Next to me is a mug shot. It's a mug shot of someone who has been charged with sexual assault. This is a mug shot of Jeffrey Krusinski, he's a Lieutenant Colonel in the Air Force. His job is to work at the Pentagon as the Chief Officer of the Sexual Assault and Prevention Office. Within the Air Force. this man is charged with the responsibility of preventing and reporting sexual assaults in the Air Force. Just this last weekend he was charged with sexually assaulting a woman in a parking lot. The best and the brightest the Air Force has to offer to run this office, and he's a sexual predator?

Is that what we are talking about? This is an indictment of the office that is supposed to be the solution for military rape and assault? It's an indictment of our procedures. It's an indictment of everything we have done on this issue. and Congress is as culpable as the military in not addressing it, because we have known about this issue for 25 years.
And we are big on holding hearings and beating our chests, saying, this has got to stop. The big brass comes up to the Hill and they say all the right words. They say we have a zero tolerance policy. And then our Chief Prevention Officer is charged with a sexual assault. But it doesn't end there. The bad news doesn't end there.

The military just released today its Sexual Assault and Prevention Office report on how many sexual assaults took place in the military last year. And guess what? The numbers have gone up. By 30%. from 19,000 sexual assaults and rapes in the military based on the last year's figures, to the most recent year's figures of 26,000 rapes and sexual assaults in the military.

For all the money we have been throwing at this issue, for all the he prevention and all the rehabilitation and of the training, the numbers keep going up. And now this most recent report also suggests that 1/3, 1/3 of the women serving in the military reported that they were sexually harassed last year. This is an institution of military good discipline, good order?

It is time for us to roll up our sleeves and do something real about this. We have got to stop just kind of nibbling around the edges in an effort to try and fix a broken system. 121 members have joined me as co-authors of legislation that would take the reporting of sexual assault out of the chain of command, keep it in the military, but place it in a separate office, staffed by persons who are experts in investigations, experts in prosecuting these crimes. And until he we do something like this, the numbers of sexual assaults will continue to rise in the military. The number of unrestricted reports will not rise as fast as the number of restricted reports.

Why do we have restricted reports? Why would we say to any member of the military, yes, report this but we will keep it quiet, we will sweep it under the rug? This, my friends, is time for to us do something. It is time for us to say that we are not going to tolerate another scandal. We are not going to tolerate a scandal at the Air Force Base where there were 59 victims and 32 military training instructors who were implicated. We are not going to tolerate that in Italy where we have a Major General who overturned the decision by five military members of a jury who court-martialed a Lieutenant Colonel and found him guilty, and yet the Major General overturned the decision and decided to reinstate this this individual.

The time, my friends, has come to do something. I yield back