Specialist Vanessa Guillen was 20 years old. She was last seen at Fort Hood, Texas, on 22 April 2020; her remains were found on 30 June. Before she disappeared she told her mother that if she reported being harassed, her superiors would laugh, or brush it off.
I understand Congressman Speer mentioned another general that was engaged, but I just want to read this sentence into the record or this paragraph. Army officials say Guillen never reported sexual harassment through official channels. She told her mother near the end that a sergeant had been harassing her. She told her best friend that a soldier had walked in on her in a shower.
That is well known throughout Houston. It is very painful, but she wasn't going to file a complaint. She told her mother her superiors would laugh or brush it off, if she said something, she bristled at the idea of quitting the army, she would not violate her oath. And so, we have a real problem.
Specialist Vanessa Guillen was twenty years old, of the third Cavalry Regiment at Fort Hood, Texas. She was last seen there on the twenty-second of April, twenty twenty. What you have just heard was read into the record of a congressional hearing on the twenty-ninth of July, three weeks later, by a member of Congress. It is the closest the federal record comes to her own voice.
Her family never testified.
This is what the Department of Justice says happened to her. On the twenty-second of April a soldier of her own regiment, Specialist Aaron Robinson, who was also twenty years old, killed her by striking her in the head with a hammer. The committee that later reviewed the post says where: the arms room. It is the room where a unit's rifles are locked up, and she had been working in it that day.
Her military identity card, her keys and other belongings were left in that room. Her car was still in the barracks car park. Robinson moved her body off the post to a remote site in Bell County, and brought in his girlfriend, Cecily Aguilar, to help him get rid of it. In the Department's words, Aguilar helped him mutilate and dispose of the body.
She later pleaded guilty to being an accessory to murder after the fact, and to altering, destroying, mutilating and concealing evidence - that is, the body of Vanessa Guillen. She was sentenced to thirty years. What was left of her was found by the Leon River on the thirtieth of June, sixty-eight days after she disappeared, and had to be identified by a forensic anthropology unit at a university. Robinson shot himself the next day, when the police came for him.
He was never charged with anything. That is what happened to her, and it took the Army sixty-eight days to find her. What the rest of this film is about is the place it happened in - because in the months that followed, the Army looked at that place twice, and came back with two different answers. While she was still missing, the Army inspected itself.
Six people from the inspector general's office of Army Forces Command were sent to Fort Hood at short notice to look at the harassment and assault programme and at the command climate. They began work on the twenty-ninth of June. Her remains were found the next day. They stayed until the third of July, and came back at the end of the month to finish.
And so the results were consistent on trust in the chain of command and willingness to report between the anonymous surveys and the information that we were hearing soldiers in sensing sessions. And so I absolutely acknowledge the point of the value of the gender specific sensing sessions. In this case, there was good correlation between the subjective information we got and the survey information. Well, you also said that 18 of the 52 women surveyed more than a third reported being sexually harassed but why doesn't your data report include the data on any gender specific way so that we can look at how female soldiers feel as compared to male soldiers?
The inspection report that we provided was was actually provided to General Garrett which is our norm. We provide it to our commander who directs us to do the inspections. In this case, the and protections for all of our men and women who serve. Colonel Wempe, I understand the Inspector General's inspection at Fort Hood concluded the SHARP program is executed as prescribed and meets Army standards, yet many military women have come forward to share their own personal stories of sexual harassment, and a sexual assault.
These women have shared, they've been overlooked and silenced. How do you rectify your findings with the real lived experiences of these women, and is there something that's being overlooked? Congresswoman, the execution of the program to standard, sort of the programatics of the SHARP program, that was one of the objectives that we looked at, and that was really focused on are they doing the training, are they doing the training consistently, what is the level of awareness of soldiers of the SHARP program itself, and all of that was very strong from Their conclusion was that the programme was executed as prescribed and met Army standards. Hold that sentence.
Everything that follows in this film was found at the same post, by other people, within the next four months. On the thirtieth of July the Secretary of the Army did something the Army rarely does. He appointed five civilians from outside it a lawyer who had spent twenty-four years in the Federal Bureau of Investigation and had run its criminal investigative division, and four others - and told them to assess the command climate at one post.
Fort Hood, the independent review of Fort Hood's command climate, so this will be a longer statement. The murder of Specialist Vanessa Guillen shocked our conscience and brought attention to deeper problems. The initial investigation into Vanessa's death, coupled with high numbers of crimes and deaths at Fort Hood, has revealed a series of missteps and multiple failures in our system and within our leadership. For that reason, on July 30th, I directed the Under Secretary of the Army, Mr.
James McPherson, to establish an independent review committee to review the culture at Fort Hood. Secretary McPherson, with the help of the League of United Latin American Citizens and some members of Congress, selected a diverse and highly experienced panel to determine whether the command climate and culture at Fort Hood and the surrounding military community It reflected the Army's values, including safety, respect, inclusiveness, and a commitment to diversity in workplaces and communities free from sexual harassment and sexual assault. The panel, led by Chris Swecker, also included Jonathan Harmon, Carrie Ricci, Katerra Rodriguez, and Jack White. You'll have an opportunity to speak with them shortly, and we will make their report available to the public.
Over the course of 103 days, the panel surveyed 31,612 soldiers, interviewed 647 soldiers, and met with civic and elected leaders, local law enforcement leaders, and the local district attorneys. On November 9, the panel briefed the Army's senior leaders and provided nine findings and 70 recommendations. The findings of the committee identified major flaws with sexual harassment and assault response prevention program from implementation, reporting, and adjudication. Fundamental issues with Fort Hood Criminal Investigation They reported on the sixth of November.
Nine findings. Seventy recommendations. The ninth finding is one sentence long: the command climate at Fort Hood has been permissive of sexual harassment and sexual assault. The command climate relative to the SHARP Program at Fort Hood was ineffective, to the extent that there was a permissive environment for sexual assault and sexual harassment.
independent review commission or committee I should say to look at what is indeed a national tragedy. Our focus today are the nine findings and the 70, I'll repeat that, 70 review committee recommendations after this extensive investigation into whether the command climate and culture at Fort Hood reflects the Army's values including respect, inclusiveness, and workplace free from sexual harassment and a commitment to diversity. Despite red flags popping up for years, leaders ignored them, carried on, and I quote from the report, business as usual, causing female soldiers, particularly in the combat brigades, to slip into survival mode, vulnerable and preyed upon, but fearful to report and be ostracized and re-victimized, unquote, that a statement from the committee's report. and readiness of our soldiers and units.
In addressing this mandate, the committee determined that during the time period covered by the review, the command climate relative to sexual harassment, assault response, and prevention at Fort Hood was ineffective. to the extent that there was a permissive environment for sexual assault and sexual harassment. The committee's report set forth specific findings which demonstrate that the implementation of the SHARP program was ineffective. During the review period, no commanding general or subordinate echelon commander chose to intervene proactively and mitigate known risks of high crime, sexual assault, and sexual harassment.
and below, the SHARP program was chronically under-resourced due to understaffing, lack of training, lack of credentialed SHARP professionals, and a lack of funding. Most of all, it lacked command emphasis where it was needed most in the junior enlisted ranks. A resonant symptom of the SHARP program's ineffective implementation was significant under reporting of sexual harassment and sexual assault. Without intervention from the non-commissioned officers and officers entrusted with their health and safety, victims feared the inevitable consequences of reporting ostracism, shunning, and shaming, harsh treatment, and damage to their career.
And a sentence in the summary explains the rest of the report. Without intervention from the non-commissioned officers and officers entrusted with their health and safety, victims feared the inevitable consequences of reporting - ostracism, shunning and shaming, harsh treatment, and indelible damage to their career. Many have left the Army, or plan to at the earliest opportunity.
We met with junior enlisted women who described a cultural sexual harassment, a culture of leaders watching as women and men were harassed before their eyes but kept silent. Squad leaders and platoon leaders who seemed either unwilling or unsure how to help them. So their harassment became just another hazard of being a soldier and no one was held accountable and not one leader stepped forward. We We visited the SHARP 360 facility that a few enterprising NCOs and soldiers designed.
Taking furniture from their homes and spending their weekends painting, The committee interviewed six hundred and forty-seven soldiers and surveyed thirty-one thousand six hundred and twelve. Of five hundred and seven women it interviewed, a hundred and sixty-four close to a third said they would not be comfortable reporting sexual assault or sexual harassment through the programme as it was then run at Fort Hood. that we did, about 1,800 people, and many of the individual interviews come across many, many of our soldiers who had been either sexually assaulted or sexually harassed by NCOs within their chain in the command or people who are under their supervision. Primarily from what our data shows is that most of the sexual assaults occurred between people who were close to the same rank and it was within the lower ranks.
That's where most of them were occurring, but we did come across many different incidents where the chain of command was being used. They were being predators, in other words, That is the same thing she told her mother. She said it about herself in April. A hundred and sixty-four women said it about themselves to investigators in the autumn.
The Army's own inspection, in between, found the programme met Army standards. A "business as usual" approach was taken by Fort Hood leadership, causing female Soldiers, particularly in the combat Brigades, to slip into survival mode - vulnerable and preyed upon, but fearful to report and be ostracized and re-victimized. The fourth finding is about the office that investigated her disappearance. It did not have enough qualified agents for a caseload of complex sex crimes and death investigations.
It was inexperienced. It was overworked.
received almost no support from their battalion leadership, resulting in an undermanned, inexperienced team investigating a high profile disappearance. The lack of experience of those agents resulted in brief choppy interviews of key individuals in the Guillen case. The interviews appeared to be rote and indeed checklist driven. It's a very powerful, depressing statement about the Army CID.
Could you expand on that? One of my concerns has been that CID, when they came and testified here, when we met with them at Fort Hood, had really a very happy face presentation. And yet what you have disclosed here would suggest deeply troubling problems. And if I'm not mistaken, the chief investigator in the middle of the investigation of Vanessa Guillen's disappearance was transferred.
Is that correct? for five years, so they were static over five years in terms of how many agents were actually allowed. That doesn't mean they had the people in the seats. So what we saw was chronic inexperience that translated in, we felt like, into a they had at a difficult time and it's not their fault.
These are brand new agents right out of Fort Leonard Wood with very few mentors. I mean, the supervisors and the head of the office, the special agent in charge, very competent and very experienced, but just not enough journeyman level special agents to mentor the younger agents. There was not enough continuity. We found that they didn't have some of the specialized tools the death investigations.
And again, it is not the fault of the CID agents on the ground, it just was being used as a training ground. So one of the shocking things to me was the fact that it was not until after Vanessa Guillen's body was located that CID actually went back to the arms room and did a thorough investigation. Does that surprise you? It did.
As an experienced investigator, the first 24 hours, the first hours in any investigation of a missing person are absolutely critical. And what played into this somewhat was the lack of missing soldier protocols. The critical first 24 hours, the noncommissioned officers who would be the first to notice someone missing really didn't have any guidelines to go by in terms of how to determine what what was suspicious, what are the criteria. The CID investigators, despite the fact that they had all of Vanessa Guillen's personal belongings left behind at a place where she was supposed to come back to within 10 minutes or so, got themselves diverted because of two other witnesses that threw their timeline off.
We believe that experienced investigators would not have been thrown off by sort of the red herring aspect of those other witnesses. Three months later the same subcommittee came back to that one finding, and put numbers on it. new solutions. Ultimately, it's a guidebook for how to create a smarter, safer, and more ready force.
The Fort Hood Independent Review Committee's report is a stinging repudiation of the Army Criminal Investigation Division. The combination of woefully inadequate experience among the investigators, in fact, 92 percent were apprentice agents, coupled with understaffing created a doomed operation that resulted in unsolved murders until civilian law enforcement stepped in, a disturbing sexual assault conviction rate of 22 percent, and an installation in which soldiers felt unsafe, a damning result. What the Independent Review Committee found was startling. Quote, the Fort Hood CID is a training ground.
These young, inexperienced agents were checklist-driven, focused on developing a case file that simply checked the boxes rather than identifying and working leads and suspects that are most likely to resolve cases," unquote. Fort Hood CID investigations were extremely long. Quote, the yearly average days to complete an investigation between 2016 and 2020 ranged These apprentice agents should by definition have been mentored and supervised by experienced agents to learn the ropes and keep investigations on track. Instead, the lack of experienced agents and adequate resources resulted in long case lead times and poor investigations.
Individual missteps added up to chronically lackluster investigative work on suicides, homicides, and sex crimes on and off post. Only one of 53 suicides in CID's jurisdiction received a completed postmortem behavioral assessment. Sex crime cases progressed slower than nearly all other comparable posts and undermined a soldier's belief that allegations of criminal wrongdoing would be taken seriously. For many victims of crime at Fort Hood, justice delayed felt like justice denied.
And the seventh finding is the one that reaches back to the twenty-second of April. There were no procedures for what a supervisor should do in the first twenty-four hours after a soldier fails to appear. The people most likely to notice first had nothing to go by.
other installations were doing better in some cases, at least anecdotally. But we found that Fort Hood was an outlier in so many areas, suicides, AWOL, sexual assaults, on and on and on. That's what our research projects told us. And we were told that they very had seldom seen one place be such an outlier in this type of study But we just didn't have simply didn't have the resources in the mandate to go outside of Fort Hood and do a deep dive Thank You chairwoman spear and I yield back, but thank you for yielding me a little few extra times Mr.
Swecker in my my fantasy world The committee did not only read files. It went to the post and held a meeting for the families who live there. where the soldier is, that they're safe? Because it just troubled us, again, when we visited Fort Hood, when we asked people, when we had the town hall with spouses and family members, how many felt safe?
Nobody felt safe. Remember Chairwoman, nobody rose their hand. Will the gentlelady yield? Yes, ma'am.
One case in particular, a mother talked about keeping a gun on a shelf in the kitchen because she was afraid on base and needed it to protect herself. I mean, is that normal? All three of you just, I mean, our families have to feel safe. The soldiers have to feel safe.
Our families have to have a level of trust and confidence that they are safe. No, that is not normal for a family to feel unsafe Two members of the committee met the Guillen family. What follows is their account of that meeting, given under questioning. The family has never told it themselves in a hearing.
appropriate manner, because I think that was a huge problem in this case too. And quite frankly with some of the other cases, because regrettably a lot of the cases, particularly the deaths, do have Spanish surnames, and they are Spanish speaking people, but when they saw us again on 2020, that's why they called us because they knew we spoke Spanish. That was part of the problem. Part of the problem was cultural.
There were specific events that transpired where the Army thought that it was doing something charitable. For example, the Army, the unit, Specialist Guillen's unit, tried to give to the family a care package that was put together by the unit's Family Readiness organization. That was not well received because it felt to the family a lot like charity. Why did they want charity when their daughter was missing?
Mrs. Guillen said to me, I didn't want charity. I wanted my daughter. That was indelicate.
When they were funeralizing their daughter, Mrs. Guillen wanted to visit the arms room and pray where her daughter had been killed. And the unit didn't get how important that was to that mommy to say goodbye to her daughter and to pray in the spot where her daughter was killed. That was worse than indelicate.
I'm well aware of that and that's why I'm asking the question. The arms room is the room where the unit's weapons are kept. It is where she was killed. It is also the room the investigators did not search properly until after her body had been found, sixty-eight days later.
during continuous deployments to combat. And we know in the Army that we are not perfect. But what makes us the greatest Army in the world is that we recognize where we must change. We acknowledge our issues and we fix them.
Prior to coming here, I talked to Mrs. Guillen, Vanessa's mother, and I told her that we're gonna fix these issues and change the culture that allowed them to happen. I told her we must and will provide a safe and secure environment for Americans, and sons and daughters that serve in the Army. As the Secretary said, we are holding leaders accountable, and we will fix this.
Tomorrow, we are briefing the Army's senior leaders on this report, and we will ensure it is understood, and our plan to move forward will be implemented throughout the Army. We have been entrusted to lead the world's greatest soldiers. It is our sacred duty to protect our soldiers so we can defend our nation. That is what we do.
On the eighth of December the report was made public and fourteen leaders were relieved or suspended. The Army created a task force to carry out the seventy recommendations.
These are complex cases. The investigation and court-martial process can be long, complicated, and extremely difficult for victims. The Fort Hood Commission looked at three years of court-martials, including 65 trials involving sexual assault charges. Those cases, unfortunately, had a conviction rate of only 22 percent.
Both victims and the accused deserve better. I agree that the time has come to move the prosecution of rape and sexual assault and related crimes to dedicated uniformed special prosecutors outside the chain of command. recognize myself for five minutes and in so doing would also like to recognize the presence of Vanessa Guillen's sister, Myra Guillen, and attorney Natalie Koam. They have been articulate, powerful, passionate in their efforts to try and make sure that Vanessa's death and murder was not in vain.
So I appreciate you being here today. Dr. Hicks, the IRC recommended that sexual harassment be The following year the Secretary of Defense appointed a commission to look at the whole of the armed forces. It made more than eighty recommendations, and the first of them was to create an office of special victim prosecutors and shift the legal decisions about prosecuting these crimes out of the chain of command away from the commanders soldiers had been expected to report to.
in me file a complaint by my commanding officer. He felt the girl was promiscuous and drunk. And there are more than 135,000 voices like those since DOD started keeping track. They are countless more voices we will never hear from.
But for over 10 years, I've heard your deafening silence and the tides are finally turning. Others are hearing you too. Secretary Austin is committed to implementing many of the Independent Review Commission's recommendations, and he and Chairman Milley are committed to removing from the chain of command prosecution decisions for sexual assault, sexual harassment, and other special victims crimes. That is simply the She told her mother that if she said something, her superiors would laugh, or brush it off.
Nobody has ever found that she was wrong about that. The Army looked, and wrote down that the climate she described was there, and had been there for years, and that no commander had chosen to intervene. She was right about the institution. That is the whole finding.
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