ms. bhagwati. >> i think brian's message spornt. messaging is critical. culture change cannot happen without an entire rethinking of how this issue is messaged within the military. i mean, generally i think the way service members and veterans talk about this issue, there's this assumption that you are harassed or assaulted because you are weak. weakness somehow plays not entire makeup of why this doesn't -- this is such a hard problem within the military. we're not trained to think of ourselves as weak. victimhood is not something that any veteran wants to kind of own. it's -- it's commotely out of sync with being -- completely out of sync with being in the military. there's messaging that's sort of small women who aren't strong enough are victims, and you see variations on that theme constantly which is a complete myth. it has nothing to do with the sex of a victim. when there's mixed messaging about alcohol and rape where there's an assumption that there is a lapse of professional judgment on the part of a young man, in most cases, you see messaging ab

ms. bhagwati. >> thank you. good morning chairman gillibranr graham and members of the subcommittee. my name is anu bhagwati and the executive director of service women's action network or swan and a former marine corps captain. swan's mission is to transfer military culture by securing opportunities and freedom to surf without discrimination harassment are sold and to perform services to assure high quality health care health care and benefits for women veterans and their families. military sexual violence is a personal issue for me. during my five years as a marine officer experienced daily discrimination and sexual harassment. i was exposed to a culture with sexism rape jokes pornography and widespread commercial sexual exploitation of women and girls both in the united states and overseas. my experiences came to a head while at the school of amber treat and camp lejeune north carolina from 2,022,004 were eyewitness reports of rape sexual assault sexual-harassment swept under the rug by hand full of field grade officers. perpetrators are promoted or transferred to other units witho

ms. bhagwati, there are other countries that have removed the chain of command for making these decisionsfamiliar with the experience whether the incidents of sexual so went down in prosecutions when not, are you familiar enough to talk to us a little bit about what your impressions are these other countries that have made this kind of change? >> we've done some research. it's my understanding the u.k. systems are ones we should look at it closer detail. justice system is also one you can look at, although we see my success. beyond that, i would refer you to additional subject matter experts. it requires a great deal of further study, but the u.k. has done it successfully and it's my understanding the prosecutors themselves are military, but the supervisor of those prosecutors to civilians is a bit of a mix in the system. >> so there's something definitely we can learn from other countries. i happened to read an article and the mcclatchy article march 13 talking about the case and it notes that because of all those the attention being paid to this terrible situation, these assaults, but s