Ernst Calls for Passage of Bill to Protect U.S. Athletes from Sexual Abuse - March 28, 2017

Thank you very much. I do appreciate the opportunity to be here today and join my colleague Senator Feinstein, Senator Collins, thank you for your leadership on this bill. It is so important that we are supporting these brave strong women, our young- our young athletes so thank you ladies for being here today. We must send a message that we will simply not tolerate sexual assault. We won't tolerate it in our gyms, we will not tolerate it on our college campuses, and we simply will not tolerate it in the military. Sexual assault is a horrendous crime and we must work to ensure that there is ZERO tolerance for sexual assault in any faucets of our society. As my colleagues have noted, the specific bill works to combat prevent sexual assault by strengthening mandatory reporting of sexual assault allegations and the mandatory reporting of those sexual assault allegations and requiring us amateur sports organizations to develop and enforce policies to prevent sexual assault from happening in the first place. There's nothing you can do once this has happened. You can't go back and undo it, so we have to prevent it before it ever occurs. I'm proud to support it and I look forward to continuing to work with Senator Feinstein and the other original co-sponsors of this bill, and we must- absolutely must move this forward. I want to thank the young ladies that are here today, we appreciate your strength and determination. God bless you for being here and- and bringing this to our light, so thank you- thank you.