The Dallas Morning News (MCT) The following editorial appeared in the Dallas Morning News on Tuesday, March 11:

There is no doubt, as Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., told colleagues last week, that members of Congress trust the military chain of command. The problem, she pointed out, is that victims of sexual assault do not. 

The Department of Defense found that in 2012, there were an estimated 26,000 sexual assaults in the military but only 3,374 were reported. And fewer than 10 percent of those 302 were prosecuted. 

Such abysmal numbers led Gillibrand to write a bill placing responsibility for sexual assault cases in the hands of seasoned prosecutors rather than military commanders. And they were enough to persuade a majority of Gillibrand’s colleagues to support her bill Thursday, including both Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., as well as tea party firebrand Ted Cruz, R-Texas. 

But a majority wasn’t enough. Gillibrand’s bill was defeated on a procedural vote when it fell five votes short of a filibuster-proof majority. In its place, the Senate unanimously passed a much tamer bill by Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., that would get rid of the “good soldier” defense that allows the positive service record of an accused to be taken into account. 

The shameful defeat of Gillibrand’s bill was sandwiched between two news stories that illustrated how insidious and far-reaching sexual assaults have become in the military. 

Just hours before the vote, the armed services newspaper Stars and Stripes revealed the suspension of the Army’s top sexual assault prosecutor amid allegations that he had, in 2011, groped and tried to kiss a lawyer who worked for him—at a sexual-assault legal conference. 

The day after the vote, the trial of Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sinclair opened in Fort Bragg, N.C. Sinclair himself once a key link in the chain of command is accused of twice forcing a captain to engage in oral sex after she tried to break off a secret three-year affair. Sinclair, who is facing a forcible sodomy charge, is also accused of grabbing the captain’s genitalia against her will and having sex with her in public.

Opponents of the measure, such as McCaskill, Carl Levin, D-Mich., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., all members of the Senate Armed Services Committee as well as the Department of Defense, worried that Gillibrand’s bill would undermine commanders’ authority. 

And, they say, there’s no proof that taking sexual assault cases out of commanders’ hands would discourage retaliation or promote more reporting. The proof, it would seem, is in the numbers.

Given the military’s categorical failure in dealing with sexual assaults, anything that seriously shakes up the military justice system would have been an improvement.

This editorial appeared in the Dallas Morning News on Tuesday, March 11. Visit The Dallas Morning News at www.dallasnews.com.