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Military Sexual Trauma Survivors Can’t Sue the Government. A New Bill Could Change That.
Diaz remembers Clarke lifting his uniform top to show he was armed with a handgun. She can’t recall much else after he forced his way into the room, where she lived alone, and assaulted her. It wasn’t until a full day later that a friend found her on the floor with fresh bruises on her neck. Clarke went on to attack a fifth woman before he was finally caught.
In April 2025, Clarke was convicted in a court martial at Fort Hood, Texas, on 29 specifications—including rape, attempted premeditated murder, and kidnapping—for attacking five women. Not long after he was given a life sentence, in September, he died of an apparent suicide in his cell at the Army’s prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, according to Stars & Stripes.
Meanwhile, Diaz soured on her dream to serve until retirement, leaving the Army just two years after she joined.
“I wanted to make it far in the military,” she said. “But I couldn’t stand being in the same uniform.”
This year, Diaz filed a claim against the Army, accusing Fort Hood leadership of failing to provide a safe environment on base. Historically, lawsuits from service members against the military have faced a near-insurmountable barrier: a legal principle known as the Feres doctrine, which bars troops from suing the government for harms incurred during military service.
A new bill in Congress could change that. The Military Sexual Trauma Accountability Act, which has bipartisan support, would allow service members to sue the military for sexual misconduct and related issues, such as failing to investigate reports of misconduct or for negligence in creating an unsafe environment where sexual assault or harassment is allowed to fester.
In 2024, the military received more than 8,000 reports of sexual assault, the majority allegedly committed by service members. That’s a decline of about 4% from the previous year. But researchers with Brown University’s Costs of War project estimate that the total number of sexual assault cases is two to four times higher than the reported cases.
“Accountability doesn’t end with the perpetrator being found guilty and going to jail,” said Josh Connolly, senior vice president of Protect Our Defenders, a nonprofit group that works to end sexual misconduct in the military.
“If the military was on the hook for millions, if not billions, of dollars,” he said, “I think that would create an incentive for the military to take this more seriously.”
‘Be careful. It’s Fort Hood’
When Diaz joined the Army in 2021, she was excited to see the world beyond her hometown of Fresno, California.
“I wanted to go to Germany. I wanted to go to Korea,” she said. “I wanted to do all that the military had to offer.”
Her first duty station, however, was closer to home. At basic training, Diaz learned that she would be stationed in Texas at one of the Army’s largest bases.
“Be careful,” a drill sergeant warned, ominously. “It’s Fort Hood.”
Roughly two years earlier, the dismembered remains of Spc. Vanessa Guillén had been found near a river not far from the base next to Killeen. A fellow soldier had murdered Guillén inside an armory at Fort Hood, not long after she confided to her mother that she was being sexually harassed. Guillén’s death spurred a public outcry for greater accountability and protection of women in the ranks, which led to changes in how the military prosecuted sexual misconduct cases.
But when Diaz reported to the base in 2022, she noticed that fellow soldiers still didn’t take rape and sexual harassment seriously. The culture of the Army apparently hadn’t changed much. After her own assault, for instance, a fellow soldier asked why she had opened her door.
“We’re talking about an institution that has had a tendency to blame victims,” Connolly said.
Army Spc. Vanessa Guillén. (U.S. Army)Diaz found some measure of justice within the military system when Clarke was arrested and convicted. But she still thinks the military could have done more to keep her safe. Army criminal investigators did not investigate Clarke’s first attack, and military police on base closed the case after DNA evidence proved inconclusive. But even after Clarke attacked two other women, none of Diaz’s leaders warned anyone in the barracks about the assaults, according to her legal claim.
“If we were warned properly, [then] maybe this wouldn’t have happened to me,” Diaz said. “They failed to take accountability for where they went wrong.”
Under the Federal Tort Claims Act, citizens can sue the government for negligence or wrongdoing. But Feres limits service members from bringing claims against the military for harms that are “incident to service.”
The principle, according to experts, is rooted in the idea that service members must accept some risk to join the armed forces, and that a lawsuit could undermine the military command structure. But advocates bristle at the persistent denial of claims from military sexual assault survivors due to Feres.
“What they’re saying is that being raped is somehow incident to your military service,” said Christine Dunn, Diaz’s lawyer. “Which is appalling.”
Unequal justice
Although Feres has served for more than 70 years as a barrier to claims against the military, it hasn’t stopped some service members from trying. For decades, courts have cited Feres to dismiss most cases brought by service members against the government. But in recent years, Feres critics have sensed a shift.
In 2021, for example, the Supreme Court declined to hear a case from a West Point cadet who sued the Army for failing to keep her safe from being raped by a fellow cadet. The decision allowed the lower court’s decision to stand, which dismissed the cadet’s claim due to Feres. But Justice Clarence Thomas dissented.
“Under our precedent, if two Pentagon employees—one civilian and one a servicemember—are hit by a bus in the Pentagon parking lot and sue, it may be that only the civilian would have a chance to litigate his claim on the merits,” Thomas wrote, arguing that the Supreme Court should revisit the doctrine.
Then, two years later, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with a lower court’s decision on a sexual assault case against Air Force Gen. John Hyten that Feres did not apply because the assault could not be considered as “incident to [military] service.”
“It is not conceivable that his military duties would require him to sexually assault Plaintiff, or that such an assault would advance any conceivable military objective,” the lower court wrote.
The case settled out of court and the government paid the plaintiff, Col. Kathryn Spletstoser, nearly $1 million. It was the first known payment from the military in a sexual assault case against a service member.
That ruling could provide an opening to challenge the doctrine in court, said Dunn, Diaz’s lawyer. She also represents survivors in another high-profile case involving Dr. Blaine McGraw, a former gynecologist at Fort Hood and Tripler Army Medical Center in Hawaii, who is facing charges for allegedly abusing nearly 100 patients, many of whom he secretly recorded.
“When you have so many victims complaining about the exact same thing, it’s hard to argue there wasn’t some negligence,” Dunn said.
Dunn points out that Feres creates a parallel—and unequal—justice system. Both Army spouses and service members were victims of McGraw’s alleged abuse. But only the civilian spouses are able to sue the military.
“Feres has so long protected the institution and not the service member,” said Rita Graham, policy director at Service Women’s Action Network, which advocates for women in the military.
The 20th Fighter Wing courtroom at Shaw Air Force Base includes a jury box, witness stand, and gallery, and is used for courts-martial and other military legal proceedings. (Airman 1st Class Daniel Blackwell/U.S. Air Force)The path ahead
Military justice reform advocates argue that relying on courts to limit the Feres doctrine is a slow and inefficient way for survivors to get justice. They see a better path through legislation.
In 2019, Congress passed the SFC Richard Stayskal Military Medical Accountability Act, which carved out an exception to Feres for service members harmed due to negligence or wrongdoing in the military medical system.
The Military Sexual Trauma Accountability Act builds on that idea, allowing sexual misconduct survivors in the military to sue the government.
“Servicemembers give up a lot to defend this country, but they should not have to give up their right to hold the government accountable when its negligence contributes to sexual assault or harassment,” said Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana, a cosponsor of the bill with Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire.
Military justice reformists hailed the passage of the Military Medical Accountability Act, but implementation of the law has been anything but smooth. The law allowed service members to submit malpractice claims to the military, which are reviewed by military lawyers. But fewer than 10% of claims filed since 2020 have been approved, according to recent reporting from the military news site Task & Purpose. Even the bill’s namesake, Richard Stayskal, was denied his claim against the military for overlooking symptoms of Stage 4 lung cancer.
To avoid a similar fate, the new bill would allow sexual assault survivors to directly sue the government in civilian court, instead of filing a claim with the military.
“Just cleanly giving people the ability to go to court for an assault would be the best policy,” said Connolly, who advised lawmakers on the bill.
Survivors hope that, if passed, the bill would force the Pentagon to root out sexual misconduct in the ranks or face serious financial and reputational consequences.
“If the perpetrators are never held accountable, if the people that convince you not to really press charges aren’t held accountable, if you take it to court [martial] and they’re still not held accountable, well, then the military should be held accountable,” said Cairey Williams, a former soldier who said she had been sexually assaulted at all three bases where she was stationed after joining the Army in 2003.
“Until somebody is held accountable, it’s just going to keep going,” she said.
Ultimately, survivors and advocates say it isn’t about the money. Instead, they hope the threat of financial penalties will force the military to do more to prevent sexual assault and harassment for future generations of Americans who decide to serve.
“Regardless of them giving me money, not giving me money, I still have to live with what happened to me for the rest of my life,” Diaz said. “And as much as I could try, money can’t buy off the trauma that I go through now.”
Military Sexual Trauma Survivors Can’t Sue the Government. A New Bill Could Change That. was originally published by The War Horse, shared by The 19th, and is republished with permission.
Recommended
Think Smaller. The Surprising Path Out of Civic Helplessness.
I recently led a session for a group of smart, accomplished people over 60, most of them liberal. I asked them to consider our country’s past and present as objectively as they could: What have we gotten right? What have we gotten wrong? What are we getting right and wrong today?
Then I asked them to describe the future they would like to see for our country. “Be positive,” I urged. “Tell me what you want—not only what you oppose.”
The group engaged deeply with the troubling parts of our history and our present condition. But when we turned to what America has gotten right, the lists grew shorter. And when participants tried to imagine a desirable future, the picture remained tentative, general, and indistinct.
It was as though the country’s problems had become so numerous and overwhelming that it was difficult to see beyond them.
The participants had not lost their desire for a better country. It seems they had lost the ability to imagine how that country could come about.
I left the session feeling that I might have failed the group. I had asked people who were already deeply distressed about the country to think positively about it. I had asked them to imagine change at precisely the scale at which they felt most powerless.
Next 9me, I would know that when people are repeatedly exposed to threats and difficulties they cannot control, as all Americans are today, their ability to imagine a positive future diminishes. Their sense of personal agency shrinks. They begin to
believe that only sweeping achievements—changing Congress, defeating a demagogue, reforming the political system, or getting money out of politics— really count.
And because they cannot accomplish any of those things by themselves, they conclude that there is little or nothing they can do.
Learned Civic Helplessness
I’ve put a term to what I saw in the group: learned civic helplessness.
Psychologists use the term learned helplessness to describe what can happen when people are repeatedly exposed to distressing events they cannot control. Eventually, many people stop trying—not because they do not care, but because they have learned to believe that their efforts will make no difference.
Learned civic helplessness is a related condition. People care deeply about their country but have come to believe that nothing within their reach is consequential enough to matter.
Consider what we’re daily exposed to:
• Institutional dysfunction that feels immune to citizen pressure • Polarization that makes compromise seem impossible
• Leaders who appear unresponsive and untrustworthy
• Media environments that amplify threat, outrage, and hopelessness
If you are in the upper-left quadrant in the matrix below, you are probably in a state of civic helplessness:
I see signs of it everywhere.
I recently spoke with several young people about the future. Their outlook was almost uniformly bleak: They may never be able to own a home. Having children feels like a formidable economic challenge. The system seems rigged. Climate change is accelerating. Almost all politicians seem corrupt. What’s the point of voting?
When people are surrounded by evidence of decline and offered no credible path for action, concern can harden into futility. That combination—high concern and low belief in one’s ability to make a difference—is the territory of civic helplessness.
Are You Becoming Demoralized?
Here is a quick, informal assessment. It is not a psychological test, but it may help you recognize whether your sense of agency is narrowing.
Rate each statement:
0 = Not true for me
1 = Occasionally true
2 = O:en true
3 = Very true; feels like my default
1. I find it easy to list what is wrong with our country.
2. I find it difficult to recall what is still right with our country.
3. I believe that only massive structural change can meaningfully improve the country.
4. Optimism feels naïve or disconnected from reality.
5. I frequently find myself thinking, “What’s the point? Nothing will change.”
Total possible score: 15
• 0–5: You are concerned, but your sense of agency remains largely intact.
• 6–10: You may be drifting toward civic helplessness. Your attention is increasingly drawn to threats, while your sense of possibility is narrowing.
• 11–15: You may be demoralized—carrying a heavy burden of threat, frustration, and futility.
Whatever your score, the answer is to reconnect concern with action.
How We Regain Our Agency
The antidote to civic helplessness is not positive thinking or self-judgment. It is lived evidence that we can still make a difference.
That evidence is most readily found close to home.
Work within your sphere of influence
Instead of asking, “How can I save the country?” ask:
• “What can we make better together?”
• “What kind of neighborhood or community do we want to live in?” • “What institution near me needs strengthening?”
These questions are answerable. They lead toward people we can meet, problems we can understand, and actions we can take.
This is not an escape from national problems. It is a return to the level at which democratic capacity is created.
Use a wider lens
National politics matter enormously, but it is not the only arena in which democracy lives. Democracy is also practiced in neighborhoods, schools, congregations, workplaces, libraries, civic associations, and voluntary organizations. This is where trust is built and where most people can make the biggest difference.
Mentoring one student or organizing a neighborhood cleanup may not feel like “saving democracy.” But saving democracy is not your job.
Your job—our job—is to help build the trust, relationships, habits, and ins9tu9ons on which democracy depends.
Practice imagining, not only criticizing
Criticism can tell us what is wrong, but it cannot tell us what to build.
We need to practice describing the future we want in concrete terms. What would a healthy community look and feel like? How would people treat one another? Where would they gather? Who would be included? What ins9tu9ons would bring them together? What would we be doing differently?
A desirable future becomes more attainable once we can picture it—and more attainable still when we can identify one piece of it that we can help create.
Expand your definition of consequential action
An ordinary person acting alone will not be able to change Congress, the presidency, or the influence of money in politics. But we can influence people, organizations, and communities close to us.
We can mentor a young person. Welcome a newcomer. Join a local organization. Support a worthy cause. Convene neighbors. Help preserve a valued ins9tu9on. Create a place where people encounter those unlike themselves.
The question is not whether one action will transform the country.
The question is whether it will strengthen one part of our common life—and perhaps encourage someone else to do the same.
Act with others
Helplessness thrives in isolation. Agency grows through participation.
When we join an organization, convene neighbors, support a local cause, or invite someone to work alongside us, private concern becomes shared capacity.
And shared capacity is the foundation of democratic power.
Thinking Smaller Is Not Dreaming Smaller
Perhaps I asked the wrong question in that session. Instead of asking participants to imagine a better country, I might first have asked them to imagine a better neighborhood, congregation, school, organization, or community—and then to identify something they could help make real.
Thinking smaller does not mean caring less about the country. It means beginning at the human scale, where our actions are visible, relationships can form, trust can grow, and progress can be experienced.
We are out of community. And without community, democracy cannot flourish.
But community is not something only presidents, governors, philanthropists, or political movements can create. It is something ordinary people create whenever they decide to take responsibility for a small part of their common life.
The way back to hope is to stop believing that we must save the country by ourselves. We cannot. But each of us can help repair one relationship, strengthen one organization, improve one neighborhood, or bring one group of people together.
Do that with others, and something important begins to change. Not only around us, but within us. We recover the experience of agency. We rediscover our need for one another. And one community at a 9me, we begin rebuilding the foundations of democracy.
How to remember this essay:
Richard McKnight, PhD, is the author of When We The People Lead, The Leaders Will Follow.