Protect Our Defenders responds to AP story that ran in PNJ today
Protect Our Defenders is featured in this blog post from Rick Outzen, Pensacola Independent News Publisher Owner:
Protect Our Defenders sent a press release in response to the report. Protect Our Defenders is a human rights organization that seeks to fix the military training, investigation and adjudication systems related to sexual violence and harassment — systems that often re-victimize assault survivors by blaming them while failing to prosecute perpetrators.
Protect Our Defenders Advocacy Committee Member Stacey Thompson commented in the AP report. After joining the Marines at age 17, Thompson was stationed in Okinawa, Japan where she was assaulted by her commanding officer. While her rapist was allowed to separate from the Marines during an active investigation and never faced charges for his crime, Stacey was threatened with retaliatory charges and forced to end her career.
At a press conference in support of the Military Justice Improvement Act last week, Stacey called on Congress to support common sense reform to remove the decision to prosecute rape and sexual assault cases from a conflicted and often-biased chain of command, and put it into the hands of independent military prosecutors. Last year, Stacey joined Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) in Los Angeles to share her story for the first time.
