Navy brass targets hike in sexual assaults

Navy brass targets hike in sexual assaults
Intervention strategy mimics college efforts
By Jeanette Steele, UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

Originally published July 3, 2010 at 10:41 p.m., updated July 4, 2010 at 12:02 a.m.

The Navy’s top brass wants commanders to “get uncomfortable” about sexual assaults, which are happening at the rate of more than one a day and to one in five female sailors during her career — mostly at the hands of other shipmates.

“A lot of it is blue on blue, sailor on sailor,” the Navy’s No. 2 officer, Vice Chief of Naval Operations Jonathan Greenert, said during a recent speech in San Diego.

“In your Navy and my Navy, that’s, to me, totally unsatisfactory. I have a problem even talking about it. It gets me irritated,” he said.

After spending five years concentrating on supporting victims but seeing no decrease in assault numbers, the Navy’s new tactic is to get “left of the event” — the same language the Pentagon used when it concentrated on diminishing roadside bomb deaths.

They are instructing sailors to step in when something looks sinister, even if the perpetrator is of a higher rank — something, they acknowledge, that may be tough to achieve because the difference between a commander and a petty officer is woven into the basic fabric of the military.

The Navy recently held “bystander intervention” seminars in San Diego, Virginia and Hawaii. It’s a pilot program, and officials will look at the results before they roll out the seminars to the entire fleet.
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Navy brass targets hike in sexual assaults
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