Will Congress Finally Take Action on Military Sexual Assault?

by Sharon Rondeau

(Oct. 9, 2023) — Our late-August interview with former U.S. Army Captain, Reverend Dr. Gary Mason, II, was prompted by a CNN article of August 8, 2023 regarding the U.S. Coast Guard’s concealment of a lengthy string of sexual assault reports within its ranks dating back to the 1980s.

CNN has been following the story for months and has reportedly obtained documents through public records requests demonstrating “that the Coast Guard has failed to use its power to prevent and punish sexual assault and misconduct for decades — despite growing evidence that this kind of behavior is a longstanding problem at sea.”

Mason mentioned having interviewed five survivors of military sexual assault (MST) for his 2022 dissertation which earned him a Doctor of Military Ministry (DMin) degree approximately last year following his involuntary separation from the military in 2015.

A graduate of Howard University and enlisting in the Army in 2000, following his completion of Basic Training Mason began to take an interest in soldiers experiencing difficulty with relationships, their chain of command, racism and sexism, suicidal thoughts and sexual assault. Serving in a number of units and in several capacities over his 15 years, he made the decision to become a military chaplain and was ordained while stationed in Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Speaking out about his observations of misconduct extracted its price, as The Post & Email reported in Mason’s 50+-chapter saga which became the foundation of his book, “Persecuted to Love: A Soldier’s Story,” published last year by Palmetto Publishing.

In 2008, Mason himself became a victim of assault, although not of a sexual nature, after which the perpetrator escaped the level of discipline Mason believed he should have faced had his chain of command been effective.

Mason recalled that the survivors of military sexual trauma (MST) with whom he had spoken often said they did not file complaints to their chain of command against the perpetrators for fear it would negatively impact their careers or lead to retribution.

As CNN and other outlets have related, the issue of sexual harassment and assault in the military is not new. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs acknowledges MST as a “condition” requiring “care,” extending to those with “other than honorable or uncharacterized discharge.”

In a 2017 congressional hearing, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) demanded a response from a Marine commandant over a highly inappropriate posting on Facebook of female Marines, receiving an admission of, “We gotta change, and that’s on me.”

Since 2013, Gillibrand has promoted the Military Justice Improvement Act, also aimed at preventing military sexual assault which has not passed either chamber of Congress.

A dated page from Gillibrand’s website contains links to informational sources regarding the occurrence of MST supporting Mason’s account of survivors’ decisions not to pursue punishment for their attackers for fear of retaliation. One source, Human Rights Watch, in 2016 issued a 124-page report revealing that many survivors of military sexual assault were discharged for alleged “mental health conditions,” including “personality disorder.”

In one instance, the report states, a service member who was sexually assaulted by three others in 1982 was threatened with his life if he were to report it. “Afterwards,” the narrative continues, “he coped by drinking heavily and as a result was so drunk he failed to report to base. He was then court-martialed for being Absent Without Leave (AWOL) and received a Bad Conduct discharge. In the following years, he continued to drink heavily and was repeatedly arrested. Efforts to get benefits from the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) failed because the sexual trauma that caused the PTSD occurred during a period of service determined to be dishonorable.[2]“

“Based on over 270 in-person and telephone interviews,” the report continues, “examination of documents that US government agencies produced in response to public record requests, and data analysis, this report covers the impact of ‘bad discharges’ on military personnel who were separated from the military after reporting a sexual assault. It looks at the lasting impact of bad discharges on sexual assault victims and the remedies available to correct any injustice.”

In a sign that military culture regarding sexual assault might have begun to change, the report added:

Over the past several years, in response to public pressure, the US military has made a concerted effort to improve how it handles sexual assault cases. Many of the reforms have provided important additional resources and protections for service members who are sexually assaulted while in service. Other policy changes have made it more difficult to quickly dismiss service members for mental health conditions.

That development, however, was countered with, “virtually nothing has been done to address the ongoing harm done to thousands of veterans who reported sexual assault before reforms took place and lost their military careers as a result of improper administrative discharges.”

After leaving the Army, Mason’s quest to minister to fellow soldiers extended to a 2013 victim of sexual assault at the hands of four military contractors. The soldier was “burned with cigarettes; urinated upon and thrown in front of a moving vehicle after indicating his intent to come forward with knowledge of extreme misconduct involving an Army officer and his wife, a military chaplain, and his own wife,” The Post & Email reported on July 6, 2016 following an interview with the soldier’s power-of-attorney.

The soldier suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI) for which he was reportedly administered numerous drugs in high doses to which his family objected. Further, his power of attorney claimed at the time, he was put through a “forced (mental health) evaluation” and was not only financially victimized, but also sexually abused yet again while a long-term patient at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center (WRNMMC).

Several years after his medical discharge from the Army, the soldier’s body was found in a body of water, with an investigation inconclusive as to the cause of death.

During our interview, Mason recalled several cases in which sexual assault might have been concealed by the military, including that of U.S. Army Spc. Morganne McBeth, 19, who in 2010 was reported deceased from a non-combat-related cause while serving in Iraq.

In a February 2011 article titled, “Hiding Military Sexual Trauma,” LAProgressive reported:

Initially, the military told Morganne’s parents she accidentally stabbed herself and that it might have been a suicide. Her parents didn’t buy it and reached out to Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.). Pressure from Wittman apparently convinced the military to offer some kind of information because soon after his involvement, the military told them Morganne’s death was likely a murder.

Two male soldiers from her unit have been charged and are free while the investigation continues. Spc. Nicholas Bailey, 23, was charged with involuntary manslaughter and conspiring to obstruct justice by giving a false statement. Spc. Tyler Cain, 21, was charged with conspiring to obstruct justice.

“More than 130 U.S. military women have died in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the Department of Defense has deemed nearly 50 deaths noncombat related,” the report continues. “…Out of the 20 female soldier deaths under scrutiny, military reports document 14 as suicides. Many of their families refuse to accept the military’s explanation and believe their daughters died at the hands of others, possibly fellow soldiers. This much is clear: The mysterious deaths of female soldiers coincide with an increase in reported sexual violence against women in the military.”

Of CNN’s recent series of articles on the military sexual trauma, Mason told us, “This is a long time in a long history where sexual assaults and rapes in the military continue to be swept under the rug. Quite often, the only time these things come out is right around the time of elections, so sometimes it can be a political football which they kick back and forth in order to point fingers.

“When it comes to sexual assault, not just in the military but anyplace, it’s not political. It goes beyond race and gender. It’s not right, and those responsible need to be held accountable.

“It amazes me that as I was looking at this particular article about the commanders going back and talking about it — they’ve known about these rapes and assaults dating back to the 1980s all the way through 2006 — and these top officials decided they would just sweep it under the rug. So they talk about the commandant, Karl Schultz, who was in charge since 2018, and there was a secret investigation called Operation Foul Anchor into sexual misconduct focusing on the U.S. Coast Guard.

“One of the problems when these things go on is that toxic leaders try to hide them and push it out of the command. A new person then comes in, in this case Linda Fagan, who took charge of the Coast Guard in 2022, and as they always do, she offered an apology to victims of sexual assault. She pledged to help people and be ‘more transparent’ about the problem. OK, so here we go again with a cover-up for prior toxic leaders. They don’t hold anybody, especially the prior military leaders, accountable.”

In its August 8 article, CNN reported that “Fagan is not the only current Coast Guard official who was aware of the secret operation at some level. Internal records and interviews show that several of those intimately involved with the operation remain employed at the agency. Those who have retired in recent years, meanwhile, remain on the agency’s books as pension recipients, and some have gone on to top positions elsewhere, including one who leads a university.”

“According to Fagan, there were a few who were relieved of duty,” Mason continued. “In the military, often the investigations are not made available to news agencies and we get the story afterward. Even though they think they are going to try to investigate, it just keeps getting stretched out longer, and the problem continues to exist. This leads to fallout in things such as suicide.

“What generally happens is that survivors of military sexual trauma delve into suicidal or homicidal ideation. There’s a term, ‘cognitive dissonance,’ where they’re feeling peer pressure. They know what’s happening is wrong, but they have external work expectations in that military institution, and they don’t want to defy it or be seen as weak or disloyal. A lot of the time, they try to live with it or push it down. They might get moved to a different unit and act as if they’re still a part of that team, trying to keep up with the esprit de corps, but deep down inside, they’re hiding and feeling things because they know what happened was wrong. They have no place to turn to, and eventually they break. This turns into major mental health problems, and a lot of times they turn to drugs or alcohol abuse.”

“As I was interviewing survivors of military sexual trauma for the dissertation, I asked them, ‘Why did you not feel you could go and talk with the chain of command?’ Their responses were that they were in fear of military retribution, that they would be isolated in the unit, or that it would negatively impact their careers. They said even when they talked to other service members about what was going in, the service members would be divided on what they thought should be done. So because of fear, blame or shame, they chose to just bottle up and say nothing about it.

“There were some leaders with unlawful command influence — commanders at the battalion or brigade level — who were trying to cover for other leaders who were involved, and they just wanted to keep it quiet,” Mason recalled. “When I remember what was going on then, I was hoping — here we are in 2023; I left the military in 2015 — that the situation would be exposed and that the military would decide that MST could now be adjudicated outside of military ranks. And now you can get legal folks involved who are not JAGs.”

On July 28, 2023, CNN reported:

President Joe Biden on Friday ordered a historic change to the Uniform Code of Military Justice by transferring key decision-making authorities outside the military chain of command in cases of sexual assault, domestic violence, child abuse, murder and other serious crimes.

The order, which the administration is calling “the most significant transformation of the military justice system since the UCMJ was established in 1950,” officially implements changes passed by Congress as part of fiscal year 2022’s National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), and comes two years after an independent review commission on sexual assault in the military, formed by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, recommended moving prosecution of sexual assault in the military outside the chain of command.

Key among the changes in the order is the establishment of rules to govern the newly formed Offices of Special Trial Counsel (OSTC) which, composed of a panel of independent military prosecutors, would make prosecutorial decisions involving sexual assault and other violent crimes.

“When I was leaving the Army in 2015,” Mason further told us, “we were told in a briefing there were approximately 22,000 or more sexual assaults in the military alone, but only about 480 prosecutions. That is a very unbalanced number, which means there are a lot of problems. This situation is very dangerous, and there’s no way the average person or leader in the military can ignore that. Right now, there are a lot of suicides, which we covered in some of our other interviews. But the suicides are not just from combat-related PTSD; a lot of it comes from how service members are treating each other in the ranks or in garrison in military installations.

“When you put males and females into housing units — we call it a barracks — and you don’t keep them separate, there’s going to be all kinds of sexual activity. It’s just like in dorms on college campuses; a lot of rapes and sexual assaults occur when there’s substance abuse involved. You would think that in the case of the military, they would be so regimented running their installations that they would be adhering to the guidelines, but I think what’s happening is you have military leadership and commanders who are getting involved in relationships they should not have. So when the juniors see what the seniors are doing, leadership doesn’t have credibility to try to tell the junior enlisted what to do.”

Failing to go public with the problem of MST and “holding people accountable,” Mason speculated, could stem from the leadership’s fear that as a consequence, “recruitment” could lag. “As a service member, you go in and go through Basic Training where you’re getting initiated into a large institution, and you’re almost kind-of brainwashed to believe you’re part of this awesome fighting force. You’re part of a big team. You don’t want to be the one who is the weak link or crying over something that happened or that you’re disappointing the team. A lot of times, you feel guilty about sharing that something went wrong, almost to the point where your chain of command or leadership can make you think it was your fault. And a lot of people are afraid to come forward when they struggle by themselves, and it could lead to a suicide.”

In 2013, Mason’s wife Shahnaaz (Shay), also an Army veteran, founded Thriving on the Homefront, a non-profit which “empowers and inspires the military family to thrive by connecting them to a village that has the wisdom and knowledge they need.”