• Military Menu                       

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Industry
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• WMD
• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

DoN Brings Awareness to New SAPR Program

Navy NewsStand

Story Number: NNS100323-12
Release Date: 3/23/2010 4:28:00 PM

By Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class (SW) Rachael L. Leslie, Navy Public Affairs Support Element East

NEW ORLEANS (NNS) -- Top leaders within the Department of the Navy (DoN) met to bring awareness to the new Sexual Assault Prevention and Response (SAPR) program at the first Sexual Assault Response Coordinator (SARC) Summit in New Orleans, March 22-26.

To align with the DoN's newly established SAPR Office, the former Sexual Assault Victim Intervention (SAVI) program was officially renamed the SAPR program in Nov. 2009.

"It's really a prevention and response program so we've changed the name to more adequately describe it," said Jill Loftus, director of the DoN's SAPR Office. "There's really no difference in the program itself. We're trying to emphasize that it's prevention and response, not just victim intervention."

Rear Adm. Michael Browne, director of personal readiness and community support, said there are many reasons to bring awareness to this program and the issues it's designed to address.

"This program is critically important to the Navy and Marine Corps team, ultimately because it's a mission readiness issue for our forces, but more importantly a personal issue," said Browne. "First of all sexual assault is a crime, and secondly it's completely contrary to our core values of honor, courage and commitment."

Loftus agrees about the importance of this program to the future of the Navy and Marine Corps and its personnel.

"I'm very passionate about the care of victims and I think that the more we're aware that this happens every day, it happens two, three, four times a day reported, and we know it's the most underreported crime not only in the Navy, but also in the country," she said. "I think anything we can do to help prevent somebody from becoming a victim, and somebody from becoming a perpetrator, is only going to make the Navy stronger."

The goals of the SAPR program are to promote sensitive, coordinated, and effective management of sexual assault cases, to reduce the incidence of sexual assault through awareness and prevention education, and to standardize reporting of sexual assaults.

Loftus said she hopes in the future that the focus of the program will become more on prevention and less on response.

"Hopefully as we move down through a change in culture, the victims will become fewer in numbers and our prevention efforts will increase," said Loftus. "If the SARCs can help us with training potential victims, and training potential perpetrators to stop this crime then my hope is we'll have less victims."

There are many training opportunities available within the SAPR program. They include; Sexual Assault Prevention and Awareness General Military Training, a 30-hour SAPR Victim Advocate training, a four-hour SAPR Point of Contact training, and eight-hour SAPR Command Liaison training, a two-hour SAPR Data Collection Coordinator training, and SAPR Victim Advocate monthly meetings, designed to provide policy updates and continuing education for victim advocates.

"It's a privilege and an honor to support the Navy organization in the role of director of personal readiness in this important mission area of sexual assault and suicide prevention," said Browne. "There's such good work going on today by the many professionals across the Navy in so many different areas that are paying attention to the needs of sexual assault victims, and the training that has to be in place to prevent this crime."

During the next few days of the summit, more than 200 personnel from around the world, including SARCs and supporting personnel from the Navy and Marine Corps medical, legal and chaplain communities will participate in specialized SAPR training and group discussions, and attend informational lectures. For more information on the SAPR program and how to enroll in a training program, contact your local SAPR representative.