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Study: More sex assaults occur than reported

The director of the Pentagon’s program to prevent and respond to sexual assault in the ranks is not surprised at a government investigation’s conclusion that far more rapes and other sexual assaults are being committed than reports indicate.

It’s one of the nation’s most underreported crimes, period, said Kaye Whitley, director of the Defense Department’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office.

But that doesn’t mean the data the Pentagon has been collecting since 2004 are meaningless.

“It does tell us something,” Whitley said in an Aug. 27 interview at her Rosslyn, Va., office.

“It does tell us they’re occurring, it tells us where, it tells us who. So it’s a start.

“Our civilian counterparts struggle with this as well. I mean, there’s no way of knowing how many are out there. But hopefully, what we will be doing is creating a climate so that people will feel comfortable with coming forward.”

The July 31 Government Accountability Office report also questioned other aspects of the military’s approach to sexual assault prevention and response, saying training programs lack consistent effectiveness; some local program coordinators are part-timers; some commanders do not support the program; and the Pentagon’s guidance suffers when applied to deployed and joint environments.

The GAO did note that the Pentagon “has taken positive steps to respond to congressional direction” and that the Coast Guard “on its own initiative has made similar progress.”

Whitley largely acknowledged the findings, saying she is glad to have the report “because it gives me the backing to get things done. But almost everything they recommended, we were doing something in the area anyway.”

Whitley had been expected to address GAO’s concerns at a July 31 congressional hearing.

But her boss, Michael Dominguez, the Pentagon’s No. 2 personnel official, declined to let her appear, although she had met previously with lawmakers and their staffs numerous times.

Whitley said that despite GAO’s concerns, and criticism by some lawmakers, the Pentagon’s program, launched in February 2004, is making headway.

“We think we have done an incredible amount in a very short time. But we’re also finding out there’s still a lot more to do.”

GAO visited 14 installations and found that 52 percent of service members who had been sexually assaulted over the preceding 12 months had not reported the assaults.

Whitley acknowledged that figure, but noted the Pentagon’s “restricted reporting” policy has benefited 1,896 service members who might otherwise not have been treated.

That policy, introduced in 2005, gives victims who are reluctant to report the crime the option of obtaining treatment and counseling without making a report.

Whitley also countered GAO’s criticism that training programs aren’t “consistently effective.”

“I don’t think anyone knows how to measure the effectiveness of a sexual assault prevention and assault program,” she said, adding that her researchers and outside experts are trying to grapple with that problem.

“If I say we have 2,900-and-something [assault] reports last year, you can’t make an assessment about good or bad or if that says anything,” she said. “If the numbers are high, did that mean there are a lot of rapes, or we have a good program so people are coming forward? If they’re low, does that mean … nobody’s getting raped? The numbers are what they are. All that tells us is the incidents.”

Whitley stressed the important role played by commanders, who can take judicial, nonjudicial and administrative action when an unrestricted report is made.

But “while most commanders support the program, some do not,” GAO said, noting that some have resisted posting information in barracks and work areas.

“There are two key people to making this work,” Whitley said. “That’s the SARC [Sexual Assault Response Coordinator] and the commander. If those people are not working together … then this program won’t work. You have to have the commander on board.”

One problem, she said, is that funding SARCs — there’s one at each installation — has been left to the services, which decide how to staff the positions.

Often, the result is making someone a SARC as a collateral duty.

One service has solved this: The Air Force has hired civilians at the GS-12 level to be full-time SARCs. “That’s very forward-thinking,” Whitley said.

Still, she’d like to see Congress create a separate funding stream. Money has been requested in the fiscal 2009 budget that would go far toward institutionalizing the program, she said.

Whitley’s office also is drafting a new prevention strategy that will expand the service concepts of “battle buddies,” “liberty buddies” and “wingmen” to foster an attitude of looking out for fellow service members who may be headed for trouble.

“If you see your buddy overdrinking with a young woman and they go off together, and she looks probably too drunk to be alone to make a decision, maybe you intervene,” Whitley said. “Or maybe it’s somebody you overhear who’s mixing drinks that taste like Kool-Aid in order to get a girl drinking ... don’t let him do that.”

The idea, she said, is “to get them aware, and not be a bystander, but to intervene.”

That could be asking a lot of young partiers. But Whitley noted that in years gone by, it would have been rare to demand the car keys of a friend who’d had one too many.

After more than 20 years of campaigning by Mothers Against Drunk Driving, it’s now fairly commonplace, she said.

“We’re talking about changing a climate,” Whitley said. “That’s going to take time. But we think this prevention strategy and this campaign is going to help us … to get people to start thinking differently about this.”

The Air Force already is training airmen to intervene when they see problems arising, Whitley said. But the broader Pentagon policy will not launch until October 2009 because the full campaign, including training materials, is still being crafted.

Also coming is the expansion of the restricted reporting option to National Guard and Reserve members. Current policy applies to reservists while on active duty, Whitley said.

But like any injury, they must sign a form affirming that the incident occurred on active duty in order to get care.

In cases of sexual assault, however, the service member’s restricted status is lost once the form is signed because someone in the chain of command would know what had happened.

Whitley’s office is working with reserve component officials and attorneys on a solution.