'Powerless': Pioneer of Air Force says superior officer raped her

Sen. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., the first woman in the Air Force to fly in combat, told a hushed Senate hearing room Wednesday that she had been raped by a superior officer, one of multiple times she was sexually assaulted while she served her country.

“I thought I was strong, but felt powerless,” McSally said during a Senate Armed Services subcommittee hearing on sexual assault in the military. “The perpetrators abused their position of power in profound ways.”

In sharing her experience — pride in her historic military service, betrayal over the assault and determination to help find a solution — the junior senator from Arizona offered one of the most powerful testimonies to date in the growing and heated debate on Capitol Hill over how to adjudicate claims of sexual assault in the military.

McSally, a former member of the House who lost an Arizona Senate race last year and then was appointed to the seat once held by Sen. John McCain, did not offer any details about the assaults or name the senior officer.

She said she did not immediately report the attacks because she “didn’t trust the system at the time.” Later, when she began talking about them, she said she was so horrified about how her account was handled that she thought about quitting the Air Force. “Like many victims, I felt like the system was raping me all over again,” McSally said.

A Pentagon report for fiscal year 2017, the most recent available, found that the Defense Department received 6,769 reports of sexual assault involving service members as either victims or subjects of criminal investigation, which was nearly a 10 percent increase over the 6,172 reports made the previous year. But according to figures gathered in 2016, annual rates of sexual assault over the past decade have decreased by half for active-duty women and by two-thirds for active duty men.

Sexual assault claims remain challenging to prosecute, all the more so in the hierarchical culture of the military, which is governed by centuries-old systems of law and justice. Often cases are reported long after the fact — if at all — making them even harder to prosecute.

McSally’s explanation of why she did not report the assaults is typical of both men and women in the military, who have historically feared retaliation from their peers or commanding officers. In 2014, the Pentagon released statistics based on a study conducted by the RAND Corp. that found that fewer than one-third of attacks in the military were reported, and that 52 percent of women who reported sexual assault said they had faced retaliation for doing so.

McSally, the first woman to command a fighter squadron, said she ultimately determined it would be best to remain in the Air Force.

“I decided to stay and continue to serve and fight and lead, to be a voice from within the ranks for women and then in the House and now the Senate,” McSally said, who retired from the Air Force after 26 years of service. “It’s personal from two perspectives — as a commander who led my airmen into combat and as a survivor of rape and betrayal.”

In an interview with CBS after the hearing, McSally said that she considered sexual assault in the military to be a national security threat, and that during the hearing, she had tried to offer a perspective as both a commander and a survivor, and to give hope to others.

“I want to shine a flashlight for them — that today can be a new day,” she said. “They can find their own purpose and not be held back and not be stopped from fulfilling all of their potential in life because of the awful things that they were victimized from.”

McSally had previously spoken during her bruising Senate race about being sexually abused in high school but had not disclosed her experience in the Air Force. An aide to McSally said Wednesday that McSally had spent days working on her remarks to the subcommittee.

On Wednesday, a spokeswoman for the Air Force condemned “criminal actions” that “violate every part of what it means to be an airman.”

“We are appalled and deeply sorry for what Sen. McSally experienced, and we stand behind her and all victims of sexual assault,” said the spokeswoman, Capt. Carrie J. Volpe. “We are steadfast in our commitment to eliminate this reprehensible behavior and breach of trust in our ranks.”

McSally’s testimony was met with an outpouring of support from her fellow lawmakers, including her female colleagues who have pushed the Pentagon to more forcefully address the issue of sexual assault.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., who is running for president and who has made curbing sexual assault in the military one of her central policy goals, said she was grateful that McSally was present “and spoke that truth.”

Gillibrand, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Personnel that McSally addressed, offered a measure in 2013 that would have taken sexual assault cases outside the military chain of command and given military prosecutors, rather than accusers’ commanders, the power to decide which cases to try, a potential sea change to the military justice system.

That attempt failed, but in recent years lawmakers have made changes to the military’s legal system, including ending the statute of limitations on assault and rape cases, making it a crime to retaliate against victims who report assaults and requiring the dishonorable discharge or dismissal of anyone convicted of sexual assault or rape.

In a Congress with historic numbers of women, McSally’s revelation was another instance of a female lawmaker stepping forward to share a personal experience of trauma.

Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, came forward in January to say she had been sexually assaulted by her husband. Rep. Katie Porter, D-Calif., a single mother of three, has spoken openly about the domestic abuse she said she suffered in her marriage.

Ernst said she sent McSally a message after her testimony, saying “I love you and I support you.”

“I think she’s pretty darn incredible,” she said.

McSally flew an A-10 Thunderbolt II attack aircraft while enforcing the no-fly zone over southern Iraq after the 1991 Persian Gulf war. She was deployed in Kuwait in January 1995 and took command of the 354th Fighter Squadron in July 2004.

“We are survivors together,” McSally concluded in her prepared remarks, “and I am honored to be here and use my voice and unique experience to work on this mission to stop military sexual assault for good.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.