Military Sexual Assault: The Danger of IsolationThe Pentagon announced Tuesday that there will be more training for commanders and senior leaders to help prevent sexual assault in the ranks. “The men and women of the U.S. military deserve an environment that is free from the threat of sexual assault,” Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says. “Service members and their families must feel secure enough to report this crime without fear of retribution and commanders must hold offenders appropriately accountable.”
As with suicide awareness, we have been hearing the calls for more training for years. But the Joint Base Lackland scandal has gained our national attention.
I am troubled, once again, by the use of old, already tried/tired (failed?) methods for reducing sexual assault.
As I wrote about suicide awareness, service members do not need more PowerPoint slides and annual reports on the topic for nearly a decade.
Training to reduce sexual assault tends to focus on two issues:
– Army values (you should not rape a fellow Soldier).
– The battle buddy system, which pairs troops together to reduce the chances of such assaults.
What I believe, having been closely involved in these issues since the drill-sergeant scandal at the Army’s Aberdeen Proving Grounds in 1996, is that command needs to recognize patterns and circumstances in which sexual misbehavior is likely to occur.
There are three common scenarios that are repeated over and over: […]
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Military Sexual Assault: The Danger of IsolationFrom Military Yahoo News (YMIL)
