Photo By 1st Sgt. John Etheridge | Capt. Charles Thompson, a victim advocate with the Utah National Guard Sexual Assault...... read more read more
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SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – A small group of up-and-coming leaders from the Utah National Guard received cutting-edge training in sexual assault prevention during the Junior Leader Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Workshop held Aug. 10-12, 2020.
The workshop was sponsored by the Utah Guard’s Sexual Assault Response Coordinator office and is designed to bring junior leaders together to participate in discussions, presentations and lectures on the significant issues and topics regarding sexual assault prevention. The workshop also serves to help find Soldiers that may be interested in aiding their fellow Soldiers in the future.
“The goal of the workshop is two-fold; it serves to provide a greater in-depth knowledge of sexual assault and sexual harassment prevention strategies that the junior leaders can take back to their units and implement; the second is to serve as a vetting process for those that don’t meet the rank requirements to be a victim advocate and see if they would make a potentially good candidate in the future,” said Capt. Charles Thompson, a victim advocate with the SARC office and the workshop coordinator.
According to the DoD SAPR program doctrine, one of the main efforts to prevent sexual assault and encourage greater reporting in the military is to focus on junior and mid-level enlisted leaders who are well-positioned to influence younger service-members.
“What research tells us is that the more common occurrences of sexual assault take place in the lower enlisted ranks. To have junior leaders be presented with more awareness and more prevention strategies is helpful to them because many of these Soldiers are potentially going to be the ones confronted with these scenarios in the real world,” said Thompson.
Presentations were given by subject-matter experts from the University of Utah, the Utah National Guard, and local community. Topics included diversity awareness, internet safety, motivational interviewing, bystander intervention and child sex abuse.
“The motivational interviewing, that was huge for me. It gives me a new way to communicate with someone to open up about a problem or just to communicate in general because I think my generation struggles with interpersonal communication,” said Sgt. John Harrison from 2nd Battalion, 222nd Field Artillery Regiment.
Lectures were also given regarding resources available for Soldiers and survivors through local, state and National Guard services.
“I also really liked the military family resources training. There were so many resources that I personally didn’t know about and now I can share it with Soldiers who are in need or who are struggling,” said Harrison.
Thompson said that the topics presented to the attendees were carefully chosen so that even if the attendees didn’t want to continue and become victim advocates, these leaders could take this information back to their units and still use it in their daily lives to aid in the military’s fight against sexual assault.
“This training is going to help me not only be prepared to handle these situations, but to get the conversation going at my unit and raise awareness of the probability of these things happening,” said Sgt. Eric Saunders from the 625th Military Police Battalion. “With the resources available and training like this, more people can get involved with the process and help change the culture so that more people are looking after one another in these instances.”
The Utah National Guard SARC office hopes to make this training for junior leaders an annual or more frequent event in the future.
“Overall, I think this was a great training and I wish more people would have come to it. I think as a leader, having the opportunity to come here and listen to this professional training, I realized that there is a huge problem, and the more we can recognize it and work on it, the better we will be off as a team,” said Harrison.
| Date Taken: | 08.12.2020 |
| Date Posted: | 08.31.2020 17:58 |
| Story ID: | 377177 |
| Location: | SALT LAKE CITY, UT, US |
| Web Views: | 22 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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