On Friday, U.S. Army Hawaii officially unveiled its new Sexual Harassment/Assault Response and Prevention Fusion Directorate at Schofield Barracks.
The center opened after a new Pentagon report released this week found serious problems with sexual assault at U.S. bases all over the world.
Fusion Directorate is part of a new pilot program to revamp the Army’s response to sexual harassment and assault. It will bring victims’ advocates, medical personnel, criminal investigators, lawyers and others into the same facility.
One of seven, the other bases included in the pilot program are at Fort Irwin, Calif.; Fort Riley, Kan.; Fort Sill, Okla.; Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md.; and Fort Bragg, N.C.
Jodee Watters, director of the pilot program at Schofield, is a former military police officer who has served as a victim advocate both as a soldier and as a civilian since 2005.
“Being a soldier and being in law enforcement kind of pushed me down the path to go into advocacy,” she said. Historically, the resources that sexual assault survivors needed existed but were spread out in different facilities, she said.
“Here, a person comes in the door and it’s a stressful situation as is. But they’re here, and then the people that are providing those services are coming to them,” said Watters. “And so that helps lessen some of the trauma and stress that that person is going through at the moment.”
The pilot program is part of a planned redesign of the Army’s SHARP program.
Initially launched in 2005 amid reports of alarming rates of sexual harassment and violence, the service has poured millions of dollars into the program, although the effort has faced criticism.
For much of the program’s history, advocates often worked part time and held other military positions, sometimes deeply embedded in the chains of command of both survivors and alleged abusers. In 2015 Army Sgt. 1st Class Gregory McQueen, a soldier who worked as a SHARP victim advocate at Fort Hood, Texas, pleaded guilty to using his position to exploit vulnerable women, including pimping cash-strapped female soldiers out to senior Army leaders.
Military commanders rather than prosecutors have also traditionally decided whether to convene a court-martial in sexual assault and harassment cases.
The revamping of the program is based in large part on recommendations from the Fort Hood Independent Review Committee, which the Army formed after the murder of Spc. Vanessa Guillen, whose body was found after she went missing in the spring of 2020. She had reported harassment before her disappearance.
Guillen’s murder was one of several deaths at the base that year. It led to an investigation of the facility, which was already known to have high rates of sexual assault, harassment and other crimes. The investigation found widespread leadership failings that enabled these problems.
In 2021 the Pentagon announced it would make moves to take investigations outside of the chain of command.
“I think there’s some folks out there still that see things like this when we stand them up as a threat, candidly,” Maj. Gen. Joseph Ryan, commander of the 25th Infantry Division and U.S. Army Hawaii, told attendees at the program’s unveiling. “It is not. What it is is another option.”
“I believe in the chain of command, and I know many of you, if not all of you, believe in the chain of command,” Ryan added. “But I’m also humble enough to realize that not everybody in our Army believes in the chain of command, and I’m also humble enough to realize that they’ve got a good reason.”
Schofield Barracks has not ranked highly in the Pentagon’s reports of sexual harassment and assault, but leaders at the base volunteered for the pilot program.
Ryan told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that he’s hopeful about the program and believes it will lead to more transparency and make resources more accessible. But he admitted that as the military at large continues to struggle with sexual assault and suicides, he’s still working out how to evaluate the yearlong pilot period, saying, “I don’t know how we’re going to measure progress.”
But Ryan said that the issues are important enough to the well-being of troops and their families that leaders need to make an effort to make some kind of impact after years of demands for action.
“What we’re doing ain’t working. Let’s try something different,” said Ryan. “If that leads to success, or that leads to improved transparency and efficiency, leads to an increased sense that … the Army takes this seriously in the eyes of victims and in the eyes of our team (or of professionals that are working), then I believe that that’s a win.”
The opening of the new Fusion Directorate comes after the Pentagon released a report this week of widespread problems at several bases, including Marine Corps Base Hawaii. Dozens of reports of sexual harassment and assault and 68 incidents of domestic abuse at MCBH in 2020 were found.
The Kaneohe base was one of 20 included for review by the authors. According to the report, 16 of the bases were selected because a survey of nearly a million military personnel identified problems at those locations. These problems included toxic leadership, heavy binge drinking, high levels of stress and racial or sexual harassment.
Though the report found serious problems at these 16 bases, it did not specifically characterize them as the worst bases in terms of incidents. The report found that a common factor at bases that had higher rates of such incidents was having leaders who put more emphasis on operations than the well- being of service members.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered the report in 2021 as part of a wider effort to combat sexual assault and harassment across the services.
“I’m really excited to be part of this because I really see the benefit of bringing those personnel in one location not just for taking care of victims, for being able to work with each other in cohesion amongst the team,” said Watters. “I really believe in this energy of all these services coming together and really, truly being able to provide healing to those personnel that come to our door.”
