexual assault that were later pursued by military commanders, according to a report released Monday by Protect Our Defenders.

{mosads}A Pentagon official made the comments to Congress while arguing against a bill that would have taken military sexual assault cases outside the chain of command and given the cases to independent military prosecutors.

“Whether you agree or disagree with the policy at issue, every senator should be outraged, and revisit their votes,” retired Col. Don Christensen, a former Air Force chief prosecutor and Protect Our Defenders president, said in a written statement. “Congress should hold a hearing to investigate why the Pentagon knowingly relied upon false information to derail reforms they oppose.”

In July 2013, then-Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. James Winnefeld highlighted the cases to argue that a bill known as the Military Justice Improvement Act would result in fewer sexual assault cases going to trial.

“I worry that if we turn this over to somebody else, whether it is a civilian DA [district attorney] or a nonentity in the military, that they are going to make the same kind of decisions that those civilian prosecutors made,” Winnefeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee. “I worry that we are going to have fewer prosecutions if we take it outside the chain of command.”

The bill was blocked in the Senate last summer.

Protect Our Defenders, which fights against sexual assault in the military and supported the bill, obtained documents for 81 of the 93 cases through the Freedom of Information Act.

The organization’s analysis of the documents, which came from the Marines and Army, found no cases where a military prosecutor was less willing than a commander to go forward with a case, as was argued to Congress, according to the report.

Further, the report says, two-thirds of the cases were not declined by civilian prosecutors, and more than a quarter of the cases did not involve a military sexual assault.

An analysis by The Associated Press, which was given the documents by Protect Our Defenders prior to the report’s release, also found that steps taken in the cases by civilian authorities were described incorrectly or omitted in the documents. Other case descriptions were too vague to be verified, according to the AP.

In a statement to the AP, a Joint Chiefs of Staff spokesman said the information Winnefeld gave to Congress was meant as a snapshot for the committee.

“He had confidence to go with it,” spokesman Richard Osial told the AP.