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US President Joe Biden
Photo: Oliver Contreras/POOL/EPA
In the fight against sexual violence in the US military, US President Joe Biden has tightened criminal law.
On Wednesday he signed a decree that under military law sexual harassment would no longer be considered a misdemeanor but a criminal offence.
The perpetrators now face imprisonment.
The goal is to "strengthen the military's response to domestic violence and the unjustified dissemination or distribution of intimate images," the president said on Twitter.
With this decree, the so-called “I am Vanessa Guillen” law comes into effect.
It is named after a 20-year-old female soldier who was murdered at a major US military base in 2020 after being sexually harassed.
Before her murder, she had told her family that she did not trust her superiors to investigate a complaint.
The family had criticized the army for not investigating Guillen's disappearance vigorously enough until her dismembered body was found.
A dozen officers were later fired in connection with this.
Cases are tried by court-martial
The decree provides for sexual assault, domestic violence and assaults on minors by military personnel to be tried by a court-martial, leaving the decision to prosecute the perpetrators to specialized prosecutors rather than the chain of command.
Biden pushed through the law against opposition from the army, which refused to be deprived of control over disciplinary measures.
However, an independent commission of the Department of Defense had concluded that the only effective way to combat rampant sexual violence was to remove the power of decision-making from the military hierarchy to prosecute suspected perpetrators.
till/AFP
