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

Transcript for: Sexual Harassment in the Military

Audio interview by GAO staff with Brenda Farrell, Director, Defense
Capabilities & Management

Related GAO Work: GAO-11-809: Preventing Sexual Harassment: DOD Needs
Greater Leadership Commitment and an Oversight Framework

Released on: October 25, 2011

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[ Narrator: ] Welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report, your source for news and
information from the Government Accountability Office. It's October 25,
2011. Sexual harassment can have uniquely damaging effects in the
military, jeopardizing combat readiness and mission accomplishment by
eroding unit cohesion. A group led by Brenda Farrell, a Director in
GAO's Defense Capabilities and Management team, recently reviewed DOD's
implementation and oversight of its sexual harassment policies. GAO's
Jeremy Cluchey sat down with Brenda to learn more.

[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] How does DOD currently work to prevent and address
reports of sexual harassment?

[ Brenda Farrell: ] DOD has established several things. For example,
they have established a departmentwide definition of sexual harassment.
That definition's about nine lines long or otherwise I would quote it.
But it's important to understand sexual harassment is unlawful
discrimination in the workplace that can negatively impact mission
readiness or mission accomplishment by eroding interpersonal bonds and
unit cohesiveness that is so key to the military. Then second, they have
established standards for submitting claims or complaints of sexual
harassment and how those will be addressed all the way through
resolution. The policy also requires military commanders to periodically
conduct organizational climate surveys--what's working, what's not
working--and there's also a requirement for military servicemembers to
periodically have training on sexual harassment in terms of what is it
and what do they do if they or someone they know is a victim.

[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] Your team identified some areas where these
processes could stand to be improved? Can you discuss some of the data
you uncovered about the current state of sexual harassment in the
military?

[ Brenda Farrell: ] DOD data from 2010 shows that while the majority of
servicemembers believe their immediate supervisor makes reasonable and
honest effort to prevent sexual harassment, about 25 percent either feel
they don't know or they don't believe that their immediate supervisors
make such efforts. Further, about 41 percent of servicemembers in the
same survey of DOD's felt that someone could get away with sexual
harassment to some extent even it if were reported. Also, we did our own
nongeneralizable surveys and found similar results.

[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] Your report refers to DOD's visibility over the
occurrence of sexual harassment. What does this term mean, and to what
extent did you find that DOD has visibility?

[ Brenda Farrell: ] We're talking about visibility over the complaint
data, and we found that DOD has limited visibility over the complaint
data for three reasons. First of all, the installations do not
necessarily report up the complaint data to the service program offices,
so you have incomplete data: some are reporting it, some aren't. These
services go about collecting the data differently; they have different
data elements to collect it, so it's inconsistent. You can't gather and
look at the data departmentwide. And then also, some of the data is just
not reported. Again, in our survey of 583 servicemembers, about 84
stated in the survey that they had experienced sexual harassment in some
form during the preceding year, but of the 84 servicemembers who said
they had experienced this harassment, only 4 reported it. Now, in some
cases they felt that the incident wasn't serious enough to report and
they could handle it on their own. In other cases, they did not think
that the matter would be taken seriously, so they didn't report it.

[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] And what is GAO recommending in this report to help
improve the implementation and oversight of DOD's sexual harassment
efforts?

[ Brenda Farrell: ] We have a number of recommendations, but I want to
highlight one in particular about the leadership. I mentioned that early
on the policy requires the commanders to conduct organizational climate
surveys, and there's other requirements specifically for commanders, and
we have found in many cases these weren't being carried through and
commanders were not being held accountable. So we recommended to DOD,
and they concurred, to develop a strategy to hold commanders
accountable, not just for those surveys but for promoting, supporting,
and enforcing the sexual harassment program as it is laid out in DOD
policy.

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