Senior MC Official: I appreciate this opportunity to talk about the Marine Corps Sexual Assault Prevention Response Program and I’m going to use these two minutes to give you the message from the commandant and the guidance we’ve received as it relates to sexual assault; also going to talk about a few of the initiatives that we have underway. The message from General Amos is crystal clear. One sexual assault in the Marine Corps is one too many; he states that it tears the fabric of our core values from the Marine Corps’ honor, courage and commitment. Leadership is truly the key to prevention, engaged and concerned leadership. With that, having said that, the Marine Corps has initiated aggressive actions to promote our training, to build our awareness, to provide advocacy and supportive services, and I wanted to talk about a few of our initiatives. The first one, at our installations, our seventeen major installations, we’ve hired full time program managers. We also call them installation SARCs, which is Sexual Assault Response Coordinators, and they are our master trainers. They are our point of contact from headquarters and they also with that expedite the information that we have from headquarters to the installation. At those seventeen major installations, we also have 24/7 helplines and very supportive -- we’re very supportive of the Department of Defense safe helpline as well. Training. The Marine Corps were listening to what Marines are saying and they are not getting sexual assault via PowerPoint training. We’ve gotten away from that. We know it needs to be dynamic. It needs to be engaging. So we’re kicking off an initiative, a video-based Bystander Intervention training called Take A Stand, and we’re starting with our non-commissioned officers. With that, we have so much video footage from that initiative. We’re infusing video in all of our training for our senior leaders, and building in activities and building in discussion. The last thing I’ll mention -- initiative as you saw our awareness campaign -- we are in front of commanders at every brief we can go to; we work with our prosecutors and help them with best practices; and there’s a victim witness assistance program underway too that we work closely with. Bottom line, the Marine Corps is constantly looking at -- we’re evolving, assessing what changes we need to make; how are we going to reduce stigma and really get the message across to the Marines. And if we identify a shortcoming, then we go after it and we make the changes.
Reporter: Can you explain the video training a little bit more? What is that? Senior MC Official: Yes. Reporter: What is it? Is it scenarios with actors or…?
Senior MC Official: Thank you. It starts off with a drama and kinds of sets the scene for sexual assault. And in that training, we’ve built in victims of sexual assault, the commandant…
Reporter: Are they real?
Senior MC Official: Yes, the Marine Corps…
Reporter: You show their faces?
Senior MC Official: Yes.
Reporter: Names?
Senior MC Official: Yes.
Reporter: Can we get copies?
Senior MC Official: We are working on that.
Reporter: So it has victims?
Senior MC Official: It has victims, the commandant, the sergeant major of the Marine Corps, subject matter experts, leaders, Marines of all different ranks talking about sexual assault. Sharing -- we’ve built in talking points and learning points through that training. And, again, Marines of every rank and we’ve captured so many hours of footage, we could only infuse so much in that training. And in between the video -- between the videos, there are activities where we’re forcing them kind of to talk about sexual assault, [candidly] in small groups. Reporter: Are these current active duty Marines?
Senior MC Official: Yes. Reporter: And you feel that they -- was this something they volunteered to do? Were they asked?
Senior MC Official: They were asked, absolutely volunteer.
Reporter: How do you know that they were capable of giving an informed consent and didn’t feel pressured?
SAPR MC Official: It was not from their command. We worked with our installation SARCs who know them best. They’re advocates and it was totally volunteer. If we didn’t get anyone, we would have completely understood that.
Reporter: How many did you get?
Senior MC Official: How many Marines do we have?
SAPR MC Official: Six. They actually volunteered during focus groups. They came forward themselves and wanted to be part of the training.
Reporter: All women? I know.
Senior MC Official: No.
Reporter: No? Oh really?
Senior MC Official: Two men, four females.
Senior MC Official: At our last conference, we just recently had a conference in May. And the speaker, the victim, who was our speaker at that conference was a male Marine -- did an outstanding job; very impactful. Very impactful.
Reporter: They’re talking specifically sexual assault versus sexual harassment?
Senior MC Official: Sexual assault, yes.
Reporter: At this point, they’re all still in active duty?
Senior MC Official: No, one of them is no longer in active duty. She got out of the Marine Corps. Didn’t have anything to do with the sexual assault. She just…
Senior MC Official: So five are still…
Reporter: Do you have a -- and I can get this afterwards. Where do you guys sort of stand right now with sexual assaults in the Marine Corps? Are they going up on a yearly basis? Are they down? Are they…?
Senior MC Official: [Crosstalk] the steps?
Reporter: Do you break them down? I can’t remember if you break them down for deployed versus the non-deployed incidences?
Senior MC Official: Yes, we do. In 2010, our numbers went down and I can give you those numbers and they’re available online. All of our annual reports are available online [crosstalk]…
Reporter: On that sapr.mil thing?
Senior MC Official: …statistics.
Reporter: Is it going to -- okay.
Senior MC Official: In 2010, we went down 6%...
Reporter: [Unintelligible] the total?
Senior MC Official: Three hundred ten reported sexual assaults for 2010, and that was down 6% from the year prior.
Reporter: Versus 2009?
Senior MC Official: And 2009 was 331, so it ebbs and flows. The year before was 244, so that was a…
Reporter: 2008, 244?
Senior MC Official: Yes, so you can see that was a big 35% increase up to 2009, and I have 2007 which is 213.
Reporter: Two thirteen?
Senior MC Official: You know, it’s a double-edged sword.
Reporter: Because of course sometimes you’d say it’s because more people feel comfortable reporting.
Senior MC Official: Yes, our goal -- I’m not afraid if the numbers necessarily go up because if I’m reaching a Marine who feels like they can come forward and get the resources they need, then I’m doing -- then the SAPR program; [we’re] doing our job.
Reporter: So yes, when did they institute that new reporting? The -- what, I can’t remember the name of it. The something versus the non-something…
Reporter: The restricted versus [crosstalk]…
Reporter: That’s it. Restricted, yes.
Reporter: …non- restricted reporting.
Reporter: The numbers went up in conjunction with that new reporting system. Wasn’t that ’08 or ’09?
Senior MC Official: I can get the year.
Reporter: It’s okay I can look it up. I didn’t…
Senior MC Official: [Crosstalk] since 2005.
Senior MC Official: [Crosstalk] I believe so.
Reporter: Oh okay.
Senior MC Official: [Crosstalk] 2005.
Reporter: Okay.
Reporter: And that was my question too and I don’t really recall with precision. These numbers are a total of both restricted and non-restricted?
Senior MC Official: Yes. A total…
Reporter: …someone else’s [file]. How many were prosecuted? I remember that there’s been a big disparity in years past between numbers prosecuted versus numbers reported.
Senior MC Official: I don’t have that data. I would normally defer to RJA.
Reporter: Is it important for us to ask you to sort out these numbers between restricted and non-restricted.
Senior MC Official: There are two reporting options, and the Marine Corps’ quite proud that they stand both with vigor on the [commandant’s supported]. [A] Restrictive Report is if you have a Marine who does not want to inform law enforcement or the command, they don’t have to. What’s important is that we take care of them physically and mentally and if they get the counseling they need, the evidence collection they can still get and the support of services, they don’t have to go through their command or law enforcement. It takes such a tremendous amount of emotional strength to come forward and [record] [crosstalk]
Reporter: Unrestricted.
Senior MC Official: Unrestricted is when you just -- you want command to know. You want law enforcement to know and a full investigation of [the issue].
Reporter: And so, just remind me, in Restricted, that would mean there would be no separation between the accused and the victim because the commander would know.
Senior MC Official: Yes. The commander would know and it’s the victim’s choice and we fully support that. Every year, there’s a percentage of those that start restricted and then decide to go unrestricted. For those that got counseling services, they were able to come and put everything into perspective and feel like, “Okay, now I’m ready to tell my command.” And we already have the evidence because that evidence as they get it collected will be stored for a year. So they can still go ahead and bring it to their…
Reporter: And that’s DNA evidence?
Senior MC Official: Yes. [Evidence selection]. It’s called a safe kit.
Reporter: Do you have then also -- well, do you have the breakdown for these four years restricted versus unrestricted and deployment [center] versus non deployment?
Senior MC Official: We can get you the deployed versus non-deployed. We can get that…
Reporter: It’s also all in the annual report.
Senior MC Official: It’s all in the annual report.
Reporter: The most recent [SAPR] report includes 2010 does it?
Senior MC Official: Yes. Okay. Let me look at this to decide…
Reporter: Just generally, do you recall the basic [crosstalk]
Senior MC Official: Oh, they’re right here. Yes. Yes. oh. I’m sorry. 2010: Unrestricted, 254; Restricted was 56. In 2009: 299, Unrestricted; 32, Restricted. 2008: 217, Unrestricted; 27, Restricted.
Reporter: [Still seeing] trends. I’m sorry go ahead.
Senior MC Official: No, that’s okay. 2007: 191, Unrestricted; 22, Restricted.
Reporter: That’s an overwhelming trend right there. But do you happen to have -- do you just recall off the top of your head what deployment [sum of] -- or half of it -- we won’t hold you to it -- we’ll go look it up. I’m just curious.
Senior MC Official: Versus combat areas? Am I understanding the question correctly? You mean combat?
Reporter: Oh, yes. I’m sorry.
Senior MC Official: I have – for combat areas, FY10, there were six [crosstalk]
Senior MC Official: FY09, seven. 08, ten. and 07, five.
Reporter: Okay. So it’s very small. Consistently small.
Reporter: Back to the video, when will you start using that?
Senior MC Official: We’ve already trained our master trainers -- we’re keeping it off to our non-commissioned officers in January. What I didn’t say is we have so much video footage, we’ve created a video -- we’re working with a contractor for a video library so that we can pull --and use the great tidbits to infuse in all sorts of training when I do a brief. For example if I had had some clips from it to show you today, we can pull from all that information.
Reporter: When do you think just – Joe Marines going to start seeing that training then?
Senior MC Official: January
Reporter: Oh, so that January it’s going to be Core Y?
Senior MC Official: January goes to non-commissioned officers, yes.
Reporter: Okay. Got you.
Senior MC Official: We’ll start with non-commissioned officers then we’ll work towards our Junior enlist with the same training and [unintelligible].
Reporter: Do the marines in the war zone also see you?
Senior MC Official: Yes.
SAPR MC Official: They will. They’ll have 90 days upon return from deployment to get the training. The problem is, the training has to be taught Uniform Victim Advocates and UVAs that are currently deployed obviously haven’t received the master trainer yet.
Reporter: What’s the difference between what they’re getting now versus this video?
Senior MC Official: It runs on PowerPoint.
Reporter: Military PowerPoint? Got you. Thanks.
Reporter: Tell me again what your title is.
Senior MC Official: I’m [Senior Marine Corps Official with knowledge of] the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response [Office].
Reporter: Okay, I got you. So you deal specifically with the sexual assault issues for the commandant for the Marine Corps in general?
Senior MC Official: Yes.
Reporter: The numbers that you gave us on sexual assault, just loosely, that does not include numbers who report harassment? When they say “assault” that’s an actual physical assault?
Senior MC Official: Yes. Sexual harassment is under equal opportunity within the Marine Corps.
Reporter: Okay, thanks.
MC Official: We were talking before this about our numbers comparative to society and the other services and you were saying that it’s -- because I was saying if something happens in a command, does that mean there’s a problem with the leadership there or something like that and you were saying that it’s -- could you elaborate on that part that it’s society or something?
Senior MC Official: There are societal factors. What we see in the Marine Corps is what we’re seeing in other services, which is what we’re seeing in civilian community. Our best tools right now are training and command climate and getting that commander to go in front of marines and saying, “We’re not going to tolerate this. Sexual assault has no place in the marine corps.” We’re also working with marines in our video initiative. Bystander Intervention right now has been identified as the best practice.
Reporter: I’m sorry, what kind?
Senior MC Official: Bystander Intervention. So we have a clear message saying it’s each marine’s inherent duty to step up and step in to prevent sexual assault, as well as for commanders.
http://www.dvidshub.net/video/128796/sexual-assault-prevention-and-response-training-clip#.TqsFeXLwGSoReporter
What do you mean by Bystander Intervention is best practice? What do you mean by that?
Senior MC Official: The other services, in addition to the Marine Corps, recognize that ‘marines taking care of marines’ is the way to go. Of course, we have our leadership who’s going to convey the message, “We’re not going to put up with this” but we need marines watching out for marines and identifying behaviors that may lead them into trouble either as an aggressor or as a victim and watching out for each other.
Reporter: So you mean, if you see a friend who’s drunk basically -- I mean, a lot of this will come back to alcohol, right?
Senior MC Official: Absolutely -- and taking care of each other. It has to be a comprehensive approach. We have to put “That’s what marines do. They take care of each other.” -- and the core values; we’re going to bring those core values into our training where we’ll say, “Hey watch out for your fellow marine”.
Reporter: Has there been any talk of changing the way if someone does report -- or maybe you could just [unintelligible] me – if someone does report a sexual assault, how would the commander deal with separating that person from the alleged assaulter? Assuming they’re assigned to the same base, even worked together -- whatever, what do you do there?
Senior MC Official: The commander is going to do what’s in the best interest of the marine and separate that marine from the offender. Reporter: So move the offender away or move the victim away?
Senior MC Official: Sometimes, the victim doesn’t want to be moved and the [SAPR] Program is victim-centric so we’re sensitive to that, that you don’t want to punish the victim if the victim cares to stay. The commander will take that into consideration, but some victims are moved or separated from the offender within the unit or there’s a bigger move like an expedited transfer where they’re moved further away.
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