SHARP trailblazers reflect on program's start

By Master Sgt. Kap Kim, 10th Mountain Division PAO NCOICApril 23, 2015

Fort Drum's SHARP leaders
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Fort Drum's SHARP leaders
2 / 3 Show Caption + Hide Caption – The 10th Mountain Division (LI) Sexual Harassment / Assault Response and Prevention program team poses in the new SHARP Resource Center at Fort Drum. From left are Maj. Charity O'Dell, division SHARP program manager; Sgt. 1st Class Regina Swint, form... (Photo Credit: U.S. Army) VIEW ORIGINAL
Fort Drum's SHARP Resource Center
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FORT DRUM, N.Y. (April 23, 2015) -- Since Fort Drum's Sexual Harassment / Assault Response and Prevention program began in 2012, it has evolved to educate Soldiers, Civilians and Families on being accountable for solving problems and to act as an advocate for victims of harassment and assault through interagency coordination.

Today, the Fort Drum SHARP continues its quality of services with the goal of giving confidence back to victims to inspire them to report incidents and ultimately restore resiliency.

The Department of Defense and Department of the Army, along with local commanders' initiatives, have helped to shape the program throughout its short history, but it was a small group of SHARP trailblazers who added their innovative ideas and gave so much of their time and even their personal experiences to not only help make the program better but to regain the trust lost during harassment and assault cases.

By the time the 10th Mountain Division SHARP office was formed, it was more than eight years after former Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld ordered a review of the Department of Defense's process for treatment and care of victims of sexual assault in the military. Later in 2004, DOD assembled the Care for Victims of Sexual Assault Task Force that later recommended the need to establish a single point of accountability for sexual assault policy with the department.

The following year, the DOD presented a comprehensive policy on prevention and response to sexual assault. The policy provided a foundation for the DOD to improve prevention of sexual assault, significantly enhance support to victims and increase reporting and accountability.

Years later, the task force and the military services collaborated to implement the policy and provided instruction to more than 1,200 sexual assault response coordinators, chaplains, lawyers and law enforcement officials to a cadre of trained first responders. Since then, more than one million service members have received training, and sexual assault program offices have been established at all major installations.

Through the years, the program has allowed service members and Family Members to come forward and seek help. An average of approximately 19,000 reports were filed each year for the last four years.

Yet, that stat, along with others including the number of cases not going to trial and the conviction rate, led U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.) to introduce Military Justice Improvement Act in May 2013, which she has tried to get passed as a law. Among many other items, it would reform procedures for determinations to proceed to trial by courts martial for certain offenses under the Uniform Code of Military Justice and for other purposes. The movement gained traction after the release of the 2012 documentary, "The Invisible War."

Two years before that, the Army had started the arduous process of training victim advocates such as Sgt. 1st Class Jennifer Anne Stafford, who would serve as one in her unit, Operations Company, Headquarters and Headquarters Battalion, 10th Mountain Division (LI), and later during her deployment to Kandahar, Afghanistan, at Regional Command-East in support of Operation Enduring Freedom 10-11.

When the division returned from that deployment, Stafford took the SHARP 80-hour course and later sought out the sexual assault response coordinator, or SARC, position. She joined the team in October 2012.

Years after her time as one of the original four Sexual Harassment / Assault Response and Prevention coordinators at the 10th Mountain Division (LI), Stafford still teared up as she looked through Facebook photos of a Soldier and her Family.

"That case caused a lot of heartache, and there were a lot of nights I couldn't sleep," she recalled. "I stayed up thinking, 'what could I have done better?'"

Yet, the tears weren't from the case itself, but rather, from the new Family Member her former victim and her husband have now and how they eventually have moved on years after her assaulter was convicted of rape and confined.

"Seeing them now with their child … that helps me heal," she said. "We are still very close."

Stafford, a chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear noncommissioned officer, was one of the four-member team who helped give the 10th Mountain Division and Fort Drum SHARP program a face during its first year in 2012. She teamed up with Maj. Charity O'Dell, a UH-60 Black Hawk pilot; Sgt. 1st Class Regina Swint, an administrative NCO, and Sgt. 1st Class Chylciale Washington, a firefighter. Together, they were trailblazers in a program that was years in the making.

The motley crew, armed with their 40-hour Unit Victim Advocate and 80-hour Sexual Assault Response Coordinator courses, the Department of Defense directives and their new title, immediately started taking harassment and assault cases from both the Equal Opportunity and Family Advocacy Program. Stafford remembered the hurdles they all had to face in the beginning.

"Information flow was a big problem back then," she said.

The team continued to press through and found new and better solutions. Through time, as the program received more support from the top, they received the access they needed to properly help their clients and their subordinate SHARP offices.

For Sgt. 1st Class Kristina Smith, who served as a SARC for the former 3rd Brigade Combat Team during 2013 and 2014, the Division SHARP staff would prove to be helpful in so many ways, especially moments when she had to do the job by alone and needed a "sounding board." Smith currently serves as a SARC in the Division SHARP office.

"It's a lot to do by yourself," she said. "Whenever we had questions or concerns or whenever there were members of the chain of command who weren't always receptive, Maj. O'Dell was there to help."

O'Dell, a UH-60 Black Hawk pilot, was asked to head the new program by then Brig. Gen. Walter E. Piatt, who was 10th Mountain Division's deputy commanding general for support. She was at the National Training Center, Calif., where she was one of the battle captains on the division staff.

"I didn't even know what SHARP was," she confessed, but the program would become the greatest passion of her career.

Swint then joined the young major, who was relieved to have someone with an administrative background. With the addition of Stafford and Washington, the team began the process of educating commanders, community leaders and just about every agency in and around Fort Drum and eventually set the stage for the current SHARP actors to work with agencies like the Staff Judge Advocate, the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division, Victim Witness Liaison and many others.

"We don't do anything but network between the different agencies," O'Dell said. "I mean, a major and a few sergeants just couldn't have done it alone."

Through their first year, O'Dell and her team knew that they had to get away from the Division Headquarters and have a place where all their clients could come, and through Army directives, all installations had to begin looking for resource centers.

At the end of 2013, O'Dell and her team started looking for real estate around Fort Drum. They found a small building on South Post, and it was then that people like Jeremy Wildhaber and Matthew "Mick" Kopchinski of the Single Soldier Housing Office worked with the Fort Drum Garrison came in and completely flipped the abandoned building.

"I noticed it was in bad shape," Wildhaber said.

The SHARP Resource Center, as it is called today, is a center where all agencies' members such as Joanne Armstrong, the victim witness liaison, and Special Agents Michael Stankovich and Andrew Mosley come to conduct their interviews. It is the "one-stop shop" that O'Dell and her team once envisioned.

O'Dell said her last three years have been all worth it, and the growing pains and minor struggles pales in comparison to what the program has become.

"I have 700 combat flight hours, and I did a lot of cool things in the Army, but the thing I'm most proud of is the SHARP program and what we were able to do with the support of the command and all the agencies," she said.

Related Links:

Fort Drum and 10th Mountain Division

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