Short answer: We wish… The Department of Defense’s (DOD) Independent Review Commission (IRC) concluded on or about June 22, 2021, and the recommendations were released on July 2, 2021. Deputy Defense Secretary Honorable Dr. Kathleen Hicks appeared before the Military Personnel Subcommittee for the House Armed Forces Committee on July 20, 2021, and she was followed by 4 of the 13 main appointees of the IRC. This IRC published more than 80 recommendations (28 recommendations and 54 sub-recommendations). Sadly, this report is almost 300 pages long so this article will only include highlights, and other portions will be revisited in the future as their subjects arise.
The biggest recommendation that had many people had been waiting for was moving judicial proceedings on sex crimes from the commander’s responsibility. But this doesn’t mean that all legal decisions on sex crimes are removed from the commander, the IRC recommended that the nonjudicial proceedings stay with the commander. The biggest ticket in all of the recommendations is that the IRC recommends that the decision of whether to take a case to court-martial or go down the nonjudicial route will rest with a civilian led office of designated independent judge advocates called the Office of the Special Victim Prosecutor.
Is it really as bad as it’s been sounding? Yes! During the July 20, 2021, House hearing, Ms. Meghan Tokash stated “92% of the criminal investigators at Fort Hood, Texas during the Vanessa Guillen’s investigation were not properly credentialed.”
So, what will be changed first? It has been recommended by the IRC that the first implementations should be done for victim care; that way the victims come first and while prevention and military justice changes will be evolving thru the next couple of years, the victims during this process will receive the best care possible. This includes a manpower study, desk audit and additional victim care and support recommendations to be initiated within the first six month from the date of the IRC report. Then there are recommended policy changes that are long overdue, this includes:
- Expanding services normally for sexual assault victims to sexual harassment victims like expedited transfer and admittance to Catch a Serial Offender program (https://www.sapr.mil/CATCH).
- Determining who would serve as investigators for formal sexual harassment complaints, which previously were any appointed commissioned officer within the organization’s chain of command.
- Expanding the definition of “intimate partner” for domestic abuse policy to include dating partners when defining eligibility for military-provisioned services regarding intimate partner violence.
- Amend policy so that services can research on sexual minorities. (This is important because the House committee found that 40% of sexual assault victims identify as LGBTQ+).