Sexual assault victims in military will have some confidentiality

With reports showing that victims of sexual assaults in the military rarely come forward, the Pentagon is implementing a policy that would allow victims to report incidents without automatically triggering an investigation.

The new policy, known as restricted reporting, would allow sexual assault victims to disclose the incident in secret to certain individuals. The policy, announced Friday, applies to service members only and will be implemented in 90 days.

A victim can confidentially report an incident to a sexual assault response coordinator, a health care provider or a chaplain. Victims will then be assigned a victim advocate.

"This policy change will encourage more victims of sexual assault to come forward and seek help," said David S.C. Chu, undersecretary of Defense for personnel and readiness. "Although the department would prefer complete reporting of sexual assaults … we believe our first priority needs to be for victims to be protected."

On Friday, Defense officials also revealed the results of an anonymous survey at the three service academies. It showed that more than 50 percent of females at the academies said they have experienced some type of sexual harassment. About 13 percent of those had been sexually assaulted, according to the data, but only 12 percent of the assaults were reported.

The confidentiality policy did not satisfy everyone.

Rep. Louise M. Slaughter, D-N.Y., told Government Executive that victim's advocates will need special protections to keep commanders from retaliating against them and that the military's culture is inherently hostile toward women.

"I don't feel it's enough," said Slaughter of the new policy. "They have hired advocates [in the past] and they won't let them advocate … There's something in that culture that creates this."

Slaughter, a member of the Congressional Caucus for Women's Issues, has pressed for new military policies regarding the handling and prevention of sexual assaults.

Anita Sanchez, spokeswoman for the Miles Foundation, a nonprofit group that assists victims of sexual assault in the military, said the new policy is helpful but incomplete, because it does not apply to civilians or family members living on military bases.

"I think there is still a significant amount of work to be done," Sanchez said. "You have created inequity, and that is not something you are supposed to create."

Allowing the victim to decide whether or not to proceed with an investigation leads to an informed decision and encourages victims to seek medical attention, which would include the collection of evidence, according to experts in sexual violence trauma.

Brig. Gen. K.C. McClain, commander of the Pentagon's Joint Task Force on Sexual Assault Prevention and Response, said the military services have budgeted for the policy's implementation and are hiring sexual assault response coordinators.

The Pentagon's inspector general and the assistant secretary of Defense for health affairs will create guidelines for collecting evidence for a criminal investigation that would keep the victim's identity a secret until an investigation is given the go-ahead.

Breaking a victim's request for confidentiality would result in discipline under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, loss of credentials, or other personnel or administrative actions. If information regarding a sexual assault reaches a commander, he or she is permitted to report the possible assault to law enforcement officials for a full investigation regardless of the victim's wishes.

Terri Spahr Nelson, an Army veteran and a psychotherapist specializing in sexual violence trauma, said it may be difficult for military commanders to accept the fact that they will not know the details of a sexual assault that occurred on their base.

"Commanders are accustomed to basically being in charge of their unit, and this is one exception that they will not have oversight on," Nelson said. "If someone in their unit is a suspected sex offender, they're going to want to know."

But Nelson said this policy should help commanders because victims will be encouraged to come forward without identifying themselves, giving commanders a clearer picture of sexual violence even if they do not know the identity of the victim or the suspected assailant.

The policy is the capstone of work that began in September 2004 when Pentagon officials and sexual assault trauma experts sat down to discuss the issue of sexual assault in the military, and to formulate policy proposals in response to a report showing that the Defense Department wasn't doing enough to prevent sexual assaults.

In October 2004, Congress required the Pentagon to develop a new sexual assault response and prevention policy, which was released in January.

Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Joe Richard said the next steps include morphing the Joint Task Force on Sexual Assault Prevention and Response into a permanent office by October and implementing the policy across all the services.