Life
Former Marine Leads New Charge
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| Former marine Anuradha Bhagwati, executive director of Service Women’s Action Network, an advocacy group for women veterans, is leading the charge behind an explosive class action lawsuit by 16 current and former soldiers who allege they were “raped, assaulted and harassed while serving this nation as members of the military.” It accuses the military leadership of ignoring or persecuting victims and coddling sexual perpetrators.
Bhagwati says that as a marine commander she had personally witnessed “senior officers violate sexual harassment and sexual assault policies, shirk their responsibilities to their own troops and lie to families by ignoring reports of abuse, transfer sexual predators out of their units instead of prosecuting them, promote sexual predators during ongoing investigations, and accuse highly decorated enlisted service members of lying about their abuse, simply because they were women.” Bhagwati said the the lawsuit was necessary because “change cannot happen on the inside.”
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