“As a courtroom prosecutor, I specialized in crimes against women and children. As District Attorney of San Francisco, I made it a priority to prosecute more sexual assault and domestic violence cases and secure higher conviction rates.” - Vice-President Kamala Harris.
Vice-President Harris rightly points out that her opponent is not only a self-admitted sexual predator but is a legally judged sexual abuser as well and that she is a former prosecutor of such criminals. The fact that she makes this statement and openly talks about the rampant sexual assault and abuse of women and children at the hands of men in this country has not been done at this level of politics in quite this way before. It is a welcome change from our political leaders of the past. Especially from those who are women.
But as we know, talk is cheap, and actions speak louder. What does this statement mean? Is it just a rallying cry, or does Harris intend to try and change this epidemic of sexual violence? What would that look like?
Under #MeToo, we told our stories in hopes it would lead to action that never emerged. Rape kits are still not being processed, cops are still accusing women of lying, predators are still not being charged, and even when they are, they are still being given light sentences. Whether our abusers are within our own families, in our worship spaces, schools, our work areas, our recreational spots, on our death beds and even after we are dead…we are not any safer.
Like the Vice-President, I believe we must talk openly and change the narrative about sexual crimes, harassment, and misconduct. This change in narrative must be led from the top. The systems with which to report, track, and discuss these abuses have been predominantly created and run by men who make up almost 99% of those doing the offending. The very agency that victims are supposed to report sexual misconduct to in the federal government was once run by accused sexual harasser Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, to name just one example.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) currently offers a unique opportunity for those professionals and scholars of sexual crimes. As the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) exposed in 2022, over 10,000 DHS employees (1 in 3) in its various law enforcement agencies experienced “sexual harassment or sexual misconduct.” While Secretary Mayorkas and some congressional members have mentioned reforms or hearings, little has been done. Noted in POGO’s report was that DHS’ Office of Inspector General, the investigators of employee misconduct, were falsifying the statistics to domestic violence and sex crimes to make the problem appear less extensive than it is.
The problem is that we cannot even begin to understand how to end violence against women and children if we do not even understand the extent of the problem in our own federal agencies. And we do not understand the scope and how these systems are protecting predators, if we continue to allow those who created the systems to do the investigations, if we allow them to lead the very agency that is supposed to protect the victims, then we cannot change the narratives around sexual violence, and thus the culture does not change.
This will require independent scholars and investigators.
A great deal of research has already been completed by POGO on DHS’ Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) and the US Border Patrol’s widespread rape culture and includes their podcast series that touches on the subject, “Bad Watchdog.” Additionally, there is already a scholar who has published a podcast and this piece on the agency’s history of covering up agent sexual assaults from trainees to chiefs since the first women entered the academy in 1975; Assistant Professor Erin Siegel McIntyre, University of North Carolina. Just recently, the agency’s second highest ranking agent retired early when he was warned he was under investigation for sexual misconduct allegations made by several female agents. The year before, same thing happened with another high ranking chief.
As the Royal Canadian Mounted Police was forced to do in 2020 because it had a strikingly similar violent rape culture against its female officers, the US Border Patrol must go through the same independent investigation with zero influence or input by the agency, CBP, and DHS. Because the US Border Patrol relies on a variety of ways with which victims can file complaints, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Border Patrol union, as well as local police and sheriff complaints that end up in pleas to lighter non-violent charges to save the offending agents’ job must be considered. DHS’ Office of Inspector General files must be opened for study, as well as CBP’s Office of Professional Responsibility. Because most sexual misconduct complaints do not make it past the station level, individual stations and sector disciplinary records must be studied. Whether names are redacted or not, investigators and scholars need to have access to this data to assess the scope of the problem.
All these agencies have been used to hide the extent of the agency’s rape culture. They can no longer be part of the solution. Forty-nine years of women in the Border Patrol being raped, sexually assaulted and harassed by fellow agents is enough.
If Vice-President Harris, Presidential Candidate Harris is sincere, let’s start here.