From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov

Transcript for: Watchdog Report #4: Sexual Assault Prevention and
Response in the Military
Audio interview with Brenda Farrell, Director, Defense Capabilities and
Management

February 26, 2010

[ Music ]

[ Narrator: ] Welcome to GAO's Watchdog report, your source for news and
information from the Government Accountability Office. It's
February 26, 2010. In fiscal year 2008, the Department of Defense
reported nearly 3,000 sexual assault cases and the Coast Guard
reported another 84. A group led by Brenda Farrell, a Director in GAO's
Defense Capabilities and Management team, recently examined
the Department of Defense and Coast Guard efforts to strengthen their
sexual assault prevention and response programs. GAO analyst
Jeremy Cluchey sat down with Brenda to learn more.

[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] Sexual assault is obviously a problem and a crime
wherever it happens but when it happens in the military it can
have uniquely negative outcomes. Can you tell us about some of those?

[ Brenda Farrell: ] Yes, Jeremy thank you so much for asking that
question because sexual assault as you noted is a crime that has
far-reaching implications, not just for the victim but for the victim's
family, friends, colleagues, the community. And for the
military services, sexual assault incidents can undermine their core
values which-- that's their beliefs of what drives them to be so
good at their jobs--as well as it can degrade mission readiness, esprit
de corps, strategic good will, and also it can increase
financial costs. Obviously there's costs to take care of victims from
sexual assault incidents as well as lost productivity and of
course if there's court time, that's associated with that as well.

[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] GAO previously recommended the Department of Defense
and the Coast Guard take certain steps to aid in the
oversight and the implementation of their sexual response and prevention
efforts. To what extent have these departments acted on GAO's
recommendations?

[ Brenda Farrell: ] Well, first we did make nine recommendations to the
Department of Defense as well as two to the Coast Guard, and
both DOD and the Coast Guard concurred with all of our recommendations,
so they are on board with our findings and that actions need
to be taken. And both departments have been working toward implementing
our recommendations; however there's still quite a bit of work
to be done, the recommendations have been implemented in various stages.
To its credit DOD has implemented four of our nine
recommendations. For example they established a working group to
evaluate the policy for how you handle sexual assault incidents in a
joint environment, a joint environment being when there's more than one
service involved. And they have made suggestions to the Joint
Staff so that in a joint environment you'll have a common policy
regardless of whether you're an Army member or Navy member, Marine
Corps, Air Force. But they have not made as much progress in developing
a fully comprehensive strategic framework. They have laid the
foundation and we certainly do not want to take away from the steps that
they have made toward that end, but they don't have some key
elements that GAO would like see in that strategic framework based on
our body of work in the area. For example, they do need to work
on measurements so that they can take the measurements that -- of how
they're doing, see where there's weaknesses, make course
corrections, and move forward. So that is one area where we'd like to
see them do more. Coast Guard we had two recommendations as I
said, they've implemented one of two, the one we would like to see them
focus on more is also on their strategic framework.

[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] What is that status of the Defense Department’s
centralized sexual assault database, which it was directed by
Congress to implement by January 2010?

[ Brenda Farrell: ] This is a database that we had looked at very
carefully, that DOD unfortunately did not meet the congressional
deadline of last month to establish such a database, and we do not know
when DOD is going to have that database in place that would be
critical for management.

[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] What are the biggest steps GAO recommends the
Defense Department and the Coast Guard take to improve their
prevention of and response to sexual assaults?

[ Brenda Farrell: ] We would like to see them complete actions on the
other five recommendations from our 2008 report, and as I
mentioned earlier that strategic framework, there are several elements
that are missing that they need to fully implement in order to
guide their efforts and really strengthen their prevention and response
program. Our report that's coming out also has a number of
recommendations that build toward that same end.

[ Music ]

[ Narrator: ] To learn more visit GAO's website at gao.gov and be sure
to tune in to the next addition of GAO's Watchdog Report for
more from the Congressional Watchdog, the Government Accountability
Office.