Garry Trudeau, Doonesbury creator, and Loree Sutton, Psychiatrist and Founding Director of the Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and TBI, write in the Washington Post:

In our view, the only credible solution is to create an independent special victims unit completely outside the unit chain of command, under civilian oversight. It should be led by a flag-rank officer who has no stake in the reputation of individual commands but a huge stake in doing the only thing that matters — driving down the rate of sexual assault in the military. Any such office would need to ensure leader accountability for the “gateway behaviors” — bullying, humiliation, scapegoating — that set the conditions for violent assault. Another Defense Department study found that the incidence of rape triples in units that tolerate sexual harassment.

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