Fellow Katelyn Ferral’s year-long investigation uncovered systemic flaws in the National Guard’s response to sexual assaults
O’Brien Fellowship gave Ferral the time she needed to reveal deep problems
By Rachel Ryan
Expose injustice and ignite change through the O’Brien Fellowship in Public Service Journalism. Apply now through Jan. 21 for the 2022–23 fellowships.
Two years — that’s how long it takes on average for a sexual assault investigation in the National Guard, said reporter Katelyn Ferral (O’Brien Fellow 2019–20).
And that amount of time can be painful for assault survivors.
“Some victims I talked to really felt like the military justice process further took control away from them,” Ferral said. “They were re-victimized through the process.”
This wasn’t the only flaw Ferral found in the Guard’s sexual assault allegation process. In her year-long investigation funded by the O’Brien Fellowship, her digging revealed the Guard’s lack of accountability and messy record-keeping system.
“We found that at times sexual assault survivors or victims couldn’t get records of their own cases,” Ferral said. “Victims were waiting two years or more to get basic documents.”
The scarceness of records wasn’t only a problem for victims. It was also a problem for reporting.
Ferral, whose work was co-published in the Cap Times and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, said that she couldn’t obtain records she wanted across the entire country. In the end, the absence of information was a key finding in the investigation.
Ferral faced other challenges too.
“It (the O’Brien Fellowship) was really the boost that I needed at that point in my career to do the kind of work that I had always been wanting to do.”
Because the National Guard exists as separate independent militias, sexual assault cases are also handled differently in each state. This became a barrier for Ferral. She said that folks coming in from the outside couldn’t understand the system in the states they were entering.
“Even folks who study military justice and our military experts in general, really didn’t know anything about the Guard,” Ferral said.
So, Ferral had to dig in and become something of an expert in the topic.
And it paid off.
After writing her first story on the Wisconsin State Guard in December of 2019, a major federal report revealed that the Guard botched investigations of sexual assault and harassment. As a result, the chief of the Wisconsin National Guard, Adjunct General Donald Dunbar, resigned and was replaced.
Since then, even more attention has been given to the issue by federal lawmakers. U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) has been working on legislation to extend whistleblower protections to National Guard members, a privilege they previously hadn’t been allowed, Ferral said.
“Maybe because of what happened in 2020, but maybe in part a little bit because of my reporting, folks are starting to realize that the Guard is distinct…and therefore, it needs distinct resources, and distinct reforms and solutions to their distinct problems,” Ferral said.
For Ferral, being an O’Brien Fellow really helped her get to the root of the Guard’s problems and gave her the ability to share those findings with the larger community.
“It (the O’Brien Fellowship) was really the boost that I needed at that point in my career to do the kind of work that I had always been wanting to do,” she said.
Returning to her alma mater, Marquette University, and being able to mentor students while working on her project also meant a lot to Ferral.
And if there’s one thing Ferral took away from her reporting at O’Brien, it was recognizing how crucial it is for reporters to focus on covering the military.
“It’s just important for the journalism industry to not forget about doing that type of reporting when it comes to the military because it touches on so many issues that we continue to encounter,” Ferral said.
