because that you know in the military when or functioning at our best cohesive unit with brothers and sisters of the band of brothers and sisters i mean we are family when that beyond trust is violated. i. the wound penetrates to the very most inner part of one's soul one psyche. i have this folder that i keep i have all my boot camp letters in it from my mom and my sister and. people and. i was just going through some of this stuff and i'm like what's this you know nailed it i'm like oh my god. my suicide letter. bomb i'm sorry for the grease that you must feel. just because i'm gone physically

doesn't mean i will be there spiritually i truly feel that god will take me without question even though i took my own life. i've had the most broken thoughts of dreams and physical pain to remind me of the her if it acts upon me that happened while a duty a mother brother sister and husband should never live with knowing the horrible acts upon me find peace in knowing that my that the body left behind doesn't consume my soul i am free now and i'm not afraid ready to soar corded and you know . i took a whole bottle of pills and woke up strangely enough i'm 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. to go so the car in the fixie it was so it was all pulled blondie went out a little w. door and she scratching and helling at the dust shot up to me going to wake my wife up so i get to shut the car off for a minute i'll just take her in the garage and then i says why would you kill a dog that's stupid and then then it dawned on me would you kill yourself i thought of it so many times and 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 i'd 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 nauseated and.

they took my urine and they told me that i was pregnant. you know there's a wife and there you know and maybe her life 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 loss. 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 don't have. the fare structure and it is a judicial doctrine that was developed by the supreme court that says if you're in

the military you cannot sue for something that happens to you that's 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 that's 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. to me sick to see everybody stories how they kind of closely tied together everybody's story somehow has that it's consistent that the military does to people like us all the things that they put in place are all pretty much intended to help women deal with being raped better that's what they're about. and join the military halfway through my superior 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 c.t. agent who was senior to me. i was contacted by an agent with 4 riley c. id who said they were investigating the suspect as a serial rapist who had raped several military law enforcement women and i thought there was no way that you know she wouldn't be convicted and i have a difficult time with anything it's not the fact that i. an almost 20 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 he's probably doing the same thing right now. and one female attendant pulled me aside and tell me that you know she had heard about my case and she thought she could talk to me as one female marine to another and she told me what he did was capitalize on an opportunity that you presented to him that's 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 try to having everybody advocate for me to not make me go so i was 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 wasn't 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 steeper and. there's 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 that's those are your only 2 options suicide it all or deal with it right now i'm just barely appreciating. learning how to appreciate being a woman again that's 11 years. and. i had to have fun with it not forcing myself to have fun my. i'm trying really hard not to cry but it just. you know and watching you

girls having to. go through what i did it makes me want to explode in here like knowing that me wanting to commit suicide i'm not alone me being hit and raped and not all everything the way that they treated me the way that they made me feel i'm not alone and we have all you guys with all your knowledge and everything you guys are going to stand right up you know it's awesome business in this state. i think the woman who are coming forward in this lawsuit are very courageous they because they're putting their names out there for criticism. they're putting their names out there to go down and his truth is they were the ones who got raped and there's one thing you want to go through life with.

today i stand in solidarity with the courageous women and men who serve in our nation's armed forces the inspirational plaintiffs you see before you are a small handful of the 10s of thousands of troops and veterans who've 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 allowed many . people recently me don't go to the public don't let this get out because it'll make the military look bad 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.

thanks for being willing to fill me in a little bit on some of the experiences i name is reaching and i served honorably in united states marine corps for 4 years planning this clearly chokin i served in the united states coast guard i was harassed and sexually assaulted i was administrative leave discharges no benefits after 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 for time a criminal activity we're talking about a vicious. attack that it is criminal it isn't assault. almost none of the cases means court martial and all of the ones that do almost none of them result in convictions teams to me in all the time times that i've looked at these things the command is the one who has so much discretion i think our advocate should actually

be civilians once at work or in the military i think we should have actual units civilian units it absolutely tears in my inside to think that this has been going on for as long as it's been going on and we've 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 you're going to be held accountable the world is driven by shaped by one person. thinks. we dare to ask.

you but if she warned you and i do. wish that the bazemore those genes knew the speech in which she me we. will name in the news i mean that is where that information ball. a lot of you will see sawing your info as if parts about 2 kids each other both sides. of the. 5 days doing this is. an english lady a people. you

know world of big. loft and conspiracy. to dig deeper to get the stories that mainstream media refuses to tell more than ever we need to be smarter we need to stop slamming the door. and shouting past each other it's time for critical thinking it's time to fight for the middle for the truth the time is now for watching closely watching the hawks. and so cod i found it tremendously frustrating when i would demonstrate that an offender had committed enough and taking it to a commander and having a commander be the deciding authority you know i don't think commanders are capable of making. an object of decision i don't i do not think it should be in their hands so he was just seeking to do discretion away from the yes absolutely congresswoman

davis and i are both on the armed services committee there are a number of issues that you've 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 it's a very difficult thing to go through and don't think i don't know i know. the fact that you're willing to tell me your stories firsthand makes it much easier for us to go back and just say you know these are policies that we have to change it's a big it's a big big deal what are you doing you really find people like you who will stand up for us and just thank you so much for everything they do there was to me. thank you again for your service. just figure last year the military received over 3000 reports of sexual assault involving other members in the service this week 17 veterans are saying that the military ignored their cases of sexual assault while they were on active duty today i'm going to talk about the men corey. who served in

the coast guard from august 2005 to june 2007 she now stumper's from p.t.s.d. and abnormal nerve damage in her day. jo'burg later told the press it's like they didn't care it wasn't important i was. going to get mail. readers cross. hairs my way.

this is. effective october 20th 2009 my overall combined rating is 70 percent. service connection for anxiety is deny service connection for displacement and bilateral bilateral this displacement is denied. oh my god. i'll be right there. my face doesn't have any desks in it that's what gags for a show that's what dr karp those letters show you deny medical from the winners for it's.

nice to see you again and thank you for coming i'm 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 reduction are ideas like telling women to if they're going to go somewhere together always have a buddy with them. or there are other examples of risk. i didn't i'm not familiar with that's out of my area of expertise. well i want to continue where dr whitley left off looking at what our focus is and that's on prevention as well as as a response we've 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 don't think the department of defense has has really yet embraced that they have

a sexual assault problem that it's 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 doesn't provide the medical protection and 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 they're 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 you you're 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 that's 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. i'm 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 can't 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 that's going to honestly. i don't think it's affected his life it on. and people in my own squadron i talk to . they they don't see any effect that it's had on him and that hurts. because a struggle every day it's completely changed. i'm

really hoping that he falls off the coast guard but they never find him i'm really hoping for that they find for so poor mishap where he got chopped up by the prop. big that would be great there'd be an exciting day but i prized so very much. i hope this reaches them too you know i hope that somewhere someone sees my face. wherever it is and go as. they know them and they're talking about me. because they know what they did you know and then although half the matter is the same friend they. say what we station with her. you know and then they can be a secret anymore. so hopefully they have to deal with the to. some way shape or. most rapists. repetitive criminals that it's a kind of crime that has an obsessive quota she said people do it again and again

so the tragedy of that is that every one of these guys who gets off 3 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 isn't because 5 percent are a lot 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 i'm aware of but if you're convicted in court a felony conviction of sex offense of a sex offense you're going to go on the national list for the very words were correct that is not the case it depends on what level conviction they got if they received over a year then that's considered a felony but a lot of these cases are pled down. so there are not felonies the military doesn't

like to prosecute people and keep them. as felony convictions i often ask myself the question why wouldn't why would they stop and if there's nothing to stop them like incarceration or some other light major life change they're going to continue. if you run that the sexual predator through the judicial system and then you get a slap on the hand all you've done is you've done the equivalent of the catch release program you've caught up you've educated now you released him 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 literally prey on women and men in our neighborhoods across the united states i mean if we don't care about women or men in the military then we. care about women and men in our girls and boys in our neighborhoods back home.

we're. 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 person's hope and i did this and crushed in that brutal way i think we owe people love and that. increasingly. women are becoming some of the best trained

professionals that we have and the military is a great soldiers and we can't afford to lose them. carrying on. people deeply believe in their hearts to serve their country they should be given that chance with respect. you know it's part of really harm american way you can get leaders there purple hearts because we were wounded in time of war. and they give us and you know very just saying maybe there should be written for women you. were served and she should have survived it. we have a good army a good military but not a great one and this is the kind of issue that keeps our military from be viewed this as a shared challenges not just a women's issue it's not just something that the military has to deal with but as a society we're all in this together.

and. it's our national duty.

thank. you.

tensions between the masses and clauses have existed ever since modern states came into being but often serve as a driver of political change with russian civil society growing larger and louder against the excesses of the governing elites what does the future of the political system look like. the tense situation in venezuela is still all over the news the problem in venezuela is not that socialism has been poorly implemented but that socialism has been faced only temperament from the inside venezuela things look different we're going to announce sanctions against petroleum to venezuela associate. in the school of a supplement to. the tempest. political battle song move the. focus

of the who story isn't new nixon called in henry kissinger to tell him that it would not be tolerated that in latin america an alternative economic and social system could take hold and therefore the policy would be to make. the chilean economy scream so wants and making the economy of venezuela screed. please please. please please.

the week's top stories here on the u.s. sends extra troops to the middle east and slaps new sanctions on iran accusing the country of bombing saudi oil refineries. hong kong is gripped by street brawls and vandalism is on the rest continues for a 16th weekend. and the israeli prime minister's bid for a new term is still a major blow as arab parties back his rival to form a new government.