By Kevin Knodell
Copyright staradvertiser
A bipartisan group of U.S. senators introduced legislation to give the Department of Veterans affairs retroactive authority to disinter the remains of veterans from national cemeteries who would have been deemed
ineligible for such a burial under current law.
The VA currently has the authority to disinter the remains of veterans and service members who have committed serious crimes. But under current law, the VA can only reconsider eligibility for burial in national cemeteries for cases dating back to 2013.
Families and victims’
advocates seeking disinterments for crimes committed prior need to secure a specific act of Congress.
“Rather than setting an
arbitrary cutoff for disinterment requests, this legislation will help ensure that the process is available to everyone,” said U.S. Sen. Mazie Hirono, one of the cosponsors of the proposed bill. “I’m glad to join my colleagues in this bipartisan effort to implement this commonsense fix and grant the VA the authority to carry out these requests.”
Under the proposed
Restoring the Sanctity of Public Entombments, Cemeteries, and Tributes (RESPECT) Act, the VA would now have retroactive authority back to June 18, 1973 — the date when the National Cemeteries Act was signed into law.
Along with Hirono the bill is cosponsored by democratic Sens. John Fetterman and Adam Schiff, and republicans John Cornyn, Lisa Murkowski, and Rick Scott. According to a media release from Hirono’s office there are at least seven
outstanding disinterment petitions across multiple states, including Hawaii, Alaska, Pennsylvania, Florida and California.
In Hawaii there is a petition to disinter the remains of Dr. Robert Browne from the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in
Punchbowl Crater.
Brown was an Army veteran and once-highly regarded psychiatrist who served as Chief of Psychiatry at St. Francis Hospital. He also saw students from Kamehameha Schools from the 1950s to the 1980s, and was ultimately accused sexually assaulting dozens of those students between the late ‘60s and mid ‘80s.
Browne died by suicide in 1991 before charges could be filed, and Kamehameha Schools and his accusers
ultimately agreed to an
$80 million settlement.
In July Hirono and U.S. Reps. Jill Tokuda and Ed Case wrote a letter to VA Secretary Doug Collins requesting support for new legislation to remove people like Browne. They wrote that “although Dr. Browne was never convicted due to his suicide prior to trial, credible and documented findings of his extensive sexual abuse of minors warrant a full review by the VA.”
The lawmakers’ letter also quoted an unnamed constituent, one of the students that Browne saw during his tenure, who said that he was outraged Browne was buried “in a place of honor, along with many other great and well-known people. There are many victims, myself included, that do not feel he should be laid to rest among our heroes.”
