I've traveled the world as a writer and an activist
for my entire life.
What we are talking about is a revolution.
We are the women that our parents warned us about.
And I can tell you that by confronting the problems
once marginalized as "women's issues,"
we can tackle the greatest dangers
of the 21st century.
Behind every major crisis,
there's an unseen factor at play,
a story you've never been told.
The greatest indicator of the world's stability,
wealth, and safety is the status of women.
The United States is home to the most powerful,
most well-funded military on the planet.
With a nearly budget of nearly $600 billion,
it would constitute the world's 21st largest economy,
but within this colossal institution
that employs over 1.3 million active-duty soldiers,
there is an insidious pattern of sexual assault
most often directed at women.
It's a violence that betrays those
who have devoted their lives
to maintaining the safety and security of the country.
This is not just a women's issue,
it is a matter of national security.
We're down on the flight line,
basically looking at these huge C-130 airplanes
take off and land.
These are basically the aircraft
that bring supplies to different parts of the world.
And how many people are on base here?
It's more than 5,000 on any given day
that are on base between civilians and military.
Just in this squadron that you've been visiting,
there's about 500 personnel.
Many of those soldiers are women.
In fact, there are over 200,000 women
active in the U.S. military,
which is more than any other time in history.
But along with this increased presence
have come some very disturbing revelations.
Last year alone, 20,000 service members
are estimated to have experienced
at least one sexual assault.
I rise again today to highlight the epidemic
of rape and sexual assault in the military.
While both men and women are victimized,
female soldiers are five-times more likely
to have been assaulted than their male counterparts.
Hi. Hi, I'm Katherine.
I'm Ciera. So nice to meet you, Ciera.
Nice to meet you, too. Please, come in.
Ciera bridges grew up in a military family.
When she joined the Air Force in 2008,
she had high hopes of one day outranking her father.
For her, a military career
seemed to open up a world of possibilities.
I joined as a 19-year-old who had no idea
what she wanted to do in life,
and then I finally found something that I could say that,
"Hey, I can excel in this."
I was doing logistics,
and then I got shipped off to Osan, Korea.
I was there for a year -- amazing experience.
I was treated like an equal.
It was when I got to Nellis
where I started having difficulties.
Ciera claims while at Nellis Air Force Base
in Las Vegas, she was sexually assaulted by a superior.
He started sending me nudes of himself.
Not only that, at work,
he would touch me inappropriately.
Supposedly he would accidentally bump into me.
"I'm sorry. Excuse me."
But he would keep rubbing on me,
depending on where he touched me at.
After months of just dealing with it,
I finally decided to report it.
The next day, I was moved out of my work section
into a new section.
As far as Ciera knows,
there was no formal documentation
of her complaints against this airman.
She thought her problems would be over
once she was transferred,
but Ciera alleges that soon after the move,
a new round of harassment started.
And so how did it end in the end?
What happened?
It was like I was stuck in my nightmare all over again.
After filing a complaint,
Ciera began receiving formal reprimands
for minor infractions.
The harassment continued to escalate,
turning into a full-blown assault.
I was working late shift, like I usually do, by myself.
He came in behind me, forced me on top of his desk,
pulled down his pants,
and he basically started masturbating on top of me,
and then when he was done, he left.
And that's when I just -- I had my breaking point.
And...
that was also probably the day
that my career really ended.
Ciera reported the assault to her supervisors,
but no investigation took place.
One month after the assault, Ciera was issued
a formal reprimand for an off-base incident and demoted.
After another violation a few months later,
she was called into her commander's office.
He told me that they were
going to initiate a dishonorable discharge.
Her commander cited the reprimands
and poor performance reports
as the grounds for her discharge.
And that's when I contacted my parents.
I asked, "How do I fight this?"
With the help of her family, her lawyers,
and her congressman, Ciera finally got the Air Force
to investigate her assault.
At the end of the investigation,
the letter that they gave me said that I was exposed
to a hazardous work environment
and the individuals that were involved
and knew about it were all disciplined.
The Air Force reversed her dishonorable discharge,
allowing her to stay in the service,
but for Ciera, the damage could not be undone.
I was isolated.
I got to the point where I felt like a failure
and I tried to commit suicide.
Ciera was required to undergo a medical evaluation
which found she was suffering from PTSD and depression.
As a result, the Air Force recommended
she be honorably discharged in 2013.
Suddenly, the career that meant everything to her was now over.
It was like I was losing myself.
Who is Ciera outside the military?
And even to this day, I can't answer that for you.
I don't know who I am outside the military.
Ciera isn't alone.
A 2013 survey showed that 90% of sexual assault survivors
were involuntarily discharged with mental disorders.
It seems that instead of
rehabilitating assault survivors,
the military is systematically getting rid of them.
Back now with news about a serious problem
in the US military -- sexual assault...
In 2012, a wave of scandals and media scrutiny
finally brought the issue of sexual assault in the military
to the attention of Washington.
Reporting is the key. This is about creating a culture
where victims are comfortable coming forward.
Amid a public outcry,
a sweeping set of pro-victim reforms introduced
by Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill
were passed by Congress and the Senate.
We basically have provided the victim
with services and their own lawyer.
We have made retaliation a crime.
It is a long list of reforms
within the criminal military justice system
that I believe, in my heart,
that we have done the best job we can
to create a system that will protect victims
and put perpetrators in prison.
Despite these reforms, by the end of 2014,
only one out of four victims
within the Department of Defense
were choosing to report their assaults.
Of the women who did choose to report,
62% claim to have faced some form of retaliation
from their peers or commanders.
We're at the Pentagon to meet with General Gina Grosso
on her last day as director of the sexual assault prevention
and response office.
I want to know why she thinks more women aren't speaking up.
So, only one in four report abuse.
Why do you think that's the case?
If you ask people, one,
they want to put the incident behind them.
They don't want other people to know.
Sometimes they feel responsible. This is amazing to me,
but they don't want to get the person in trouble --
the perpetrator in trouble.
They don't think anything will happen.
And that's the insidious nature of this crime.
Can you talk about
the types of things that have happened towards servicemen,
you know, in regards to reporting and the problems
that they've had as a consequence of that?
Yeah, you know, retaliation is a really tough nut to crack.
So, there's survey data from women that are survivors.
More than one out of two of them, on the survey,
reported feeling some negative outcome from reporting.
And about 1/3 of that was professional
and 2/3 was the social --
their friends wouldn't talk to them.
They were unfriended on Facebook.
If your friends stop talking to you,
that's not criminal behavior,
but that's not behavior that we want of an airman.
But retaliation is a real factor that you have to contend with
and deal with that you see all the time, would you agree?
No, I would not agree with that. I don't understand.
You see retaliation all the time?
There's so many examples
that I've even read about for this research of,
like, people coming out
and then actually experiencing real retaliation.
Sexual violence changes you,
but it's not necessarily the institution
or people intentionally trying to harm you.
If they really are being reprised against,
we need them to be comfortable enough to tell us
so that we would investigate it,
and then it would be prosecuted criminally.
But we don't have that yet,
and so that's why you don't see criminal investigations.
It's not that there's not the law,
it's that people aren't telling us,
and so we're working very hard to get people to tell us.
We know that it's not, as the D.O.D. wants to claim,
just being unfriended on Facebook.
Retired colonel Don Christensen served in the Air Force
for 23 years, and from 2010 to 2014,
was its chief prosecutor.
He is currently the president of Protect Our Defenders,
a not-for-profit group that fights for the rights
of the victims of military sexual assault.
A woman who reports a sexual assault
is 13-times more likely to be retaliated against
than she is to see her perpetrator held accountable.
This is a severe and persistent retaliation
that ends careers,
that drive women and men out of the military,
and as a result,
people can commit sexual assault with almost impunity.
Perpetrators of sexual assault
don't just traumatize their victims in the moment.
Untreated, the effects of sexual violence linger for years,
often unraveling entire lives.
How long have you been out on the road now?
For about a year, I've been without a permanent residence.
10 years ago, Colleen Bushnell
was a high-achieving Air Force staff sergeant
in the public affairs department.
that all ended after she claimed she was sexual assaulted
by one superior and raped multiple times by another.
Today, she's homeless.
I joined the military in 1997,
and I was medically retired in 2006 due
to major depression and post traumatic stress disorder
from the rape.
Since her mandatory retirement,
she gets a small monthly disability payment
from the VA, so she's not destitute,
but years of depression and PTSD from her assault
have made it impossible for her to hold a steady job
or create a stable home.
In 2007, after a failed suicide attempt
and a stay at the psych ward,
her children's grandparents sued for custody and won.
I think it's this.
Welcome to my world.
What specifically are we picking out today?
This is a surprise for my sons.
This is a movie we watched when they were little,
and we watch it every Christmas.
We have hot cocoa
and we build a gingerbread house together.
So, then I have my linen,
because my linen matters to me as a woman.
And my books...
and pictures.
And how does it feel to have all of your stuff here,
just in a storage facility?
It's demoralizing.
Um...
There was a time in my life when I had... a home.
I was the kind to have
a full dining-room set and Noritake china,
and just a formal, you know, holiday place to be
with my family and my children.
It's hard to maintain your dignity
when this is the quality of your existence.
As a society, we should be saying, "This is crazy."
We can't be doing this to the men and women
who raise their hand and defend the country,
and we got to do better.
After Colleen Bushnell claimed she was sexual assaulted
by one of her superiors, her life went into a tailspin.
Her career ended, she attempted suicide,
and her family fell apart.
She's trying to pick up the pieces,
but she still struggles with depression.
I had no other alternatives.
There weren't crime-victim services in place.
Nothing about the aftermath of my rape
reflects my character
or who I am as a person in any way.
It's like night and day.
Life is before the rape and after the rape.
When Colleen was in the Air Force,
any report of sexual assault
would automatically trigger an investigation,
opening survivors up to retaliation.
Back in 2005, the military made some crucial changes
to the reporting process.
Survivors are now assigned a victim advocate
and given two options for reporting their assaults.
The first is called an "unrestricted report".
Survivors get access to health and legal services,
and an investigation takes place.
The base legal office then makes a recommendation
to the survivor's commanding officer,
who decides whether or not charges should be filed.
The other option is called a "restricted report".
Survivors still get access to health and legal services,
but they remain anonymous and avoid possible retaliation.
With this option, no investigation takes place
and no charges can be filed against the perpetrator.
We're on the ground at Little Rock Air Force Base,
as you can see, and we're here to talk to the experts
about their sexual assault program.
Since victim advocates
are the front-line response to sexual assault,
I wanted to hear about how this process works
from their perspective.
So, when they walk into the office,
they come to me and talk about what happened.
We talk about the pros and cons
for the restricted and unrestricted part
and different ways to get help.
They can decide if they want to go forward,
if they don't want to go forward,
how we can provide support to them.
'Cause, you know what?
Going forward, you have to have
a preponderance of the evidence,
and it has to be beyond a reasonable doubt,
and probably 90% of the victims/survivors
that I talk to --
"Well, I don't want to ruin their career.
I don't want them to get in trouble."
And you've seen a lot of cases, personally.
Do you see that a lot of people bounce back,
or as a consequence, leave the military?
We have to talk about real expectations when they come in.
We cannot provide them something
or promise them something that we cannot do,
because if they want that offender to go to jail,
a lot of the times, that's not realistic
and that's not gonna happen.
So, if we are honest with them from the beginning
about what they expect, how the process works,
I think they can bounce back.
In fact, within the Department of Defense,
only 1 in 20 of all reported perpetrators
end up serving jail time.
More often, they're formally reprimanded,
docked pay, or discharged.
According to some survivors, that's not enough.
My goodness.
For Regina Vasquez, the Marine Corps
was a path to a college education
and a dream of becoming a lawyer.
I have a lot of family members who served in the military,
and I joined the Marines.
Graduation day --
that was the most proudest moment ever.
And I'm a part of something far bigger than me.
And for me to earn that title was, like,
the highlight of my life.
But just like the other women I spoke to,
Regina had her dreams of a lifelong military career
cut short by sexual assault.
I had two guys found a way to drug me and rape me.
Didn't tell anybody.
I hated life.
Okay? I literally --
I hated being a woman.
I hated the skin I was in.
For 11 years, Regina kept her rape a secret.
Her marriage crumbled, she almost lost her house,
and she tried to commit suicide several times.
I'm a Marine, trained to kill.
I didn't want to remember being weak.
I did not want to remember being raped.
Okay, boys, you need to put the goldfish up.
I don't want anything to ruin your appetite.
Regina Vasquez finally spoke out
about being raped while in the Marines.
She's now an activist for reforming
how the military handles sexual assault.
For her, the reforms of 2014 didn't go far enough,
and there's one huge issue that needs to be changed --
involvement of the survivor's commander
after the investigation process.
We're all in one building.
We eat together in the same chow hall.
We do everything together.
So, everybody's friends.
So, that makes it hard to go through the chain of command.
Many advocates for assault survivors
argue that the reforms of 2014
should have removed military commanders
from the investigation process entirely.
What, at it's core, is the issue here?
The issue, at it's core, is that we have
a military justice system that is unlike
any other criminal justice system in this country,
where commanders control the entire system.
We have this concept in our country of blind justice,
that the decision whether or not
someone is prosecuted should be made on the facts
and the evidence and the law, not on personal beliefs
and personal relationships, and there's
that inherent problem that we have
is that the commander who makes the decision knows,
almost always, everybody involved.
The problem is very clear,
because the victims have told us what it is.
The victims say it is the climate
that they fear retaliation.
Their commanders are not creating a climate
where they can report without being blamed,
being retaliated against,
being marginalized, having their careers be over.
The victims tell us they do not report
because of chain of command.
We have to change the culture in the military.
You treat people with respect, you hold people accountable,
you make it clear that each member of that military
is a vital part of it
and that, when we lose one, we all are diminished.
We all come from different backgrounds,
different stories, and different personalities,
but in the military, we're supposed to be one.
"One team, one fight,"
so if one is off, then we're all off.
There's no question that women in Congress
and in the military have taken real steps
to address the problem of sexual assault,
but it's not enough.
As long as women are afraid to come forward
because they fear retaliation,
the system is still broken,
and the very organization tasked with defending the nation
is exposed as inherently flawed, unequal, unjust,
and ultimately vulnerable.
To support survivors
of sexual assault in the military, go to...