Army Leader Helps DoD Tackle Domestic Violence

 

 By Linda D. Kozaryn
 
American Forces Press Service


 WASHINGTON, Sept. 21, 2000 -- Maj. Gen. Craig B. Whelden no 
 longer heads the Army's Community and Family Support 
 Center, but he's as busy as ever working to support 
 military families.
 
 After spending two years commanding the support center, 
 Whelden now serves as deputy commander of U.S. Army Pacific 
 in Hawaii. The command has responsibility for all Army 
 forces in the Pacific from Alaska to Japan. 
 
 And as if that isn't enough travel for the general, Whelden 
 also serves on the Defense Task Force on Domestic Violence 
 here. He is one of 12 senior military leaders and DoD 
 civilians working side by side with 12 civilian law 
 enforcement and domestic violence experts to improve the 
 military's response to domestic violence.
 
 During the panel's mid-September site visits to Fort Bragg 
 and Camp Lejeune, N.C., Whelden talked about domestic 
 violence.
 
 "Over the past few years, I saw an increase in emphasis but 
 not a corresponding increase in resourcing and funding," he 
 said. Even so, the general noted rates of substantiated 
 abuse in the Army have decreased in the last four years. 
 
 "Transitional compensation payouts have gone up," Whelden 
 noted. "To me that means we're getting the word out and 
 that abused spouses are coming forward and reporting more 
 than they previously were, and we're helping them with the 
 transitional compensation."
 
 In his old job, Whelden used to tell battalion and brigade 
 commanders that the rate of substantiated spouse abuse is 
 about one in every 1,000 married couples. 
 
 "That means that on average every battalion commander has 
 about 10 in his battalion," he said. "Unsubstantiated cases 
 are a higher number than that, and those that never get 
 reported are a higher number than that. The bottom line is 
 that every unit in the Army, and in the military, no doubt, 
 has some level of spouse abuse, so it's important for 
 commanders to understand what programs are there."
 
 Whelden said he worries that most domestic violence victims 
 are unaware of the help available to them. "Control is a 
 major issue in many of abuse cases. The soldier-abuser 
 clearly doesn't want the spouse to know what's available, 
 so he keeps her insulated from the Army," he said. 
 
 "I always stress to the folks who offer services to family 
 members that those who need them most are always the 
 hardest to get to," Whelden said. "It's the 19-year-old 
 spouse in a trailer park 10 miles off post who may never 
 have set foot on post because she doesn't have 
 transportation, and her husband doesn't want her to see 
 what's available."
 
 Installations have different forms of outreach programs, he 
 said. Some are more robust than others. "Again, that's tied 
 to resourcing, and the more resourcing we have the more 
 capability we have," he said.
 
 Fort Carson, Colo., for example, sends a van into the local 
 community to distribute information about all the Army 
 Community Service programs. When a soldier comes in, the 
 unit finds out if they're married and where they live. If 
 off post, the van goes out to visit. 
 
 "They've got a great program, but it's only as good as 
 they're able to resource it," Whelden said. "Everybody 
 would like to have a more robust outreach program." 
 
 While the Army already has a good family advocacy program, 
 the general noted that there is a need to improve community 
 collaboration. At some posts, he said, a large percentage 
 of military personnel live off post. 
 
 "If an incident happens on post, the commander will know 
 about it the next morning because it comes on the MP 
 blotter," Whelden said. "If it happens off post, it's 
 anyone's guess as to whether we'll know about it."
 
 If civil authorities report domestic violence involving a 
 service member to military authorities, he said, "then we 
 can act." In some cases, the failure to share information 
 "tragically ended in death," he said.
 
 "When you 'peel the onion back,' to find out what led to 
 this," he said, "you find that had we known about the 
 problems ahead of time we could have intervened and done 
 something. The problem was, we just didn't know about it." 
 
 The general said he thinks the task force is going to 
 identify gaps such as this and others in the military's 
 response. 
 
 "My guess is that this task force will recommend increased 
 resourcing," Whelden said. "It will recommend some 
 requirements for commanders to enter into collaborative 
 agreements with civil authorities. That is not the 
 requirement in all services right now.
 
 "It's going to identify the changing demographics we've had 
 in our military whereby we have a lot of partner violence. 
 And by law, we can't provide services to partners who are 
 not ID card holders." 
 
 Overall, Whelden said, commanders do not get enough 
 education on domestic violence. "I reflect back to my own 
 times when I was a company commander 20 years ago and we 
 didn't have a process then. 
 
 "As I have grown up through the Army, I've seen how the 
 company commander is really the first line of defense," he 
 said. "Typically, they're the first to find out about the 
 problems within their units. So first response is always 
 important. Too often when you find a tragic case, you find 
 out the first response was not adequate. And that's why it 
 led to severe domestic violence or homicide."
 
 Unfortunately, he added, company commanders have too many 
 things in their kit bag already. "We ask that company 
 commander and that first sergeant to do an awful lot of 
 things. This is just one more thing we ask them to do. 
 Could we do more? Certainly we could, but there's only 24 
 hours in the day and there's only one commander and one 
 first sergeant."
 
 Times have changed and the military has to adapt to those 
 changes, Whelden concluded. More service members are 
 married. Many are single parents. "If you don't feel your 
 children are being properly cared for, that's another 
 stressor," he said. Consequently, the military dramatically 
 improved child care. ”We've done a good job to become the 
 benchmark for the nation in that program." 
 
 The Army is working to accredit its family advocacy 
 programs, he said, and some commands are offering financial 
 management programs aimed at reducing family stress. 
 
 "I'm pretty excited about where we're headed with financial 
 management programs, because those are the kinds of 
 programs that are preventive in nature. We're not going to 
 get rid of family violence completely, but there are 
 certain things we can do to reduce stress. Financial 
 management training is clearly one of them." 
 
 

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