VFW CALLS SEXUAL ASSAULT A ZERO TOLERANCE ISSUE
'Every confirmed instance of sexual assault must be dealt with swiftly and to the maximum extent of the law...'
June 14, 2011
The Veterans of Foreign Wars of the U.S. presented testimony yesterday afternoon before the House Veterans Affairs Subcommittee on Health about the recently released Government Accountability Office report on sexual assaults at VA facilities. Also testifying were representatives from the VA, the GAO, and three other veterans' service organizations.
"Every confirmed instance of sexual assault must be dealt with swiftly and to the maximum extent of the law," said Marlene Roll, director of New York's Erie County Veterans' Service Agency and a member of the VFW's National Women Veterans' Committee. "VA employees and veterans who commit or know of these acts must be held accountable."
The June 7 GAO report was based on visits to five of VA's 152 medical centers, and interviews with four of their 21 Veterans Integrated Service Networks, in which 284 alleged assaults occurred between January 2007 and July 2010. Included were 67 rapes and other assaults by patients against patients, patients against staff, and staff against patients.
According to Roll, a veteran of the first Gulf War from Alden, N.Y., the VA must swiftly address the many problems identified by the GAO in its report. They must clarify what constitutes sexual assault, because the lack of a clear and consistent VA-wide definition has allegedly led to many events not being reported or resulted in no action on those events that were reported.
"This is an appalling abdication of a solemn responsibility, and it must stop immediately," she said. "This is a zero tolerance issue in the military world and in the civilian world; it must be so in the VA world, too."
"This is not the way to run a health care system," said Subcommittee Chairwoman Ann Marie Buerkle (R-N.Y.), "and it is certainly no way to treat the men and women who have sacrificed so much on our nation’s behalf.”
Roll said total leadership is now essential from everyone within VA. She said VA Secretary Eric Shinseki and his senior executive staff are sincerely involved, and that the VFW knows they will do everything within their power to end sexual assaults in the VA workplace.
"Yet the solution to stamping out this problem is not in Washington," she said. "The solution is in the field in every network director, medical center director, clinic director, and their senior staffs, frontline supervisors and in every employee. The GAO report identifies a shared problem that reflects upon the integrity of the entire VA. Its eradication can only lie in a total commitment by those very same employees at every level."
To read the VFW's testimony, as well as statements made by subcommittee members, go to the House VA Committee website at http://veterans.house.gov/hearing/preventing-sexual-assaults-and-safety-incidents-us-department-veterans-affairs-facilities.
Pictured: VFW National Women Veterans' Committee member Marlene Roll (left) and House VA Subcommittee on Health Chairwoman Ann Marie Buerkle (R-N.Y.).
BACK TO NEWS >