Sexual Assault Prevention Training For Protecting Male...

Sexual Assault Prevention Training to Protect Male Servicemembers According to the GAO report, Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office (SAPRO) officials have focused the SAPR program on females.28 Even this year’s Presidential Proclamation for the National SAPR month only addresses female assault victims.29 In the past, male victims were discussed as just a small percentage in training (1%). When looking at the raw numbers, that is where you can see there are more males assaulted than females annually; 10,600 males to 9,600 females.30 Any number is too much, but the services need to do more to educate the force about male victims in order to improve the environment for reporting It starts with better training materials and videos to address prevention and response for male victims. Most of the training focus has been on females where sexual assault is perceived as sexual gratification. Sexual assault against males is not the same and are acts of violence, domination and humiliation against the member, not â€Å"acts motivated by sexual attraction.†31 Men are more likely to experience â€Å"repeated physically violent assaults† that occur in the context of hazing.32 Education is key to highlighting these differences and addressing the root cause, hazing in the workplace. Using multiple male examples, based off real life events will bring stories to the numbers. The more the military discusses male sexual assault as an act of violence and physical domination, the more we can get