Lawmakers press for more progress on assault cases

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Lawmakers press for more progress on assault cases
By Leo Shane III, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Thursday, January 29, 2009

WASHINGTON — When Laura Watterson told her commanders that a fellow airman had raped her, she expected the Air Force to investigate and punish the offender.

Instead, she said, he was promoted to be her supervisor and she was told to "get over it."

"They said in basic that I’d be taken care of (in the Air Force) and I trusted that," she told a House committee on Wednesday. "I thought I had joined a band of brothers as a sister. I became an outcast."

Watterson’s testimony was part of the first of a series of hearings scheduled by the House Armed Services Committee on the military’s sexual assault response.

Military Personnel Subcommittee Chairwoman Susan Davis, D-Calif., said lawmakers hope to use the hearings to develop better rules on victim advocacy, offender prosecution and command attitudes towards the crimes.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=60313