Seen from women who are veterans who have suffered military sexual trauma. I cannot remember how many times a young female marine that had been raped or sexually assaulted told me that she looked at these guys as your brother or the suspect as your brother its a kin to what happens in a family with incest because you know in the military when or functioning at our best cohesive unit with brothers and sisters in of the band of brothers and sisters i mean we are family with that ball and of trust is violated. I. The wound penetrates to the very most inner part of ones soul one psyche. I have this folder that i keep i have all my boot camp letters that are from my mom and my sister and. People and. I was just going through some of this stuff and im like whats this you know nailed it im like oh my god. My suicide letter. Bomb im sorry for the grief that you must feel. Just because im gone physically doesnt mean i will be there spiritually i truly feel that god will take me without question even though i took my own life. Ive had the most broken thoughts of dreams and physical pain to remind me of the her if it acts upon me that happened while one of duty a mother brother sister and husband should never live with knowing the horrible acts upon me find peace in knowing that my bottom that the body left behind doesnt consume my soul i am free now and im not afraid ready to soar corded and you know. I took a whole bottle of pills and woke up strangely enough im not sure why. I at that point in my life i just wanted to be over. And think i was 2021 and then. Within the next year i tried again i went out into the garage which separate from the house when i turned the car. Close at the current fix it myself and there was little pool blondie went out a little w. Door and she scratching and howling at the dog shut up im going to wake my wife up so i get to shut the car off for a minute ill just take her in the garage would be the nicest what would. To kill a dog thats stupid and then the world would you kill yourself i thought of it so many times and in so many ways i thought about. At one point in time hanging myself from the flagpole was a song on me. Saying exactly what happened to make him feel bad. I was going to. Overdose on pain medication and sleeping medication. And just hope that id fall asleep in my body would just shut down or something. When i went to the doctor i had been feeling sick and dizzy and nausea and as he ate it and. They took my urine and they told me that i was pregnant. You know theres a wife and theyre you know maybe very wife will be better than mine and i got to make sure that so. She was very special. Sometimes it takes a different kind of action to cause change to calm. And sometimes. A lot. I grew up on military bases my dad was career army when i was a child when we answer the phone we just have to say colonel burks quarters and because of that i have as i have an understanding of the level of control that the military exercises that perhaps most in civilian life dont have. The fare structure and it is a judicial doctrine that was developed by the Supreme Court that says if youre in the military you cannot sue for something that happens to you thats incidental your military service if you military doctors amputate the wrong limb you are out of luck you cannot sue for that for that harm thats been done to you so we filed a lawsuit in federal court on behalf of. 16 men and women seeking to bring former secretary rumsfeld and secretary gates to justice. I heard about the lawsuit and decided to become a part of it. Because i never wanted another woman to go through what i would. Be a lawsuit alleges that they have overseen a system that has deprived the rape survivors of their Constitutional Rights specifically we allege that they deprived them of their substantive due process procedural due process equal protection and 1st amendment rights. Me sick to see everybody stories. How they kind of closely tied together everybodys story somehow has a its consistent that the military does to People Like Us all the things that they put in place are all pretty much intended to oh women deal with being raped better thats what theyre about. And join the military have phrase from a sphere of high school awning to serve my country and do new things and challenge myself in a different way. I was in the army about 7 or 8 years before anything ever happened to me. By another cod agent who was senior to me. I was contacted by an agent with 4 riley c. Id who said they were investigating. The suspect is a serial rapist who had rapes several military Law Enforcement women and i thought there was no way that you know he wouldnt be convicted and i have a difficult time with anything as well the fact that i had an almost 10 year career which i was very invested in and i gave that up to report a sex offender who was not even put to justice or put on the registry and hes probably doing the same thing right now it was a female attendant pull me aside and tell me that you know she had heard about my case and she thought she could talk to me is one female marine to another and she told me what he did was capitalize on an opportunity that you presented to him thats not the same thing as rape and you need to know. Him after it happened they mean you know and i think with him and i tried having everybody advocate for me to not make me go so i just can deal with seeing him so their solution to that was just to put him right in front of me so i could see him the whole time so that i could know where he was and know that he wasnt able to do anything to sit right in front of me and they were thinking the entire time we were up on the hills and camp when they define him. Theres no way out of it i mean if you think about it the only way out of it is like a suicide or a wall so thats those are your only 2 options suicide it all or deal with it right now im just barely appreciating. Learning how to appreciate being a woman again thats 11 years and. And i have fun with it not forcing myself to have fun my. Im trying really hard not to cry but it just. You know and watching you girls having to. Go through i mean it makes me want to explode being here and like knowing that me wanting to commit suicide im not alone me being hidden raped and not on everything the way that they treated me the way that they made me feel im not alone and we have all you guys with all your knowledge and everything you guys are going to stand right up you know. I think the woman who are coming forward in this lawsuit are very courageous they because theyre putting their names out there for criticism. Theyre putting their names out there to go down and his truth is they were the ones who got raped and theres anything you want to go through life with. Us. Today i stand in solidarity with the courageous women and men who serve in our Nations Armed forces the inspirational plaintiffs you see before you are a small handful of the 10s of thousands of troops and veterans whove been sexually brutalized by their fellow Service Members while defending our nation it is time to finally acknowledge that the military judicial system is broken when it comes to these cases my name is and in my case my command was unwilling to help me i went for help several times with other petty officers and i i was denied help even with other men saying please get her away from him and it was it was still out many. People recently me dont go to the public dont let this get out because itll make the military look at i really feel like my. Social responsibility to speak out about this issue especially considering my investigative experience and the fact that the military Justice System allows so many offenders to escape justice. These are. Thanks for being willing to fill me in a little bit on some of the experiences that i name is Regina Basque is and i served honorably in the United States for marine corps for 4 years let me miss corey chokin i served in the United States coast guard i was harassed and sexually assaulted i was a ministry of. 9 and a half years of Service Women should not bear their burden that is not part of what we should have been doing to do our jobs were home a criminal activity were talking about a vicious attack that is the discriminant it is an assault. Almost none of these is music or martial and all of the ones that do almost none of them result in convictions teams to me in all the time times that ive looked at these things and the command is the one who has so much discretion i think our advocate should actually be civilians not ones that work in the military i think we should have actual units civilian units it absolutely tears in my inside to think that this is been going on for as long as its been going on and weve never addressed all people in the military most know if you are a perpetrator of Sexual Assault against someone else military will be to you youre going to be held accountable. L. O l. This is all the proof. Seems wrong. Just dont hold. Me. To shape our. To educate and in. The trail. When so many find themselves worlds apart. Just to look for common ground. I found it tremendously frustrating when i would demonstrate that an offender commit an offense and taking it to a commander and having a commander be the deciding authority you know i dont think commanders are capable of making. An object of decision i do not think it should be in their hands so he was just seeking to do discretion away from yes absolutely congresswoman davis and i are both on the Armed Services committee there are a number of issues that youve raised that makes me want to go back and particularly take another look an emotional one individual basis what happens after a crime like that has been committed its a very difficult thing to go through and dont think i dont know. The fact that youre willing to tell me your stories 1st and it much easier for us to go back and just say you know these are policies that we have to change its a big its a big big deal but you do it really find people like you who will stand up for us thank you so much for everything they do. To me. Thank you again for your Service Thanks for your time mr speaker last year the military received over 3000 reports of Sexual Assault involving other members into service this week 17 veterans are saying that the military ignored their cases of Sexual Assault while they were on active duty today im going to talk about the men corey. Who served in the coast guard from august 2005 to june 2007 she now suffers from p. T. S. D. And abnormal e. G. Did nerve damage in her fate. Joburg later told the press its like they didnt care it wasnt important i was. Going to get the mail. Heres cross. Heres my way. This is. Effective october 20th 2009 my overall combined rating is 70 percent. We Service Connection for anxiety is deny Service Connection for displacement and bilateral bilateral this displacement is denied. Oh my god. Ill be right there. My face doesnt have any desks in it thats what the x. Rays show thats what dr karp those letters show you do not medical were there when theres extra. Nice to see you again and thank you for coming im going to play a short Public Service announcement and then we can entertain questions i think the prevention aspect of Sexual Assault goes back in some ways to Risk Reduction what it what is Risk Reduction risk productions are ideas like telling women to if theyre going to go somewhere together always have a buddy with them. Are there other examples of risk. I mean i didnt im not familiar that thats out of my area of expertise. Well i want to continue where dr whitley left off looking at what our focus is and thats on prevention as well as as response weve really done a very good job there and the credit goes to dr whitley and her staff that has been working this for the last 5 to 6 years i dont think the department of defense has has really yet embraced that they have a Sexual Assault problem that its not just an issue of the culture environment so that the people are at risk for Sexual Assault that their system itself though just does not value the rights of victims and doesnt provide the medical protection you know i have heard the accusations as well that you know commanders are sweeping this under the carpet now what i would say to the people that have come forward to you is if you feel your commander is ignoring what you have have asked them to do if theyre not taking care of you within that chain of command you need to go to the d. O. D. That are part of the fence Inspector General g. A. O. General Accounting Office just did a study a report and guess what not one. One case of more than 2500 has been reviewed and investigated by the Inspector General and when asked about that the Inspector General said we have other higher priorities what what you really want is you want there to be a system akin to a civilian system where you go to the police and youre in the crime is prosecuted by an impartial judicial system as a commander you have no favorites you are equally to take care of every Single Person in your organization thats what commanders are all about these are human beings just like everybody else you cannot be impartial when you are already involved with people in other settings i would take exception with your characterization that the disposition of the case is based on the relationship between the commander. And he alleged perpetrator. Im going to speak to you with my former commanders had on there is absolutely no conflict of interest you do what the right thing is to do. d you have other avenues and those if you feel like you have not been taken care of adequately by your commander go up through your congressman or congresswoman and file a complaint that way you cannot you cant go to a congressman to be to obtain justice for being raped i mean imagine ringback how silly that is imagine if you told civilians that oh geez sorry you were raped go talk to your congressman. You could Say Something to the sky but what you want to see. I dont think its affected his life at all. And people in my old squadron that ive talked to. They say they dont see any effect that its had on him and that hurts. Because its a struggle every day its completely changed who i am. Im really hoping that he falls off the coast guard but they never find him im really hoping for that like they fight for so poor mishap got chopped up by the proper. Big that would be great thered be an exciting but i price over and. I hope this reaches them too you know i hope that someone or someone sees my face you know wherever it is and goes. I know them and theyre talking about me. Because they know what they did you know and then although half the mater is some friend they goes hey we station with her. You know and then they cant be a secret anymore. They have to deal with the to. Some way shape or. Most rapists. Repetitive criminals that its a kind of crime that said has an obsessive quantity of people do it again the tragedy of that is that every one of these guys who gets off free will be doing it to other women again and again often for years. The average sex offender in their lifetime has about 300 victims and the vast majority of sex offenders will never be caught a lot of civilians see it as being a military problem but it really isnt because 5 percent or a louse of reported offenders are convicted. So almost none of them wind up on the sex offender registry there is no military sex offender list that im aware of but if youre convicted in court felony conviction of sex offense of a sex offense youre going to go on the National List for any sex a very correct that is not the case it depends on what level conviction they got if they received over a year then thats considered a felony but a lot of these cases are pled down so that theyre not felonies the military doesnt like to prosecute people and keep. As felony convictions i often ask myself the question why wouldnt why would they stop and if theres nothing to stop them like incarceration or some other light major life change theyre going to continue. If you run the sexual predator through the judicial system and then you give a slap on the hand all youve done is youve done the equivalent of the kitchen release program youve caught to educate and now you release them back in the home town america he now knows a lot more about the Law Enforcement judicial system than he did when he 1st started which makes him a much more capable criminal a much more dangerous criminal they go on to litter. They prey on women and men in our neighborhoods across the United States i mean if we dont care about women or men in the military then we hopefully should care about women and men in our girls and boys in our neighborhoods back home. Were. The thing that broke my heart more than anything about this story was the young women who went in with such ideas and i want to serve my country i want to give back to see a Young Persons hope and idealism crushed in that brutal way i think we owe our young people love and that. Increasingly women are becoming some of the best trained professionals that we have in the military is a great soldiers and we cant afford to lose them. Cant have it or have tried to get. People deeply believe in their hearts to serve their country they should be given that chance with respect. You know its part of really harm american way even dont we just there purple hearts because we were wounded in time or you know youre going to give us one you know very just saying maybe there should be written for women you. Are served and straight you have survived it is you did. We have a good army a good military but not a great one and this is the kind of issue that they keeps our military from being great. We can view this as a shared challenges not just a womens issue its not just something that the military has to deal with but as a society were all in this together. Its our national duty. These policymakers have grown accustomed to the idea that every single problem can be solved with money cant we solve the coronavirus of money printing the market now is starting a little bit and saying wait a minute thats insane so therefore valuations look like theyre going to be marked already in correction territory on these markets down time percent are going to have to bear market valuations down 20 percent probably i think the likelihood of. A 50 to 60 percent drop thats probably a 10 to 20 percent probability. The coronavirus is a Global Health danger that is yet to be contain this fire is also raise questions about the integrity of supply chains open borders and the weaknesses of globalization and dangerously this virus is being used as a political weapon. I. Love that. I. Do not and it. Pays off the heralded deal with washington the taliban have a 20 soldiers and police in afghanistan. With strike. 3 troops and dry a policewoman on high alert. Pace r. T. For a night at the border and desperate refugees scramble to reach the moon driving out towards the front to hear the hope of getting a sense for whats going to happen as we were trying to fill we were stopped this my cameraman being School Teacher i had my work looks like a military personnel to. Me us Vice President joe biden scored several big wins during super tuesday the democrats is a vital voting day mostly at the expense of progressive bernie thought