Sexual Abuse in the Military? Pentagon refuses to allow Kaye Whitley to talk about it.

Congress attempted to hold an oversight hearing about sexual assaults in the military and to that end, a subpoena was issued for the head of the sexual assault program to testify.

The Pentagon refused to allow her to attend the hearing. Yep, they really don’t want the word to get out about what is going on within their ranks. From TPM Muckraker:

The House panel had issued a subpoena for Dr. Kaye Whitley, the director of the Defense Department’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office.

But Pentagon officials ordered her not to testify and instead sent her supervisor, Michael Dominguez, a principal deputy undersecretary for defense, in her place.

Whitley’s absence came on the same day a federal judge rejected the White House’s claim to blanket immunity from Congressional oversight in an unrelated case.

Dominguez told the committee the Pentagon was not citing executive privileged but had simply instructed Whitley not to show up.

A Pentagon spokeswoman, Cynthia O. Smith, provided a statement today in response to questions about Whitley’s defiance of the subpoena.

It is inappropriate to question Dr. Whitley about the program when Mr. Dominguez, the decision maker responsible for the program and for the program’s results, is available to answer those questions.

Mr. Dominguez has full accountability and responsibility for the Sexual Assault Prevention Office and he has the full authority to discuss and answer all questions regarding the SAPRO and the Department’s sexual assault policies. Dr. Whitley is responsible for implementing the policy….

Dr. Whitley has been on the Hill numerous times discussing the DoD’s sexual assault program and she will continue to do so.

Lawmakers interpreted the move as an affront to Congressional authority and said they had specifically sought Whitley based on her knowledge of how the military’s sexual assault programs actually work in practice.

Ain’t that a load of horseshit. The hearing was held on the day that ABC News reported that a GAO report states that sexual assault is being under-reported by at least 50 percent.

Below is the testimony of Ingrid Torres in front of Waxman’s Oversight Committee. The video is courtesy of The Real News Network.

Crossposted at Its my Right to be Left of the Center.

Sphere: Related Content

A bitch wouldn’t even know..

After a night off from thinking spent enjoying the company of my sister, Sweetie the three legged mostly-chow and my two sorta-beagles…and a decent night of sleep (yay!)…this bitch is feeling human again.

Thank Gawd!

Shall we?

Like many St. Louisans I was deeply touched by the story of Private First Class LaVena Johnson, who died as a result of a non-combat incident near Balad, Iraq. PFC Johnson, who was from Florissant Missouri, died July 19, 2005 and was the first woman from Missouri to die while serving in Iraq or Afghanistan. I will never forget seeing her family interviewed on local television and witnessing their pain and frustration over the lack of information they’d been given concerning their loved one’s death. It was wrenching and emotional…and I was left frustrated that this story had not garnered national media attention like other similar investigations.

Fellow St. Louis blogger Phillip Barron of WaveFlux fame has done an amazing job covering the case of PFC Johnson on his blog and on a separate site, LaVena Johnson dot com, where there is a petition seeking to compel the Army to reopen their investigation into PFC Johnson’s death.

The army ruled the death of PFC Johnson a suicide despite physical evidence inconsistent with suicide. As Philip relates in the first post on the LaVena Johnson petition site, that evidence includes “indications of physical abuse that went unremarked by the autopsy, the absence of psychological indicators of suicidal thoughts; indeed, testimony that LaVena was happy and healthy prior to her death, indications, via residue tests, that LaVena may not even have handled the weapon that killed her, a blood trail outside the tent where Lavena’s body was found and indications that someone attempted to set LaVena’s body on fire.”

The name of Corporal Pat Tillman, who died as result of friendly fire, and the story of the cover-up of his cause of death has held firm in the national press with good reason. Corporal Tillman was a sports hero who gave up millions for a military career after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

And who can forget the perfect script of a rescue that was the story of PFC Jessica Lynch? The war hungry media latched onto the Jessica Lynch capture and rescue story and there was even a movie made. But the truth of it all… a truth Lynch testified to before Congress…took years to come out.

Meanwhile the family of LaVena Johnson must fight for a legitimate investigation into her cause of death without the assistance of the national media or public outcry.

I wonder if her family finds any comfort in the fact that Johnson’s death was mentioned in a proposed report from the House Oversight and Governmental Reform Committee: Misleading Information from the Battlefield: The Tillman and Lynch Episodes.

But I know that this bitch finds comfort from knowing that I can turn to Waveflux for information about this disturbing case.

And so this is a sincere thank you to Phillip Barron for keeping up with this investigation and for seeking justice for PFC Johnson and her family.

Otherwise I fear that a bitch wouldn’t even know…

Crossposted from The Angry Black Bitch.

Sphere: Related Content