Military parents: Laws for kids on bases need overhaul
To the mothers, the 13-year-old boy appeared largely unsupervised as he roamed among the clusters of townhomes on the U.S. Air Force base in Japan.
It would have been unremarkable — the neighborhood was full of kids — except that young girls were starting to report the boy had molested them.
“We were like, ‘How is this OK?’” the mother of one 5-year-old girl told The Associated Press, which granted her anonymity to protect her daughter’s privacy. She locked her kids inside.
The first girl to report had to wait six days for officials on the largest Air Force installation in the Pacific to provide counseling. The mothers didn’t get much urgency from Air Force criminal investigators either. They told the families they’d waited 13 days to meet the boy’s father.
By then, mothers had identified five girls, ages 2 to 7, who said the boy had taken them to some trees or a playground or his house. Another five kids would allege abuse soon after.
“We come here, and it takes the worst cases that you can imagine to find out that you don’t have the services to support your children,” the 5-year-old’s mother said. “There’s a feeling of complete distrust.”
This was not supposed to happen again. Last August, Congress ordered the Defense Department to overhaul how it handles allegations of sexual assault among the tens of thousands of military kids who live or attend school on U.S. bases worldwide.
Yet the case at Kadena Air Base in Okinawa began unfolding in February, six months after President Donald Trump signed those landmark reforms.
For decades, justice has been elusive on American bases when it comes to children. Help for victims and accountability for offenders have been rare in the nearly 700 reports of sexual assault over a decade that an AP investigation documented.
The new law required reforms across the Pentagon. The school system it runs for service members’ kids had to create new student protections. The Family Advocacy Program, whose social service counselors would turn victims away, must review reports. The Office of the Secretary of Defense would track cases and create a policy for how to handle them.
The reforms are now rolling out, but the rollout has been uneven.
The Air Force has not drafted new guidelines. Instead, it is “reserving decision on adding or amending policy until publication of a Department of Defense policy,” according to spokesman Maj. Nicholas Mercurio.
The Army didn’t wait to follow the Pentagon’s lead. It wrote its own policy.
That March 21 directive mandates both a criminal investigation and victim assistance through Family Advocacy, which now must inform counterparts on other bases when an offender’s family transfers.
Because military law doesn’t apply to family members, justice must come under civilian law. So cases on Army bases will be referred to state or local district attorneys who, unlike federal prosecutors, have juvenile justice systems.
“There’s a recognition that states are best able to adjudicate,” said Charles Lozano, an Army attorney who helped draft the policy.
Rep. Jackie Speier, who chairs the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Military Personnel, said she was encouraged the Army’s policy was “more comprehensive” than the law required.
The Navy and Marines fall between the Army and Air Force.
The Marine Corps is updating its guidelines to include “language and protocols that address problematic sexual behavior in children and youth,” according to Maj. Craig Thomas. Publication is expected by year’s end.
Naval leaders have directed base commanders to work with social services, according to spokesman Lt. Samuel Boyle. The Navy also has issued interim guidance, which it would not share.
The most detailed changes came to the Pentagon-run school system that educates more than 70,000 students on bases in the U.S., Asia and Europe.
These students have not received protections that public school students get under Title IX, a federal law that’s been used to investigate sexual assault in schools and to help victims. Congress said students at Pentagonrun schools must get protections “at least comparable to” Title IX. The school system published new policies in February.
School officials are supposed to be trained by Oct. 1, and a new incident logging system is scheduled to launch in the fall, the Department of Defense Education Activity said in a written statement. For now, the school system introduced a “Sexual Harassment Awareness and Prevention” website.
Four Title IX experts who reviewed the policies for AP said they broadly create comparable protections, but their substantial shortcomings include a complex investigation process that relies on already-stretched school principals.
A mid-april post on a Facebook page for teachers at Pentagonrun schools asked whether anyone was aware of the new policies.
Two said they had received training. One more mentioned a question-and-answer session at her school. Another eight had no training, with nearly all unaware of the new policy.