In his final State of the Coast Guard address, Adm. Robert J. Papp Jr., commandant of the Coast Guard, said the agency is determined to not only punish Guardsmen convicted of sexual assault, but to prevent such assaults.
“I made a commitment to the president and Congress. I made a commitment to you and to the American people,” said Papp in remarks at Coast Guard headquarters on the St. Elizabeth West Campus in Washington, D.C. “We will eliminate sexual assault from our Coast Guard.”
Papp, who has been the commandant of the Coast Guard since the spring of 2010, continued: “We are taking aggressive steps to do this. We have established the Military Campaign Office to drive completion of the initiatives in our Service-wide plan to end sexual assault.”
The issue of sexual assaults in the Coast Guard has received public notice in the wake of a report released last year by the U.S. Department of Defense, which said the number of reports of sexual abuse in the armed services increased by 6 percent between 2012 and 2013 — from 3,192 to 3,374 reports.
Reports of sexual assault in the Coast Guard, which is a part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, have seen a steady increase from 65 in 2010 to 216 in 2013, according to Coast Guard statistics.
Papp noted that the Coast Guard is currently providing “additional training to our special agents and attorneys who investigate and prosecute these crimes and who advise our commanders.
“I continue to have faith in our military justice system, which is the best in the world,” said Papp. “And in our convening authorities whose diligent and deliberate judgment in every hard case makes it so.”
To that end Papp noted that the Coast Guard has committed an additional $5 million and 32 military and civilian billets. “This includes creation of our cadre of Special Victims Counsel — specially trained Coast Guard attorneys dedicated to assisting victims of sexual assault,” he added. “Their sole focus is representing the victim throughout the entire process of holding a perpetrator accountable, ensuring the victim has an advocate to speak for them.”
The 24th commandant of the Coast Guard, Papp has commanded four of the six Coast Guard cutters he has served in during his career. He is a 1975 graduate of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy.
In his address, Papp also lauded the growth of the Coast Guard fleet. “We have also received 148 of the 170 Response Boats-Medium we’ve ordered. They are the most capable response boats in our history.”
He also emphasized that this year the Coast Guard became the first military service to achieve a clean financial audit. Papp said that the Coast Guard provided a sound stewardship of taxpayer dollars, an “achievement that required an all hands effort across the service.”??
