On November 17, the House approved, by voice vote, a bill (H.R. 3936) to improve a number of veterans’ benefits, sending the measure to the White House. The Senate passed the bill on October 9 (see The Source, 10/13/04).
H.R. 3936 makes permanent the requirement that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) provide counseling and treatment to veterans who experienced sexual trauma while on active duty for training.
Rep. Hilda Solis (D-CA) spoke to the importance of making the program permanent. “I would like to commend those that worked on this in particular because this has been a subject for the Women’s Caucus. We actually had an informal hearing here and brought forward individuals to talk to us about how we could remedy this problem…The counseling program is one step towards helping victims access services that they deserve. And studies, as we know, have shown that three-fourths of the female veterans who are raped did not report the incident to a ranking officer. Many did not know how to, and some even thought that rape was somehow expected in the military. Since August of 2002 until November 1 of this year, there have been an estimated 261 cases of sexual assault in Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan, and Bahrain. We must enforce a zero-tolerance policy within the Armed Forces and protect all of our veterans, women and men, from having to cope with these injustices.”
