Michael Silva Case

In 2012, a woman came forward and accused Michael Silva of raping her in 1995 twice when she attended Basic Military Training. Additionally, two of his ex-wives accused him of similar sex crimes. MSgt Michael Silva, family, friends and his legal counsel stood their ground stating Silva was innocent, none of the testimony lined up. Not only that, three of the four alleged victims did not attend or testify in the court martial. Their written statements were allowed to be used as evidence. As stated before, Michael Silva is currently serving his 20 year sentence. There have been many attempts to appeal his case for it to be heard by a different convening authority. The military is practically a “political game” high ranking officials are worried about making rank, there is so much power hanging over their heads that will influence someone to be pressured to go with “majority vote” instead of doing what’s right. Situations like this can potentially wrongfully convict someone of their crimes they were accused and convicted of.
With the amount of Military Training Instructors being investigated and prosecuted in court martials, it was hard to imagine the workload that was place on the Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland AFB …show more content…
The Department of Defense (DoD) reported over 26,000 male and female service members were assaulted in 2012. In 2014, initial findings of an extensive survey of 170,000 military personnel revealed that of the 170,000 personnel, 20,000 reported that the experienced at least one unwanted sexual contact within the past year. Compared to 2012, the figures have dropped my more than 23%. Half of the assaults were reported by women while 35% were reported by men. RAND surveys were conducted to improve the reporting procedures and other processes to allow victims to have more faith in the system when reporting a sex crime. Kime, Patricia.