Operation Dragon Foundation - Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson

B-8 Arctic Warrior April 8, 2011
Bystander intervention key to stopping assault
By Staff Sgt. Carolyn (Viss) Herrick
Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam
Public Affairs
JOINT BASE PEARL HARBOR-
HICKAM, Hawaii – “Every single day for
over a year, he’d come home and beat me. I
came to work with black eyes, fat lips, and
bruises on the sides of my neck. Nobody did
anything. Nobody called the cops, nobody
sent me to family advocacy; no one wanted
to say anything.”
This was the testimony of a now 29-yearold
female staff sergeant, 10 years after her
brutal first marriage, as she opened discussion
at Bystander Intervention Training.
“He forbade me from talking to men. He
threatened to kill me, and I believed him,”
said Staff Sgt. Christine Kearney-Kurt, a
65th Airlift Squadron communications systems
operator and instructor for Bystander
Intervention Training, a new mandatory
program for all Air Force military service
members and civilians.
In the gender-segregated forum, men
and women alike are encouraged to speak
openly about their experiences, discussing
how they, as bystanders, might have colossal
impact on potential victims of physical
or sexual assault.
“It’s a little bit different than ‘death by
PowerPoint,’ or a typical briefing,” said
Master Sgt. Jason Redford, the 647th Logistics
Readiness Squadron acting first sergeant,
and
a victim
advocate
a n d B I T
instructor.
“ I t ’s i n -
teractive.
I t ’s n o t
canned. You’re
asking for their direct
thoughts, their
ideas, and things
they’ve seen in the
Air Force, right or
wrong.”
The intent of
the curriculum is to
help Airmen assess
if, when and how
to intervene in questionable, intimidating
or even explicitly dangerous situations, in a
non-attribution environment.
“Bottom line is giving people options and
preparing them beforehand,” Redford said.
“When it comes to sexual assault, we
When it comes
to sexual assault,
we can talk about
the end result, but
often people aren’t
looking at the steps
that lead up to that.
can talk about the end result, but often
people aren’t looking at the steps that lead
up to that.”
In the breakout sessions, which Kearney-
Kurt said are different for males and females,
they talk about the “continuum of harm,”
which is a scale of
things that lead up to
sexual assault. That
could be anything,
from sexist jokes
to inappropriate e-
mails.
“As you allow
those behaviors to
occur, it becomes inappropriate
touching,
(and) then it
could turn to an assault,”
which isn’t
always necessarily
rape, she said.
Sexual assault
can occur on many levels.
Allowing and tolerating negative or derogatory
behaviors in the Air Force breaks
down unit cohesion, morale and productivity,
and decreases the ability to accomplish the
mission, agreed many of the females during
one open forum.
If those things escalate, they could very
quickly turn into a full-blown assault.
“We want a culture shift,” Kearney-Kurt
said. “We want to get people to understand
that the person being assaulted, if it’s a
woman, could be your girlfriend or sister.
That (analogy) seems to hit home with the
men. They don’t want their sister to be assaulted.”
Every person is a bystander, she said. The
BIT is geared to help every bystander be able
to intervene on another’s behalf.
“This is being taught at college campuses
now,” she said. “Eventually, we want the
whole country doing this. Hopefully it’ll be
a learn-by-seeing thing. It’s like paying it
forward. Someone helped me; let me help
someone else.”
April is Sexual Assault Awareness
Month. For more information on sexual
assault prevention, response or reporting
procedures, or to become a victim advocate,
contact your installation Sexual Assault Response
Coordinator.
Information is also available on the
Department of Defense’s Sexual Assault
Prevention and Response website at http://
www.sapr.mil/.
VA budget request
signals commitment
By Donna Miles
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON – President
Barack Obama’s $132 billion 2012
budget request for the Veterans Affairs
Department demonstrates that
despite a tight fiscal environment,
U.S. officials stand by their commitment
to men and women who
have served in uniform, Deputy
VA Secretary W. Scott Gould told
American Forces Press Service.
“It says that VA and veterans
are the president’s top priority,”
Gould said during an interview
in Snowmass Village, Colo., last
week at the 25th National Disabled
Veterans Winter Sports Clinic.
Gould said the budget request
reflects a commitment to VA’s charter
as President Abraham Lincoln
enunciated it in his second inaugural
address: “to care for him who
shall have borne the battle, and for
his widow and his orphan.”
“If you look at our fiscal year
2010 budget, it was the largest in
30 years,” Gould said. “It was fol-
lowed by another roughly 7 and a
half percent in 2011, and now we
have another 3 and a half percent
on top of that. So it is a striking
level of investment.
“We are working really hard
to make sure we use every dollar
wisely,” he said.
The fiscal 2012 budget request
supports VA’s five-year strategic
plan, with priority goals to:
- End veteran homelessness
by 2015, with $940 million in the
fiscal 2012 request for programs to
reduce and prevent homelessness
among veterans and their families;
- Implement a paperless claimsprocessing
system by 2012, a major
step toward eliminating the disability
claims backlog so no veteran
has to wait more than 125 days for
a decision;
- Build and deploy an automated
Post-9/11 GI Bill benefits
system to speed tuition and housing
payments for all eligible veterans;
- Create the next-generation
electronic record system that begins
when service members enlist
in the military and remains with
them through retirement or after
they return to civilian life;
- Improve the quality, access
and value of mental health care
provided, with $6.2 million in
the fiscal 2012 request for mental
health programs, including $68
million for suicide prevention; and
- Deploy a new management
program to improve client access
to VA services and benefits by
June 2012.
“We have a very bold strategy,”
Gould said. “And we are very focused
on making sure that we get
the resources to support it in a way
that ties the budget to this strategic
strategy.”
Much of VA’s focus is on making
the organizational changes and
systems improvements required for
it to function more efficiently and
effectively, Gould said.
“We want to invest in the people,
their training and the systems
that make our organization more
intelligent, more able to deliver on
the promise of these priorities and
the overall strategy,” he explained.
VA is working to become Secretary
Eric K. Shinseki’s vision of
a veteran-centric, results-driven,
forward-looking system, he said.
This, Gould said, involves new
management systems that ensure
accountability while eliminating
waste and improving the delivery
of high-quality and timely veterans
benefits and services. To that end,
VA is seeking nearly $3.2 billion to
maintain and improve its information
technology systems.
Gould reported progress already
made on the IT front. “Two
years ago, only 20 percent of projects
were on time, on budget and
to technical standards,” he said.
“Today, 80 percent are.”
Similar improvements are bearing
fruit in how VA manages its
human resources. “Two years ago
when we started hiring people, it
took us 108 days,” Gould said.
“Now we have it down to 76, and
will achieve a goal ... of 60 days,
the private-sector standard.”
Another improvement uses
strategic sourcing, with VA’s separate
operating units pooling their
buying power to get the best price
for their goods and services. Previously,
the department’s units did
their buying separately.
In addition, VA adopted a strategic
capital investment plan that
improves the way it manages its
infrastructure -- 6,500 buildings
nationwide, with a replacement
value of $87 billion.
“Two years ago, there was no
integrated process for evaluating
where you would invest your next
dollar in that physical infrastructure,”
Gould said. Today, VA makes
a business case for every proposal,
pools proposals, then evaluates and
prioritizes them.
“So now we can go to the
secretary and say, ’For the limited
dollars we have, here is the best
investment we can make to improve
the security and safety of our
veterans and improve quality and
access,’” Gould said.
He noted an adage in the health
care realm: health care is 85 percent
business and 15 percent medicine.
The VA’s care providers, who
make up the country’s largest
direct-care health system, receive
consistently high marks in the quality
of care they provide, he said.
Many, he added, are on par with
their counterparts at prestigious
hospitals and medical centers.
“So think about how much cost
(savings) and how much potential
efficiency is created if you can improve
the underlying systems” that
support them, Gould said, “while
giving the doctors the maximum
freedom to make the best judgment
they can based on health care
principles.”