Air Force Times: Why the AF’s chief prosecutor left to fight for sex assault victims

The AF Times reports on why Don Christensen, the Air Force’s top prosecutor, left the military to join Protect Our Defenders as our new president:

Don Christensen felt like a man unburdened.

On a cold day in early December, the former Air Force chief prosecutor sat at a table inside the tiny Washington office of the victims advocacy group of which he had recently been named president.

He’d traded his dress blues for a charcoal suit, a clean-shaven face for a closely cropped beard. Gone, too, were Christensen’s measured remarks on the case that would define his 23-year career as a judge advocate general and put him at odds with the institution to which he’d devoted half his life.

For more than a year, in the rare moments he spoke publicly about his successful November 2012 prosecution of a lieutenant colonel on sexual assault charges — and a three-star general’s reversal of the conviction less than four months later — Christensen’s words came with a disclaimer. He was speaking for himself, he’d say, and not the Air Force.