Posted on: Thursday, April 1, 2004

Hickam team touring bases for survey of sex assault

Associated Press

FAIRBANKS, Alaska — Investigative teams from Hickam Air Force Base are visiting installations in South Korea, Japan, Alaska and Guam to review their sexual assault response plans, officials said.

The assessment is part of a service-wide directive that gauges Air Force response to rape allegations. It comes on the heels of a study that showed 92 reports of rapes among the 40,000 troops stationed throughout the Pacific Rim.

A team from Hickam visited Elmendorf and Eielson Air Force bases this week in Alaska, which ranked third in the study behind Korea- and Japan-based Air Force personnel for rape allegations.

Col. Dave Fadok, chief of the three-member team that visited the Alaska bases, said the goal is to identify successful practices and pinpoint areas for improvement.

"One incident of sexual assault, which by definition is a crime, is one incident too many," Fadok told the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner "and so it is an issue that we are addressing seriously."

The team will prepare a report by April 9 to be presented to senior Air Force officials, Fadok said.

The directive handed down by the secretary of the Air Force and Air Force chief of staff follows an investigation into complaints of how rape allegations were handled at the Air Force Academy.

The Army has ordered a similar survey after some women returning from deployments in the Middle East said they had been sexually assaulted by fellow soldiers.