Air Force general calls sex assaults a 'cancer'

WASHINGTON (AP) — Liken­ing sex­ual assault in the Air Force’s ranks to a can­cer, the service’s top offi­cer resolved Wednes­day to tackle the prob­lem by screen­ing per­son­nel more care­fully and putting an end to bad behav­iors like binge drink­ing that can lead to misconduct.

But Gen. Mark Welsh, the Air Force chief of staff, under­scored the chal­lenge by telling a House over­sight com­mit­tee that the ser­vice recorded a dis­turb­ing num­ber of reports of sex­ual assault last year even as it worked to curb mis­con­duct in the wake of a sex scan­dal at its train­ing head­quar­ters in Texas. Dozens of young female recruits and air­men at Lack­land Air Force Base near San Anto­nio were vic­tim­ized by their instruc­tors who sex­u­ally harassed, improp­erly touched or raped them.

Most dif­fi­cult, Welsh said, is trans­form­ing a cul­ture in which vic­tims are often reluc­tant to report what hap­pened because of guilt, shame or fear they won’t be believed.

“Why, on what was undoubt­edly the worst day of a victim’s life, did they not turn to us for help?” Welsh said dur­ing tes­ti­mony before the House Armed Ser­vices Com­mit­tee. “We are miss­ing some­thing fun­da­men­tal in the human-to-human inter­ac­tion that will allow them to feel safe enough to come to us and report.”

An Air Force vet­eran who was sex­u­ally assaulted while serv­ing — but not at Lack­land — described how intim­i­dat­ing it is for young enlisted per­son­nel to speak up.

“You’re stuck,” Jen­nifer Nor­ris told the com­mit­tee. “If you want a career, you don’t want to say any­thing because you get retal­i­ated against.” Nor­ris, who said she med­ically retired in 2010 with post-traumatic stress dis­or­der, said the Air Force and the other mil­i­tary branches have a sex­ual assault epi­demic and a bro­ken sys­tem of justice.

The scan­dal at Lack­land, now known as Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, con­tin­ues to unfold nearly two years after the first vic­tim came for­ward. All U.S. air­men report to Lack­land for basic train­ing. The base has about 500 mil­i­tary train­ing instruc­tors for about 35,000 air­men who grad­u­ate every year. About 1 in 5 recruits is a woman; most instruc­tors are men.

The ini­tial results of Air Force inves­ti­ga­tion released in Novem­ber described abuses of power by instruc­tors who took advan­tage of a weak over­sight sys­tem to prey on young recruits.

The inquiry has found that 32 mil­i­tary train­ing instruc­tors allegedly engaged in inap­pro­pri­ate or coer­cive sex­ual rela­tion­ships with 59 recruits and air­men at Lack­land, accord­ing to the Air Force. Three of the most recent alleged vic­tims are males.

Six instruc­tors have been con­victed in courts-martial on charges rang­ing from adul­tery, rape and con­duct­ing unpro­fes­sional rela­tion­ships. Nine more instruc­tors are await­ing courts-martial. Two more received non­ju­di­cial pun­ish­ments. Fif­teen 15 instruc­tors remain under investigation.

The Air Force has changed the way it selects offi­cers and instruc­tors who train new recruits and reduced from four to three years the amount of time they can spend as instruc­tors, said Gen. Edward Rice, head of the Air Edu­ca­tion and Train­ing Com­mand. Rice, who tes­ti­fied along with Welsh, said more women are being placed in super­vi­sory roles within the train­ing com­mand. The Lack­land scan­dal has not affected recruit­ing, Rice said.

“I’m not in any way ready to declare vic­tory,” Rice said.

The pre­lim­i­nary fig­ures for 2012 show there were nearly 800 reports of cases, rang­ing from inap­pro­pri­ate touch­ing to rape, accord­ing to Welsh’s tes­ti­mony. That would be a nearly 30 per­cent increase from 2011, when 614 cases were reported. The num­ber could be much greater, Welsh said, because many cases are never reported.

“It’s aston­ish­ing, really,” Welsh said. “Eight hun­dred is not accept­able, 600 is not accept­able. 300 is not accept­able. Zero is the only answer.”

The 2012 fig­ures are being audited and reviewed before being included in a report the Defense Depart­ment will sub­mit to Con­gress in April, accord­ing to Welsh.

Welsh said he has stressed to the Air Force’s offi­cer corps and senior enlisted ranks the impor­tance of elim­i­nat­ing sex­ual mis­con­duct. As part of that effort, Welsh issued a “Let­ter to Air­men” this month that said images, songs and sto­ries that are obscene or vul­gar are not part of the Air Force heritage.

Not every­one who com­mits sex­ual assault is a preda­tor, but there are preda­tors in the ranks and they have to be found before they act, Welsh said.

The Air Force also has to iden­tify and stop the activ­i­ties that can lead to inap­pro­pri­ate actions.

“A young man who rou­tinely binge drinks and loses con­trol of him­self is going to con­duct bad behav­ior,” Welsh said. “That bad behav­ior could result in sex­ual assault. Let’s stop the binge drinking.”

Posted by Matt Echelberry on Jan 23 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.