Horrifying regime of violence and sexual abuse, Congress moves to confront military child abuse with Talia's Law

REVEALED: A horrifying regime of violence and sexual abuse: This chilling Mail dossier exposes the vital evidence the Deepcut coroner refuses to hear
By RICHARD PENDLEBURY FOR THE DAILY MAIL 9 February 2016
    Private Kate Wilson claims she was assaulted and sexually harassed
    Said she witnessed horrific abuse after joining Army as a teenage recruit
    She spoke out as second inquest into death of Private Cheryl James began
    Mail investigation has revealed that a ‘wider culture of sexual abuse’ within the Army may be what the Deepcut coroner should now be considering
By Richard Pendlebury for the Daily Mail

For Private Kate Wilson, the final insult came when an administrative major at Deepcut Barracks — a man — told her: ‘What you don’t seem to realise is that you are just a number to us. We have no further use for you.’

In the 18 months since Private Wilson had joined as a teenage recruit, the British Army had ‘used’ her in a quite horrific fashion.

She had, she says, been viciously assaulted for refusing to sleep with one of her bosses, sexually harassed by other male non-commissioned officers, urinated upon while asleep, and, finally, crippled for life thanks to the carelessness of a misogynistic instructor.

That injury — a broken hip — led to her interview with that callous major, and a medical discharge from the career she had wanted since she was four years old. She still suffers with the injury 20 years later.

Wilson was by no means unique. During her ‘training’, she had witnessed a serious but unpunished sexual assault by an instructor on one of her sleeping female room-mates, and the daily abuse of other vulnerable female recruits — little more than children — by much older NCOs.

‘These were men with no honour and no pride,’ she told me this week. ‘We were kids, and they were monsters; vile and barbaric. A lot of people in the Army who could have helped knew what was happening — and yet they did nothing.’....
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3439710/A-horrifying-regime-violence-sexual-abuse-chilling-Mail-dossier-exposes-vital-evidence-Deepcut-coroner-refuses-hear.html


Congress moves to confront military child abuse with Talia's Law
By Drew Gerber, Medill News Service 
The House on Tuesday passed a bill that would require anyone employed by the Defense Department to report cases of suspected child abuse on military installations to state child protective service agencies in addition to reporting such suspected crimes up their chain of command.

The legislation was approved by voice vote and sent to the Senate for consideration.

Called Talia’s Law, the bill is named for five-year-old Talia Williams who was tortured and beaten to death by her father — an active-duty Army specialist at the time — and step-mother in 2005 at Wheeler Army Airfield in Hawaii.

Talia’s mother, Tarshia Williams, sued the U.S. government in 2008 for what she argued were failures by military officials to report suspicions that her daughter was being abused. Williams was awarded $2 million in a settlement last May.....

Citing the 29,000 cases of child abuse and neglect in the military in the past decade, Gabbard said on the House floor Tuesday that her bill creates the same protections for military children that exist for any other child.

Rates of child abuse and neglect in the military, though half the rate typically seen in the civilian population, have been on the rise since 2010, according to a 2014 memorandum from Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Rosemary Williams....
http://www.militarytimes.com/story/military/family/2016/02/09/congress-moves-confront-military-child-abuse-talias-law/80089648/