After reading several recent news articles on the Fort Hood noncommissioned officer who served as an equal opportunity officer being charged with pandering, I don't believe sending 10,000 drill training and other EEOC professionals through a refresher course on how to prevent more sexual harassment cases is the fix needed. Instead, a much stronger dose of medicine is needed.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has suggested that the military forgo the traditional process for dealing with sexual harassment cases using internal investigators. She envisions a system where an independent prosecutor and investigators are assigned a case. That is what our military needs today.

Nearly 30 years ago, I served as a noncommissioned officer for a public affairs office in northern Germany. One day, a young female airman came to me with a complaint that her supervisor was daily reaching inside her blue blouse to align her name tag. As he straightened her nametag, he would reach down and touch her breasts.

I asked her if she had witnesses, and she told me, amid the tears, that she had plenty of them.

This NCO was a personal friend of mine from church. My ex-wife and his wife were best friends. Yet, I knew what to do.

I reached out to the EEOC professionals who managed this program. They listened to the young female airman. In time, an internal investigation was conducted. The name tag adjustor was found guilty of sexual harassment and reassigned to another nearby unit.

Later, he was promoted to a higher rank.

When others noticed that the name tag adjuster had been reassigned, the gossip began about what happened. My ex-wife asked me if I knew anything about it, and I told her that I knew nothing.

I believe Gillibrand is right that we form a special unit to investigate this. Yes, the military has organizations such as NCIS and the OSI. However, I believe it's time for an independent organization to handle this. If such an organization had existed , my colleague probably would not gotten promoted. His sexual harassment would have been such that he would have been given an administrative punishment to the degree that his promotion would have been redlined.

The investigative system has been broken for years. Our military needs an independent resource that will first establish the rules of punishment and then investigate as needed.

As a noncommissioned officer, I was well trained into what constituted sexual harassment and how to refer a case to an organization that could respond to it. Yet, as Gillibrand has noted, there is a need for an independent organization to handle investigations. My former colleague advanced in rank even after an investigation found him guilty.

Military leaders need to re-evaluate their processes for handling sexual harassment incidents. The cases at Fort Hood and Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland clearly show that an independent organization needs to conduct investigations within a well-defined set of regulations and laws.

Air Force veteran Matt Scherer owns a public relations firm based in San Antonio.