WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A congresswoman said Thursday that her "jaw dropped" when military doctors told her that four in 10 women at a veterans hospital reported being sexually assaulted while in the military.
A government report indicates that the numbers could be even higher.
Rep. Jane Harman, D-California, spoke before a House panel investigating the way the military handles reports of sexual assault.
She said she recently visited a Veterans Affairs hospital in the Los Angeles area, where women told her horror stories of being raped in the military.
"My jaw dropped when the doctors told me that 41 percent of the female veterans seen there say they were victims of sexual assault while serving in the military," said Harman, who has long sought better protection of women in the military.
"Twenty-nine percent say they were raped during their military service. They spoke of their continued terror, feelings of helplessness and downward spirals many of their lives have taken since.
"We have an epidemic here," she said. "Women serving in the U.S. military today are more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire in Iraq."
As of July 24, 100 women had died in Iraq, according to the Pentagon.
In 2007, Harman said, only 181 out of 2,212 reports of military sexual assaults, or 8 percent, were referred to courts martial. By comparison, she said, 40 percent of those arrested in the civilian world on such charges are prosecuted.
Defense statistics show that military commanders took unspecified action, which can include anything from punishment to dismissal, in an additional 419 cases.
But when it came time for the military to defend itself, the panel was told that the Pentagon's top official on sexual abuse, Dr. Kaye Whitley, was ordered not to show up despite a subpoena.
"I don't know what you're trying to cover up here, but we're not going to allow it," Rep. Henry Waxman, D-California, said to the Defense official who relayed the news of Whitley's no-show. "This is unacceptable."
Rep. John Tierney, the panel's chairman and a Democrat from Massachusetts, angrily responded, "these actions by the Defense Department are inexplicable."
"The Defense Department appears to be willfully and blatantly advising Dr. Whitley not to comply with a duly authorized congressional subpoena," Tierney said.
An Army official who did testify said the Army takes allegations of sexual abuse extremely seriously.
"Even one sexual assault violates the very essence of what it means to be a soldier, and it's a betrayal of the Army's core values," Lt. Gen. Michael Rochelle said.
The committee also heard from Mary Lauterbach, the mother of Lance Cpl. Maria Lauterbach, a 20-year-old pregnant Marine who was killed in December, allegedly by a fellow Marine.
Mary Lauterbach said her daughter filed a rape claim with the military against Marine Cpl. Cesar Laurean seven months before he was accused of killing her.
"I believe that Maria would be alive today if the Marines had provided a more effective system to protect the victims of sexual assault," she said.
In the months after her daughter filed the rape claim, she said, the military didn't seem to take her seriously, and the onus was on "Maria to connect the dots."
"The victim should not have the burden to generate evidence for the command," Lauterbach told the Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs. "Maria is dead, but there will be many more victims in the future, I promise you. I'm here to ask you to do what you can to help change how the military treats victims of crime and to ensure the victims receive the support and protection they need and they deserve."
Another woman, Ingrid Torres, described being raped on a U.S. base in Korea when she worked with the American Red Cross.
"I was raped while I slept," she said.
The man who assaulted her, she said, was a flight director who was found guilty and dismissed from the Air Force.
Fighting back tears, Torres added, "he still comes after me in my dreams."
The Government Accountability Office released preliminary results from an investigation into sexual assaults in the military and the Coast Guard. The GAO found that the "occurrences of sexual assault may be exceeding the rates being reported."
"At the 14 installations where GAO administered its survey, 103 service members indicated that they had been sexually assaulted within the preceding 12 months. Of these, 52 service members indicated that they did not report the sexual assault," the GAO said.
The office found that the military and Coast Guard have established policies to address sexual assault but that the implementation of the programs is hampered by an array of factors, including that "most, but not all, commanders support the programs."
"Left unchecked, these challenges can discourage or prevent some service members from using the programs when needed," the GAO said.
By Renee Schoof
McClatchy
WASHINGTON – The Environmental Protection Agency told the Bush administration that by law California should be able to set air-quality standards tougher than federal law, but President Bush rejected the advice and made clear he wanted a single national standard, a former EPA official said Tuesday.
The testimony from whistle-blower Jason Burnett came as the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee's chairwoman, Sen. Barbara Boxer, is investigating what the California Democrat charges is an effort by the White House and Vice President Dick Cheney's office to cover up the threat from global warming.
Burnett told the committee that EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson went to the White House last year with a plan to grant California a waiver that would allow it to set tougher standards, at least for several years.
Bush made it clear he preferred a single national standard, Burnett said, and in the end Johnson denied California's request. Johnson has said that there was nothing unique in California's situation that supported granting the waiver and he made the decision independently.
The administration has denied Boxer's requests for e-mails and other documents. She plans to hold a vote Thursday in her committee to subpoena the documents but needs at least two Republican members to attend for a quorum.
A key e-mail that Boxer wants disclosed is an EPA document that describes how global warming endangers public health and welfare. Burnett sent the e-mail to the White House in December. He said Tuesday he sent it only after making last-minute checks that the agency was ready to release it and the White House Office of Management and Budget was ready to receive it.
The White House asked Burnett to withdraw the e-mail, but he refused. The OMB declined to open it. By not officially receiving the e-mail, the OMB ensured that it couldn't be made public.
The finding Burnett helped draft and sent the OMB was the agency's response to a Supreme Court ruling in April 2007.
"This president, I believe, made a decision that flies in the face of a Supreme Court case, and so I believe it is clearly unlawful," Boxer said.
Burnett described for the committee how the EPA produced a report based on the findings of thousands of scientists whose peer-reviewed work on how emissions of heat-trapping gases were causing the Earth to warm was produced or endorsed by the government.
Burnett said that officials from the White House, the vice president's office, the Department of Energy and other agencies agreed at a Cabinet-level meeting in November that greenhouse gases endangered the public and regulation was needed.
But soon afterward, the administration decided to get public comment instead of proceeding with EPA regulation of vehicles under the Clean Air Act. On Dec. 19, the White House announced it was denying California's request.
White House spokesman Tony Fratto said Tuesday that Johnson had taken the views of administration officials into account but made his own decision.
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