Prosecuting Sexual Assault in the Military: Lawyers' Discourse on Strategy
Open AccessMilitary sexual assault inflicts damage at the individual and organizational levels. For individuals, it compounds physical and emotional injury by also injuring military careers. Organizationally, sexual assault reduces unit cohesion and military effectiveness. The Department of Defense has undertaken efforts to address sexual assault by introducing personnel, procedural, and structural change. Key actors in implementing the changes are the military lawyers charged with prosecuting sexual assault cases. This study contributes to the literature by presenting an exploratory case that identifies ways by which Air Force lawyers strategize about the prosecution of sexual assault cases. The findings revealed participants were required to engage in collective strategizing at the individual and group levels. The greatest threat to the participants’ intended strategy were internal actors. The participants’ intended strategies were planned and dependent upon legal resources, organizational values, and military justice procedures. In contrast, participants’ emergent strategies were dependent upon military justice processes and by connecting texts with other texts, discourse, and interpretations. Lastly, the participants coped paradoxically when their intended strategy was challenged.A key contribution of this research was to take an existing paradox model and to place it in a new context, disclose the limitations of the model, and develop an improved model.
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