HOLDING YOUR COMMUNITY ACCOUNTABLE

The most difficult story she’s ever covered, Norah O’Donnell says, is the reporting she’s `one on sexual assault in the military, first a 2017 investigation on sexual assault at the U.S. Air Force Academy, an` most recently an 18-month-long probe into the increase in reports of abuse. In both investigations, O’Donnell and a team of reporters an` producers interviewed survivors, whistleblowers an` the families of soldiers who committed suicide.

“They are the most wrenching interviews,” O’Donnell says. While it’s hard to focus a lens on ugliness that exists in an institution she loves and respects, she says “it does need to abide by certain rules. There isn’t anything wrong with the military; it’s what certain individuals in the military are `oing an` not being hel` accountable.”

Her background as an Army brat helped her establish an instant rapport with many of the people she interviewed. “I can understand what they may be going through in the military community, and I’m going to treat their story with respect.” Victims who are living on a military base in a foreign country, for example, may not even know where to go to report abuse; O’Donnell knows firsthand “how isolating it can be to live on a military base.”

Changes are underway. In July, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin agreed with recommendations made by an independent review commission to make sure independent prosecutors, not military commanders, handle sexual assault charges in the military.

O’Donnell felt confident as she was doing the reporting that the military woul` respond one day. “By nature most of the people who serve in the military are very good people and they want to do the right thing.”