On the Case

Air Force Brig. Gen. K.C. McClain has a tough yet sensitive job. As commander of the Pentagon's new Joint Task Force for Sexual Assault Prevention and Response, she has to reform Pentagon policies on sexual misconduct and devise better methods for response and prevention.

Bungled responses to sexual misconduct claims and cases of retaliation against alleged victims of sexual misconduct have led Congress, advocacy groups and former service members to call for changes in the Pentagon's decades-old sexual assault policies. McClain and her task force will work to correct the policies, which have proved ineffective in deterring sexual misconduct and protecting the accusers.

Victims of sexual assault say the system does more to protect the assaulter than the assaulted. Despite the fact that fear of reprisal often keeps victims from reporting assaults, the Pentagon's April "Task Force Report on Care for Victims of Sexual Assault" says there were 1,007 reports of sexual assaults in 2002 and 1,113 in 2003. Reports from female service members declined in the past decade, according to the Defense Department's "Armed Forces 2002 Sexual Harassment Survey." The survey of more than 60,000 service members showed a reduction in the number of women reporting sexual harassment from 46 percent in 1995 to 24 percent in 2002. Sexual assault reports fell from 6 percent in 1995 to 3 percent in 2002.

But more than 100 reports of sexual assault last year from service members deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan caught Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's attention. In February he ordered a 90-day review that culminated in the Pentagon's April task force report. In addition, as part of the 2005 Defense authorization bill, Congress directed the military services to develop a uniform definition of sexual assault and a comprehensive prevention and response policy by Jan. 1, 2005.

As commander of the new task force on preventing sexual assault, McClain will be responsible for implementing the recommendations in both the Pentagon's April report and the legislative requirements. She says she is confident the task force will meet the Jan. 1 deadline, but she expects the policies to be refined over time.

Improving prevention, providing support for victims and holding offenders accountable are paramount, McClain says. Acknowledging that sexual assault is underreported in the military, she notes that this is true throughout society. "It is underreported for the same reasons as in the civilian community-desire to keep this very personal trauma private, fear of repercussions and [uncertainty about being] believed." Service members have said their reports of sexual harassment and assault are met with hostility, retaliation and loss of responsibilities.

Other Defense efforts to reverse this trend include a study on sexual assault by the Advisory Committee on Women in the Services and a task force investigation of how military academies address sexual harassment, which eventually will be expanded to the military workplace. But some critics say the time for studies and investigations is over and changes are needed now.

Terri Spahr Nelson, a psychotherapist specializing in sexual violence trauma and an Army veteran, says McClain's task force is a move in the right direction. "There's good momentum going. The Defense Department is on it. The public's on it. Congress is on it," says Nelson. Author of the book For Love of Country: Confronting Rape and Sexual Harassment in the U.S. Military (Haworth Press, 2002), Nelson is a longtime advocate for improving the Pentagon's sexual assault policy. Despite her optimism, she says she is concerned about the time frame: "Are you really going to get a quality product in that amount of time?"