Task force on domestic violence
gathers information during Pacific visit
By David Allen , Okinawa
bureau chief
David Allen / S&S
Marine Lt. Gen. Garry L. Parks discusses the Defense Task Force on Domestic Violence. |
CAMP FOSTER — The Defense Task Force on Domestic Violence is
visiting U.S. bases in Japan and South Korea this week to gather information on programs
and policies regarding domestic violence.
Marine Lt. Gen. Garry L. Parks, deputy commandant for Manpower and
Reserve Affairs and co-chairman of the task force, said the survey is important in
assessing what is being done — and what more needs to be done — to combat the
problem in the Department of Defense.
The 24-member task force comprises servicemembers and civilians. It
was formed a year ago to review the department’s handling of domestic violence
incidentsin an effort to make military communities safer, said Deborah D. Tucker,
executive director of the National Training Center on Domestic and Sexual Violence and
co-chairwoman of the task force.
This week they spent two days in Hawaii before splitting up to visit
bases in South Korea, Okinawa and mainland Japan.
“There’s a whole laundry list of people who have a role to
play in preventing and intervening in domestic violence cases,” Tucker said.
The task force will meet with as many people as possible involved in
domestic violence cases, she said.
“From base commanders and senior leadership, family advocacy,
military police, victim advocates, noncommissioned officers — we are really trying to
get a lot of input from different perspectives. It’s been interesting to pull all
these people together.”
Parks said the task force visited bases in the United States and
Europe.
After visiting U.S. bases, the task force in March issued a report
with 59 recommendations for improving the military’s response to domestic violence,
including a zero-tolerance policy throughout the military. It noted that the military led
the way in eliminating racial and gender discrimination in its ranks and that
zero-tolerance policies have “significantly reduced alcohol and drug abuse.”
The task force called domestic violence a “pervasive problem
that transcends all ethnic, racial, gender and socioeconomic boundaries.”
The report also called for better training for military police.
“Law enforcement in the military is not like law enforcement in
the rest of the nation,” said Robert L. Stein II, executive director of the task
force. “There are many duties military policemen have that are not applicable in the
civilian sector.”
Many military police officers show a lot of common sense when
responding to calls involving domestic violence, but need detailed training, Stein said.
To address the problem the task force is sponsoring a program in
Dallas in October in which civilian law enforcement domestic violence experts will train
military police officers.
Tucker, who established the first rape crisis center in Texas in
1973, said she has learned over the years that domestic violence may not be what many
people think.
“It’s a pattern of behavior using intimidation and
isolation to control family members,” she said. “It’s not really about
people responding to stress by suddenly acting violently. Instead, it’s an ongoing
pattern of behavior of physical and emotional abuse.
“We’ve come a long way in studying this,” she said.
“Years ago, we saw that alcohol abuse was involved in a lot of these cases and felt
if we treated the alcoholic behavior that the violence would go away. It didn’t. We
keep learning.”
Domestic abuse does not always involve physical violence, she said.
“Some of the best batterers learn to communicate their threats
from across the room,” she said. “An effective batterer uses intermittent,
unpredictable violence on occasion and uses all other controlling tactics on a regular
basis.”
One particular problem in the military overseas, she said, is the
lack of authority over civilian offenders.
“What do you do when the victim is a female servicemember and
the abuser is a male civilian?” she asked. “You can’t take him to court.
The worse you can do is bar him from base and send him back to the States. But that’s
not treating the problem.”
On the other hand, she believes that if the abusers are
servicemembers, the chances are better for controlling the behavior, since the
abuser’s chain of command becomes aware of the problem. In the civilian sector,
employers are rarely aware of problems in the home.
Parks said another challenge is in dealing with such a mobile
population.
“Many of these people will be called out for deployments in the
middle of a case,” he said.
He said the task force’s study would enable the military to
“take the best practices, synthesize them down to areas applicable to most military
units and look at voids that need to be filled.”
“We need to identify the ways we can eliminate domestic violence
across the board in the U.S. military,” he said. “It’s a pretty lofty goal.
But we’re a microcosm of society and the potential exists that what we do within the
military could be a model for all of society.”
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