WASHINGTON — A fractured command culture that included what an Air Force investigation called a "leadership gap" helped fuel a sex scandal at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland involving instructors who preyed on trainees.
The investigation, released Wednesday at the Pentagon, found leaders were insulated from training and that barriers "at nearly every level" limited the flow of information about instructor misconduct.
A shortage of instructors, who were starting their days before 3 a.m. and leaving for home at 9 p.m., along with a lack of unit oversight made for a toxic mix that set the stage for abuses.
One instructor, for example, had illicit encounters with 10 women in boot camp and now is serving a 20-year prison term.
Some were too immature or inexperienced to be in jobs that gave them so much power, the investigation concluded.
"In simple terms, what happened is we had a breakdown of good order and discipline among a relatively few but not insignificant number of our instructors," Gen. Edward Rice Jr., head of the Air Force's training command, told reporters.
"How this happened is attributable to weaknesses and gaps in the institutional safeguards that are designed to prevent this kind of behavior," he continued. "Why this happened is related to insufficient leadership oversight concerning preventing and detecting these gaps and weaknesses, and an inadequate level of self-policing by our instructors."
The Air Force has investigated 25 basic training instructors and has identified 49 airmen, all women, as victims — a number up slightly from last week.
Rice earlier this year tapped Maj. Gen. Margaret Woodward to lead the investigation that encompassed 215 in-depth interviews and a survey of 18,000 people.
Rice said he would implement all but one of 46 recommendations she made. That one, trimming a week out of basic training, is still under review. Air Force basic training was extended from 6 1/2 to 8 1/2 weeks a few years ago as part of a boot camp makeover.
Woodward's 180-page report stressed that only 3 percent of Lackland's instructor corps precipitated the scandal, which goes back to 2008.
Her team, which spent time at Lackland and an Army basic training post at Fort Jackson, S.C., among other places, found a command culture in which top commanders and first-line supervisors were too disconnected from instructors.
The instructors in some cases closed ranks, building loyalties to each other that mattered more than Air Force core values.
Asked if that, more than anything else, explained what went wrong at Lackland, Rice said: "I'm reluctant to say that more than anything is the contributing factor. I firmly do believe, again, that it's a combination of elements here."
Leaders had to be "vigilant to the formation of subcultures" and aware of their positive and negative natures, he said in an interview after the briefing.
Woodward's report made 22 findings, among them:
Trainers had little or no supervisory experience. To change that, the Air Force will require most instructors to hold the rank of technical sergeant. Just more than half the trainers at Lackland today are staff sergeants, but fewer of them will serve in the future.
Rather than work on what the report called "a culture of respect" to lead trainees, inexperienced and sometimes immature instructors "relied too heavily on a culture of fear."
A "leadership gap" made things worse. The Air Force removed operations officers from the training squadrons between fiscal years 2007 and 2009, leaving just one officer to supervise a squadron of up to 1,000 NCOs and airmen. The report said the gap should be fixed as soon as possible.
Punishment for wrongdoers wasn't evenly applied. The investigation found that instructor supervisors often were too lenient in some misconduct cases. An appearance of inconsistent punishment caused people to think that "unprofessional behavior would be tolerated by at least some in authority."
Reporting barriers and poor detection methods helped create "an environment where trainees were fearful of reporting instances of sexual assault, sexual harassment, unprofessional relationships, maltreatment, and maltraining," the report stated, "because they were afraid of (instructor) reprisal, were fearful of punishment for their own misconduct, and in some cases, did not believe action would be taken against a perpetrator."
Among the recommendations, some of which are already being implemented, were:
Add more sexual assault response counselors to basic training.
Immediately fill 508 authorized instructor positions, with one female trainer on each team.
Rice noted that a squadron commander and group commander at Lackland have been relieved and disciplinary action was taken against six others, but he could not elaborate because of ongoing proceedings.
Rice was optimistic that the report's recommendations would bring lasting improvements and said he did not need new legislation to fix problems on the base.
"I need to make sure I'm holding people accountable for properly using the tools that are available to them, and in my judgment that would be the more effective way to move forward," he said.
However, an advocacy group for women in the military countered that commanders cannot be trusted to investigate sexual assault cases and said decisions concerning those incidents should be made by an independent organization.
"Absolute command discretion, the risk to their own careers, personal bias, a low regard for the importance of the impact on the victim too often leads the command to sweep the problem under the rug," said Nancy Parrish, founder of Protect Our Defenders.
sigc@express-news.net
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