the first and she woundn't be the last. and when she reported him, she was threatened with arrest and discharged. hear an aviation commander, despite strong dna evidence, her rapist was found not guilty and she was not permitted to re-enlist. hear these voices and know there are over 500,000 others out there that deserve our support. as americans, our voices matter. there is strength in numbers. and when the country fully understands the extent of the abuse of power and the cover-up that protects the guilty, they will join this effort and demand change. thank you. >> thank you, nancy. we're pleased to have with us linda hallman who will be speaking next. she is the executive director of the american association of university women. that organization has been a

phenomenal support to us and to the plaintiffs and we are very appreciative that linda is able to be here today. >> good morning, everyone. my nine years of service in the united states army were positive and enriching for me and provided me with many wonderful experiences, memories and friendships. unfortunately, that isn't always the case for service members. service members can find themselves in a position where it's almost impossible to stand up against injustice and to do so comes with great personal cost. it's a case of a double victimization. catch 22. if you leave, you are punished. if you stay, you suffer in silence and all of this is piled on top of the original violence. so aauw makes it our mission to advance equality for women and

girls and one of the ways we do this is supporting courageous women and men who seek fair treatment through the justice system. we believe women deserve legal protection, no matter what industry they work in. we believe it so strongly that in 1981 we provided legal support to potentially precedent setting cases involving workplace discrimination and sex and gender based mistreatment. the case you're hearing about today has our proud support. we know it takes courage to speak out and aauw will continue to be a platform for those voices. the department of defense's statistics of sexual assault aren't able to tell the entire story. since there's so much at stake when someone speaks out. especially in the military. the number of reported cases in the military is kept low by a culture of shame and

retaliation. if someone speaks up, she's labelled as disloyal or unpatriotic. and often isolated, ostracized and harassed. the military culture victimizes people by demanding silence. this is hard for civilians to understand, because the military has a different set of rules. the uniformed code of military justice. the legal protections given to civilians are different. service members don't have the rights to independent counsel like civilian victims do. so we recognize that when someone goes public about her victimization, it's extraordinary. and to continue speaking out in the face of retaliation reflects the courage of these plaintiffs. what's so tragic is that the blow back isn't always just professional. it can be personal as well. often, people's families and friends don't support the choice to speak out which can make

service members feel like traitors. and pressure may be brought to bear on family members to dissuade a victim from going public. the bottom line is that these people are not lacking patriotism. that's not what this is about. it's about people who have been sexually assaulted and victimized for their cries for help. thank you. >> thank you, linda. and on that note of family members, i want to recognize the man here in the audience, ben clay. ben is ariana's husband. he went to harvard and yale and decided to join the marine corps as an officer. patriotically served this nation defending in iraq. as a result of being close with his wife and seeing the egregious harassment she endured, seeing the rape and the aftermath of retaliation, ben

decided that he would better serve this nation by leaving military service in order to join with his wife and all of us here to fight for reform in the military. so i just want to applaud ben and thank him for all his support. i would now like to introduce elle helmer. >> good morning. i'm speaking to you as a rape survivor and an advocate for reform and justice. before i begin, i'd like to thank susan for giving us the ability to change.rgiving refor

well. invisible by who were the war" for raising this awareness. jonathan, my fiance. i'd like to thank the service members who are in active duty and protecting us right now. in no way do i bear any bitterness to the military as a whole. what we do is very noble, but there are some very disturbing thing happening within the ranks that need to be addressed and need to be changed and it needs to happen now. as i mentioned i was the official marine corps spokesperson for marine barracks washington from the years 2005 to 2006. during that time, i was also the uniform victim advocate for that command which just to show you the unpreparedness and lackadaisical approach, i received a letter appointing me

as the uniform victim advocate, meaning for the command i would be the person responsible to handle and delegate resources for anyone else who had been a victim 06 -- of sexual assault or rape. the training i received was zero. anything passed the letter appointing me as the officer, as the uva, was nothing. that was the last it was heard of. put in a filing cabinet and gone. so that's how seriously that command handles sexual assault and rape. i'd also like to speak on behalf of everyone else who's been violated, raped, brushed under the carpet, fed to the wolves, because we're still strong. we stnityo change, and have the inner courage to move past this. but we can't do it without support. particularly this being an election year, and the marines for marine barracks washington

guard the president this might be noteworthy for any sort of political candidate to notice that reform needs to take place from the top and the commander in chief should also be responsible for the leaders he appoints. before i joined the marine corps, i went to the university of colorado and grew up in a normal patriotic life. i chose the marine corps because some member of my family dating all the way back to the revolutionary war had for every generation has served our country. my father was a lieutenant colonel in the air force. and he did warn me of becoming a statistic. i am a statistic, but i'm not powerless. my choice to join the marine corps was simple. marines in theory do the right thing, even when no one is watching.

they follow honor, courage and commitment and they never leave a man behind. so i thought. unfortunately, i found that not to be the case. after i reported, immediately after my rape by my commanding officer, i immediately found that i no longer was in the good old boys gun club. as long as you walked the walk, you talked the talk, you're protected. the minute you go outside the barrack's wall, the minute you question the commander or how they do thing, you're no longer one of them. they leave you behind. that needs to stop. so i'm not saying they as a general term because there are good marines and there are good officers out there. i want to thank them for doing the right thing, but for those who are not doing the right thing is doing the wrong thing and you need to stop. again, i'd like to say i still support the marine corps. my choice to participate in this lawsuit is so that no one else,

hopefully, will have go through six years of suffering and silence. this is the first time that i have had a voice in six years. so pardon if it's a little wobbly. however, since 2006, march 16th specifically, it's been a dead end after dead end road. i went to 18 different members of general officers to senators to congressmen and each time i was met with just an overall lackadaisical manner as well as i'm so sorry that type of attitude. nothing ever happened. so unfortunately, i'd like to say it got better, but considering that ariana was at the same command i was two years later it got worse. i would like to really continue to support the military. but also support reform and change. if there's any possibility to move forward, we need to start

now. i'd like to thank everyone for their time. as well as their support and their attention to this matter. it's very serious. it's not going away. we need to focus on what really makes america strong and this is right now weakening us. so i hope that the marine corps motto and this is my closing semper fidelis, always faithful, rings true. we will be always faithful to those who serve and to us. and to other survivors out there i'd like to wish you the courage and the strength to move forward. your physical wounds may heal. your emotional wounds may heal in a little longer, but you're still strong. you're still valued and you did the right thing. and you're a good person, so just always know that. so with that said, i'd like to thank you again. >> thank you, elle.

thank you. now i'd like to have the other survivor come forward, ariana clay, and i just have to take a moment to applaud the courage of both of these young women and thank them so much. without them more and more women and men in the future would be victims and by their courageous acts hopefully we'll be able to reduce that. ariana. >> my name is ariana clay. i'm a former marine officer. i was a first generation college student, graduated first in my high school class. a highly recruited soccer athlete. i chose to attend the naval academy because i wanted to dedicate my life to service. as a marine officer i deployed to iraq in 2008 and 2009. in the unit where i felt respected and for a commander that chose to value human

dignity even when harmful to himself. many of the marines followed his example. as a reward for my performance, i was recommended to go to the show case for the marine corps. the hope of the top generals and oldest posts in the corps, founded in the 19th century. that's where the alttitudes on woman have remained. leadership was successful at enforcing ceremonial standards. yet, failed to miss egregious moral failures. after six months of routinely being called a slut and whore, i sought to deploy to afghanistan. denied this opportunity, because i was considered quote too critical to the command, i repeatedly reported the humiliating environment and the toll it was tank on me. the command gave me the offered solution, to deal with it. in august of 2010, the

harassment culminated in a horrific act in an effort as he said to humiliate me. once i had reported this, the commands' disinterest in the previous sexual harassment complaints changed. during the investigation, he featured the lead rapist in the marine corps calendar and put one of the most aggressive harassments in the commercial. it described how i was repeatedly called a slut and the commander decided this wasn't sexual harassment. he also decided my running shorts, makeup and regulation skirt were the problem. my commanders' conclusions served the purpose. as the officer used it to attack my credibility in his defense. i got out of the marine corps, started a wonderful job. my life improving immeasurably. by then i had talked to others whose stories was eerily similar

to mine and a cover-up has played itself out in the united states military thousands of times. the rape trial came and went, a farce. the marine corps gave one immunity so he would testify. escorted my husband into the same waiting room with him. i endured another 12 hours of degrading interrogation that culminated with the rapists' two lawyers acting it out in front of me. after that it was indecent language with 45 days in the brig. 2 1/2 years of assault and my dignity pushed me into constant questioning and endlessly reliving the assaults. i tried to make sense of everything. often spin into despondency and understanding how i had exhausted every check only to see that each check not only failed but attacked me that's why i'm part of the lawsuit. i faced a military justice system unchecked. and unaccountable hierarchy seeking not just outcomes but the desired outcomes of

commanders in charge of it, who have no legal training and a conflict of interest against a process that discovers that the leadership failed. so i'm here to help this lawsuit, that it so badly needs, to help raise awareness that the congress needs so it can fix this broken system and help prevent this thing from ever happening to anyone again. thank you. >> thank you. thanks again to both of you for your courage. unfortunately it's not as if there's any stop of this kind of conduct. we have to our complaint the hostility of any type of reporting. it's something that was posted by a marine officer on her facebook, and simply mocks those who come forward to report

harassment and to report rape. i would like to introduce a dear friend of mine and one of the strong proponents of reform in the united states. anu bhagwati, the executive director of swan. >> thank you, susan. good morning, my name is anu bhagwati and i'm the executive director of servicewomens action network, also known as swan. a nonprofit organization founded and led by women veterans to send sex discrimination and sexual violence is in the united states military. as a former marine company commander, i am intimately familiar with the lengths they'll go to cover up sexual harassment in the units. in fact, i and many of the peers left the marine corps precisely because of command negligence on these issues. today i'll be sharing a bit about legislative efforts to bring more justice to survivors

of military sexual assault and harassment. for several years swan has been advocating for reform within the department of defense and veterans affair, culminating in president obama signing the victims rights protections into law. the concerted bipartisan effort this law included basic protections as the guarantee of privileged communication between a sexual assault victim and his or her victim's advocate and the requirement, the commanders must authorize expedited transfers of sexual assault victims who request them. these reforms were a long time coming and will assist countless survivors in the aftermath of an assault. in fact, swan's legal and peer support line has received phone calls from those whose unit transfers were possible only because of the new law. part of the military's intransigence on meaningful change lies in the insistence

that it has the rules to administer justice to survivors and yet the sexual assault response office known as sapro has been the pentagon's primary answer to stopping sexual assault in the ranks. to be clear, sapro has no law enforcement authority or any authority to prosecute or punish. it's rife with rape methodology and victim blaming including the poster that says ask her when she's sober. in other words, it cannot administer justice to anyone. the database, a centralized database recording sexual assaults required by law in 2009 has yet to appear. military and congressional leaders need to stop expecting solutions from sapro and ensuring victims get real access to justice. enormous challenges to justice for the military assault survives still remain, but

sensible solutions are available. swan is working with military and congressional leadership to enact some of the following reforms. first, rule 306 from the manual for courts marshal requires that most the accused service members chain of command be the officer who determines case disposition. in other words, company commanders, junior officers with no legal training are endowed with the legal authority to determine whether or not a sexual assault case in his or her own unit goes to trail. this archaic system often fails victims of sexual assault. sexual assault cases are far more complex than most cases. the commander can never be truly impartial as he or she often directly supervises the victim and the perpetrator and it's often higher than that of the victim. especially if the victim is of lesser rank.

to remove this clear conflict of interest, to better serve the victim and to preserve the spegryty of the chain of command we have been pushing hard for the overhaul of 306, so that all sexual assault cases go straight to the court-martial convening authority, with more impartially and experience than a junior commander. another key reform is further revision of the uniform code of military justice we defines the crime of sexual assault. currently, article 120 is a force-based law which includes sex plus some level of force. in order to effectively prosecute rape cases, the military must move to a consent based rape law which includes sex, plus a lack of consent. it has been shown that unlike forced base rape law, consent based statutes do not focus on the behavior of the victim but rather on the elements of the crime. 24 states have adopted some version of a consent based

statute and the military should follow suit. the final frontier in military sexual assault reform lies in giving service members to the courts for civil redress. currently, military members cannot bring a tort claim and this is true for crimes and acts of negligence to include medical malpractice and workplace discrimination. this is critical in the vent that service members do not receive justice in the military court. thank you. >> thank you, anu. just following up on anu's comment, one of -- there's an interesting research report that we have cited in our complaint that is a survey done by the navy itself. in which over 13% of newly enlisted naval recruits admit on these surveys that they have raped someone.

of that, 71% admit to being serial rapists. interestingly, use of drugs and alcohol are the primary weapon in order to accomplish the rapes. so the problem is widespread and needs all of our effeorts on reform. i'd like to welcome to the podium, long time reformer, ann wright, and ask her to give us her wisdom. >> well, thank you, susan, and thank you so much for you and your team bringing forth yet one more lawsuit against the department of defense for criminal and egregious behavior by members of the forces and by senior leadership. i mean, when you have to sue the secretary of defense and not just one of them, but two, three, four, you can go back how long?

i was in the military -- i started 45 years ago. i am a retired colonel. i was in the military for 29 years. i joined in 1967. if you count the number of secretaries of defense that ought to be on all the lawsuits, we ought to add two pages with their names on i. this is a culture within the military that has been long standing. we are finding out from the veterans administration how many women of my age group -- i'm 65 now, i joined during the vietnam war, a lot of my women of my age are coming forward to the veterans administration for health services and it turns out that a lot of these women were raped back when they were in the military. but they never told anyone. never told anyone at all. so the courage that we have of elle and ariana today to come forward shortly after they were raped, to make sure that people are aware of it, to make sure that they -- that we know of the horrible things that our military is doing to our people, and, you know, just to

re-emphasized, i was stunned when i read in this lawsuit that we have, you know, 13% of the guys that are coming into the navy are saying, yeah, i have already raped somebody and 71% of them said, yeah, i have raped a couple of people. and our military doesn't say, well, sorry, i don't think we need you in here right now. the marine corps, how many waivers are being given right now for people who have committed serious felonies? waivers to get them into the marine corps. if you don't think that doesn't have some sort of impact on -- at the marine barracks for god's sakes, i mean, the premiere place of the marine corps and all of this is going on against women there, it's a portfolart culture, and it's a part of the day to day culture and some women comes forward to say i have been raped and there is a rape kit and it gets lost. i have been raped. i want to tell someone about it and he or she because, you know,

10% of the people that were reported raped last year were men. men in our military are being raped. when they go forward to get counseling, they may go to the chaplain, somebody you can confide in and he says to a woman, you were drinking, that was it. 96% of the women who get raped the chaplain told one survivor, how he knew these made these statistics, 96% of the women who are raped have been drinking, it's your fault. another survivor was told, that must have been what god intended for you. the military chaplains that we have are not being sensitized to what's going on or if they are, they're throwing it out the window. so much of what's happening to women should be precluded by the own code of military justice. i mean, there are strong

regulations in there. but as anu pointed out so graphically, there are holes in this thing. and the actual application of pare parts of the code of military justice, the military lawyers don't know how to do this or they don't take the time to do it or are within the criminal investigative division of the military services that there's a culture that maybe we just don't have to investigate all parts of this. when we have a woman who herself was trying to help other women who had been sexually assaulted and raped and then she was sexually assaulted and raped and then her own criminal investigative service threw her under the bus and said we don't believe you. it is a culture within our military a military that i was involved in for over 30 years that has to change.

i mean, i am -- how many years do we have to keep having these panels? how many lawsuits do we have to bring? i'm ready to call for women to refuse to join the military until this stops. that will all -- that will kind of put a dent in the military. rather than the 1% of women that were a part of the military when i joined back in the '60s the women are a critical part of the military. in the air force i believe it's 18% of the people in the air force are women. the army, 15%. the navy, i believe it's 12% and the marine corps, 8%. i mean, it will make a dent if women say i'm not going into that unless you can tell me that there is a culture that says if anything happens, there's going to be hell to pay for it. hell to pay for criminal acts. criminal acts committed on women and men. it is time that we really put a

dent in this culture. calling for this institution to change. to change from the top leadership that says zero tolerance, but it's a lie. they tolerate everything. 8% of the -- only 8% of the cases that are ever brought to the military ever go to trial in the military, in contrast to 40% in civilian life. of the 8% that go to trial, less than 2% of people are actually end up having sentences given against them. found guilty and the sentences are really slaps on the hand. it's kind of the culture of you can do it, even if they catch you which they probably won't. even if you go to court-martial, not much is going to happen to you. so it's an entire structure that needs to change. and we need to be holding accoune all of those people in the chain of command, and if we put the lieutenants, the captains, theolonels, the colonels and the generals say it's goin