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‘I am also a military sexual assault survivor’: Sen. Martha McSally says she was raped while serving in the Air Force

McSally, the country’s first female fighter pilot to fly in combat, told her story at a Senate hearing

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March 6, 2019 at 5:15 p.m. EST

Adapted from a story by The Washington Post’s Felicia Sonmez.

On Wednesday, during a Senate hearing on preventing sexual assault in the military, Sen. Martha McSally (R-Ariz.) said she was raped by a superior officer while serving in the Air Force. She addressed several witnesses set to testify at the hearing about their own assaults while serving in the military.

“But unlike so many brave survivors, I didn’t report being sexually assaulted. Like so many women and men, I didn’t trust the system at the time.”

McSally, the country’s first female fighter pilot to fly in combat, made the revelation in front of a Senate Armed Services subcommittee. She said she shares “the disgust of the failures of the military system and many commanders who failed in their responsibilities.”

Sen. Martha McSally (R-Ariz.) spoke March 6 at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing about an alleged sexual assault on her. (Video: C-SPAN)

McSally told the panel that she blamed herself, was “ashamed and confused,” and felt powerless about what happened to her.

“The perpetrators abused their position of power in profound ways,” she said. “In one case, I was preyed upon and raped by a superior officer.”

McSally, who served in the Air Force for 26 years, was appointed to the Senate in December to the seat once held by John McCain (R-Ariz.). She previously represented Arizona’s 2nd district in the House for four years.

Arizona governor appoints Rep. Martha McSally to fill John McCain’s Senate seat

Wednesday’s hearing of the Armed Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Personnel was not the first time that McSally had spoken out about her own experience being sexually assaulted. Last year, while running for Senate, McSally revealed in an interview with the Wall Street Journal that she had been pressured by her high school athletic coach into having sex with him when she was 17.

McSally said Wednesday that she stayed silent about her experience for many years, but later felt the need to let some people know that she was a survivor, prompted by the military’s “wholly inadequate responses” to other cases.

“I almost separated from the Air Force at 18 years of service over my despair. Like many victims, I felt like the system was raping me all over again.”

McSally said at Wednesday’s hearing that she “witnessed so many weaknesses” in the system during her more than two decades in the military, urging those present that “we must fix those distortions in the culture of our military that permit sexual harm.”

She argued that commanding officers must not be removed from decision-making responsibility in handling sexual assault allegations.

“There are many commanders who would welcome taking this responsibility off their plate,” she said. “Those are the very commanders we don’t want leading our troops.”

Sexual assault in the military

There were a total of 6,769 sexual assaults reported in the U.S. military during the last fiscal year, the Pentagon said in a report in April. The figure represents a 10 percent increase from the previous year.

Military women need a voice in the #MeToo movement

Those who report their assaults frequently face retaliation. According to the Pentagon, 58 percent of those who reported assaults in 2017 — including two-thirds of women — said they faced some sort of backlash in their unit.

The question of whether sexual assault cases should be kept within the military justice system is one that has been hotly debated in recent years.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), a 2020 presidential candidate and the ranking Democrat on the personnel subcommittee, has spearheaded an effort to move the authority to prosecute such cases outside the chain of command — a point she reiterated at Wednesday’s hearing.

“To say that we are making commanders less involved is a false statement,” she said.