Hearings pledged on National Guard
Subcommittee chair wants sex abuse problem addressed
Responding to an investigation by the Cap Times and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, a key Congressional leader says she will hold hearings this summer to address the chronic problem of sexual assault in the National Guard.
“I am very troubled by the fact that we don’t have any oversight of the National Guard when U.S. taxpayer money is being spent, and we have women in the National Guard who are being physically, sexually abused,” said U.S. Rep. Jackie Speier, a California Democrat and chair of the personnel subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee.
Meanwhile, Sen. Tammy Baldwin, a Democrat from Wisconsin, said in an interview this week she will push for a variety of initiatives, including expanding military whistleblower protections for Guard members and boosting funding for federal investigations of state Guard sexual assault cases. She also called on Wisconsin lawmakers to update the state’s military laws.
“Your reporting as well as other sources make it clear to me that it is a nationwide problem, and so we’ve got to think about making sure there are sufficient resources,” she told a Cap Times reporter.
A Cap Times/Journal Sentinel investigation in March revealed a decadeslong pattern of Guard units in states nationwide burying sexual harassment and assault allegations, withholding crucial documents from victims and retaliating against women who have come forward.
It is unclear when the hearings would be held, the scope and who might be called as witnesses. But Speier said men and women should be free from sexual assault and harassment no matter what military branch in which they serve.
Sexual assault reports in the National Guard have tripled over the last decade, but the federal National Guard Bureau, the administrative agency that
“I am very troubled by the fact that we don’t have any oversight of the National Guard when U.S. taxpayer money is being spent, and we have women in the National Guard who are being physically, sexually abused.” U.S. Rep. Jackie Speier
D-Calif.
oversees the Guard, investigates only about 30% of them. The National Guard Bureau has said that it is working to improve its sexual assault response, including adding investigators to its staff.
Retaliation is a particular problem in the Guard, which is composed of militias from 50 states, three U.S. territories and the District of Columbia.
Members often stay in one location for longer periods than those who serve in full-time military branches, such as the Marines, Navy and Air Force. Leadership also turns over less frequently.
“It’s so nepotistic because they all know each other. It’s the ultimate goodold-boy network,” said Ellen Haring, a research fellow and former CEO of the Service Women’s Action Network, which works on military sexual assault issues. The Department of Defense “doesn’t provide oversight of the Guard relative to sexual harassment and assault. They just assume the states take care of it by themselves.”
Unlike other military members, those in the National Guard have not been protected by a 1988 military whistleblower law aimed at shielding those who report wrongdoing from reprisal.
The Department of Defense said it received 240 whistleblower complaints from military members in the last fiscal year, including 16 from the National Guard, according to a letter the department sent to Baldwin’s office last month. The department declined to investigate all of those 16 cases.
It said after recent internal discussions it will now include most National Guard members in its interpretation of the whistleblower law, though some on certain duty statuses would continue to be excluded.
But Baldwin is pushing to eliminate all restrictions on protections for Guard members.
“National Guard members work under many different duty statuses, and I think they have earned the same whistleblower protections that their activeduty counterparts have,” she said.
Andrea Pfeifer, who serves in the Wisconsin Army National Guard, said the change would have made a difference in her case. According to records, she was retaliated against for reporting her superior for sexual assault and harassment in 2014.
“In the Guard, we are largely at the mercy of our state’s adjutant general,” Pfeifer said. “When the adjutant general is the problem, we need to be able to appeal to a higher authority. In my case, I found myself caught in an administrative game of kick-the-can with all agencies claiming, ‘Not it.’”
Her sexual assault allegation was substantiated by the National Guard Bureau, but the Department of Defense declined to investigate her whistleblower complaint in 2017 because she was a Guard member on state duty at the time. A 2019 investigation by the National Guard Bureau confirmed several of her concerns.
“In popular culture, we see the military as a cut-and-dry institution with clear regulations. In the Guard, policy is an art,” Pfeifer said.
Because the National Guard is primarily controlled by state leaders, many federal reforms, including New York Democrat Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s bipartisan military justice reform bill, would not apply to it.
Her bill, which would remove military commanders from overseeing the prosecution of sexual assault cases, could be a good model for state-based reform of the Guard, Baldwin said.
Each state Guard has its own military justice laws, some of which vary widely and do not follow the Uniform Code of Military Justice used by full-time military branches.
But state-level change in Wisconsin has been slow. More than a year after a federal investigation recommended changes to how Wisconsin’s military law handles sexual assault, state legislators have done little.
The Guard and Gov. Tony Evers say they support reforms to the state’s military law, called the Wisconsin Code of Military Justice, to align it with national standards for addressing sexual assault, victims’ rights and discrimination, and other crimes within the force.
Legislative Republican leaders have not responded to requests for comment about whether they support updating the law.
“Because of the unique status of the Guard, there is a really important oversight role for state leaders in updating standards to ensure all service members are protected and right now our Republican-controlled Legislature in Wisconsin needs to take action,” Baldwin said.