Sex crimes are always serious. Whether you have been victimized or you are facing a court martial for a sex crime allegation, these are always serious crimes with serious consequences.
Even with the obvious seriousness of charges of this kind, all branches of the military have gotten a reputation for being laxed about investigating and prosecuting these crimes.
A recent report
CBS News online released a report earlier this week about the military’s alleged failure to handle sexual crimes aggressively. According to the report, in “cases filed between 2018 to 2020, the Department of Defense’s inspector general found that 64% did not have properly trained prosecutors assigned to them.”
This report claims that less than half of all military sex crimes in the past few years had prosecutors handling the cases who were properly trained. In some cases, the article assets, junior prosecutors with no training or experience in special victims cases were assigned to handle the prosecution.
The article specifically calls out the Air Force, which it claims had a rate of a staggering 94% of these cases handled poorly.
These are significant accusations from a major mainstream news source.
The likely response
No one likes bad press, and the military has gotten its fair share in the past couple decades. It is highly probable that, as news reports of this kind continue to surface, all branches of the military are likely to respond aggressively.
A likely scenario involves all branches of the military taking significant steps to overhaul their entire systems for handling special victims cases like this.
While there is never a good time to be facing a sexual assault crime, now more than ever you can expect courts martial to be prosecuted by the very best lawyers available. More than ever, you need to make sure you get the help of an experienced military criminal defense attorney to fight for you.