Combating
Sexual Assault
In the Army
By Thomas B. Spincic
T
Assistant Editor
U.S. Army
he Army is changing the way it handles sexual
harassment and assault cases. Under a congressional mandate, military hospitals providing
emergency care are now required to have a
trained, full-time sexual assault nurse examiner.
MAJ Douglas J. Erdley
MAJ Douglas J. Erdley, the clinical nurse officer in charge
of the emergency department at Keller Army Community
Hospital in West Point, N.Y., said the new policies result in
more careful treatment of victims of sexual harassment and
assault. Erdley has already begun to observe the changes as
he treats his patients.
“I’ve seen some changes in the dedicated sexual assault
clinical providers,” he said. “We also know who our sexual
assault response coordinator [SARC] is, and patients have a
dedicated SARC assigned to their individual case. Now,
with the SHARP’s [Sexual Harassment/Assault Response
and Prevention program’s] specialized, individual training,
it’s a really great advantage to the patient. The patient is the
center of everything we do.”
Erdley said the training—the Army Sexual Assault Medical Forensics Examiners course—is “a weeklong, 40-hour
program, followed up with another week of clinical training. You work with actors and actresses who play the role
of a victim. You go through the whole process, stopping
and explaining every part of it, every step of the way. If the
patient says, ‘I don’t want you to take pictures of that’ or ‘I
don’t want an exam,’ we move on. It’s excellent training
and you don’t feel like you’re standing out there with only
book knowledge during your first encounter with a sexual
assault patient. You have background when you first go in,
and it’s excellent.”
When asked about his role in the treatment process,
Erdley said he places victims’ wants and needs above
everything else. Once he ensures that they are physically
and emotionally stable, the next step is to reinforce the
idea that, in spite of the trauma they just faced, somebody
cares.
“I’m here to listen to their story and provide them with
all needed resources before we ever start the exam,” he
said. “In the exam itself, I take their history for the purposes of the forensic examination and then proceed with
my exam in a step-by-step procedure to make sure that
we’re looking at how the victim says they’ve been haMarch 2014 ■ ARMY 55
U.S. Army/MAJ Brian Bolton
Brigade nurse
CPT Mylinh Bruhn
performs a forensic examination
during a Sexual
Assault Medical
Forensics Examiners training course
in South Korea.
rassed or assaulted. … We make sure that we cover all
those bases, and then we collect samples that contain only
the victim’s or alleged attacker’s DNA.”
Erdley stressed that it is important that patients feel both
safe and in control every step of the way. Victims come in to
seek treatment at a time when they have already had control removed from their lives. He and his team “don’t need
to bring them in here and bring them through a cookie-cutter, assembly-line type of process. The most important
thing I do in the emergency room is to make it all about the
patient,” he said.
T
he average sexual assault case can take up to one
year before being resolved. In the event that a serial rapist is suspected—or, for that matter, a suspect has another case file currently open—the U.S.
Army Criminal Investigation Division can fasttrack the investigation. One of the changes in the 2014 National Defense Authorization Act is the elimination of a
five-year statute of limitations on sexually based offenses,
which can prove invaluable in stopping repeat offenders
before they do any more damage.
Regarding punitive measures for the suspect, victims
have two options: Their case can be marked as restricted,
which does not involve a criminal investigation, or unrestricted, in which case an investigation will occur. Erdley
emphasized that all cases are handled the same way, regardless of their status. Patients are afforded some flexibility here as well: They always have the option to change the
status from restricted to unrestricted. The evidence will be
stored for up to five years, and before disposing of the
forensic material gathered when the victim came into the
56
ARMY ■ March 2014
hospital, their SARC will contact them to ask if they have
changed their mind about the status of their case.
“Unrestricted reporting enables the Army to reach out to
soldiers until they’re ready to make that next step, if they
choose to come forward and go through the process of
prosecuting the offender. ... We need to prevent revictimization of patients as much as possible. Having the option to
go unrestricted is allowing them to be ready for that. It
helps give them control,” Erdley said.
Last year, when Chief of Staff of the Army GEN Raymond T. Odierno spoke before the Senate Armed Services
Committee about sexual assault in the military, he called it
“a cancer within the force.” Fighting this cancer begins with
reporting these horrific instances of sexual harassment and
assault, and Erdley said he hopes that these recent changes
to the process encourage more soldiers to speak up and report incidents when they occur.
“We are going to treat those soldiers and get them in the
pipeline to getting as well as they can, no matter what their
trauma or situation,” Erdley said. “I think the recent
changes, above all else, are showing that command at
higher and local levels cares. [Victims] want to know that
the Army is definitely looking toward making soldiers better, keeping them in the Army and preventing this violation
of their person.
“There’s a great desire for the Army to make all medical
care even more patient-centric than it was before. We’re trying to change the culture, and we’re going to make it happen. I’m 100 percent sure that the Army is committed to
this, and I feel good about what I’m hearing from command at senior levels. … People want it out of the Army. I
want it out of my Army.”
✭