The Air Force has made considerable progress in on tackling sexual assault, Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Larry Spencer said — but much more remains to be done.
In an April 10 interview, Spencer said the Air Force's "next big hill to climb" is improving efforts to prevent sexual assaults from happening in the first place.
"Prevention is getting a lot of our attention," Spencer said. "If you can stop the crime from happening, then the other issues take care of themselves."
Spencer said tThe Air Force particularly wants to improve bystander intervention, to get airmen feeling comfortable stepping in and stopping a potential sexual assault before it happens.
He acknowledged that fFor many people — especially young airmen in their late teens and early 20s — doing so can be difficult, Spencer acknowledged. It takes courage and conviction, he said, to stand up to one's friends and risk repercussions.
"It's a lot easier said than done," Spencer said. "What young airmen have told us is ... 'Yes, it's easy for you, but for me, I've now got to deal with peer pressure. I may be ostracized by the group, if I stand up and take a stand.' And a lot of them ask me, 'Is that really what you want us to do?' And my answer is, that's absolutely what we want you to do. And that takes courage."
Standing up to sexual assault is necessary to building trust in the Air Force, and getting its mission done.
"You can't have trust in the military if we have folks sexually assaulting each other, or taking advantage of each other," Spencer said. "We're really working with our airmen to make sure they're part of the solution, and bystander intervention is a big step, we think, forward in trying to prevent the crime from happening in the first place."
Spencer said the increased focus on bystander intervention is happening now.
"This is not something we're going to roll out in a month and it's over," Spencer said. "This is something that's never going to stop. It's something that we're never going to high-five and declare victory on. This training and awareness and prevention is something that is now going to be a part of our culture. It's going to be a part of who we are and what we do."
Spencer said he met was in North Carolina last month meeting with experts on sexual assault from the Research Triangle Institute -- a nonprofit in North Carolina that helps government agencies — to help the Air Force develop strategies for preventing sexual assault. Those experts are associated with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University, Spencer said.
Those experts planned to visit Sheppard Air Force Base in Texas to hold focus groups with some of the trainees at the tech school there, Spencer said.
"They're going to help us a lot with, one, understanding, and two, on prevention," Spencer said.
Spencer said he thinks most people in the Air Force are trusting the system more and more to fairly investigate and prosecute sexual assault cases, and would feel comfortable coming forward to report such assaults.
"Over the last several years, we have done a lot of work in that regard," Spencer said. "Specifically, over the last three years, reporting's increased by 61 percent. There is no doubt in my mind that the trust and the confidence in our system is on the rise, and continues to be."
Spencer said about once a month, he has a web chat with a group of 18- to 24-year-olds in a wing and talks to them openly and without attribution about the sexual assault problem.
"One of the things they continually tell me is that their understanding of the crime is a lot better and more in depth than it was two or three years ago, that they do have more confidence in the system," Spencer said. "And we'll just have to keep working at it until we get that [level of trust] up to 100 percent."
In a column posted online the Air Force's homepage April 2, Spencer listed several signs of progress in addressing sexual assault, including:
- Reducing the time tThe Office of Special Investigation reduced the time it takes to investigate sexual assault claims from 179 days to a standard 75 days in less than a year.
- Setting up tThe special victims' counsel program was set up to provide attorneys to advocate for assault victims. Setting up that program, along with improved OSI training, has led to a 90 percent increase in unrestricted reporting of sexual assault cases, Spencer said.
- The service has reinforced Requiring commanders' role as to central to preventing and responding to sexual assaults in their unit. Commanders are , being evaluated in their unit's climate assessment survey, and having those results are included in their annual performance reports.
- Thirty-two Adding 32 more sexual assault response coordinators and 91 full-time victim advocates have been added at installations Air Force-wide; , and training 75 more sexual assault nurse examiners at medical facilities are in training.
- Revising and updating tThe sexual assault response coordinator's course has been revised and updated, and requiring all SARCs and full-time victim advocates must to be nationally certified.
- Establishing a special victims' capability to hold alleged offenders accountable, including investigators, trial counsel and victim witness assistance personnel and paralegals who are specially trained on sexual assault cases.
Stephen Losey is the air warfare reporter for Defense News. He previously covered leadership and personnel issues at Air Force Times, and the Pentagon, special operations and air warfare at Military.com. He has traveled to the Middle East to cover U.S. Air Force operations.
