As a female/male Soldier in the Army take this essay with an open-mind and opinion. SHARP which stands for Sexual Harassment Assault Response and Prevention training is a waste of time and money. There are many ways sexual harassment can occur which is through carelessness and ignorance and this is common within the military because people either do not care or they feel they are above the rules because of their rank. Notice how I did not include “being drunk” a part of the reason why sexual harassment occurs. Being drunk is a form of ignorance, because we all know as individuals the effects of being drunk. And even though there are cases where individuals have reported alcohol being the main factor of being raped, there have also been reports of this sort of behavior being swept under the rug because of any negative actions that can reflect badly on the Military. For example, studies have shown military installations that have service members returning from deployments tend to face high DUIs and domestic violence accusations. SHARP needs to focus on SHARP instead of the environment that kills morale and causes issues. It needs to expose the poor leadership leaders and poor environments. Furthermore, to help decrease the amount of sexual assaults that occur within the military each year, SHARP needs to be revamped and focus more on what is right and wrong and create an environment of trust within a chain of command and promote strong leadership.
There is a constant increase in sexual assault cases despite the Army trying take numerous preventive measures to attempt to end it. Nevertheless, sexual assaults occur in the military because victims are often accused of encouraging the assault. It is said that the one being accused of the crime often misreads eye contact, gestures, actions or words, engagement in conversation or being alone with that person (South Eastern Centre). Majority of the cases involving sexual assault the accused and the victim are in the same chain of command. Some cases fall through because to often the accused is best buds with somebody within their chain of command. The accusation is then swept under the rug because it can kill careers and make reflect badly on the Military. The victim is then cast away to do frivolous duties below their rank or even moved to another company, which is a retaliation of that victim reporting the incident. Not only does this kill trust towards the chain of command, but it also creates fear of victims reporting incidents and the outcome is silence. Our approach to sexual assault as an organization to sexual assault is weak, because real solutions will not happen until we address the problems.
