 All right. Good morning. It is Thursday, April 15th, and we are here this morning for an annual visit from the National Guard on so that they can report on their sexual assaults awareness and prevention report and the report on the sexual assault in the Guard. This is a program that started some years ago now and through the initiative of former representative Geno Sullivan and the General Assembly. The National Guard has been coming into this committee and or a joint committee with the government operations of the Senate to discuss the report. This year it takes on a different bent because there's been some changes in the leadership structure. I think that's going to be reflected in some of what we're hearing today. We've given ourselves about 90 minutes to hear this report. We'll let the Guard do the report and then we'll go to questions after that. Please just let's welcome General Greg Knight, Adjutant General Greg Knight, and his team. Welcome, General. Morning, Mr. Chair. Morning, committee. Appreciate the opportunity to be here and understand certainly the challenges with our COVID-19 session, but nonetheless, this is good information to share and very important. As you mentioned, Mr. Chair, this is an annual report. This was initiated some years ago and in doing so, and I mentioned this to the Joint Guard and Women's Caucus. Vermont has become an example for other states. I speak with my counterparts and they're very interested and curious about how we do things. That's become a sharing of best practices. There are a number of states that have followed our lead on this. Today we're going to present the annual Vermont National Guard report on sexual harassment and sexual assault. This year a little bit different with the format. We've tried to align our information with the desires of the committee, make it a little more readable, user-friendly. The agenda report we've included as an addendum to the report on sexual harassment and sexual assault. So I've got a number of folks on today. I may miss somebody. I've got Ms. Christina Fontaine, who's our sexual assault response coordinator for the Army National Guard Serena Fernari, who is our wing sexual assault response coordinator. Nikki Sorrell is one of our victim advocates. Major Kirk Cafferlin, who's our judge advocate general, Colonel Diane Roberts, who's our Joint Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer. And very quickly, a quick introduction, so you can actually put a face to the name, our Provost-Marshall team, Major Jessica Norris, who's a Provost-Marshall, and Mass Sergeant Ken Hawkins, who's the Deputy Provost-Marshall. We can talk again offline a whole lot to discuss here. A lot of great progress made by putting this team in place. I'd like to very quickly walk through some initiatives and actions that you may be unaware of. I did share some of these with the Guard and Women's Caucus earlier. I'll be very brief on these. And again, if it's the desire of you, Mr. Chair or the committee, I can follow up via email with an attachment explaining in some detail what these things are and why they're important for us as an organization. First and foremost, Private Daniel Blodgett, who was accused of sexual assault in February, is no longer a member of the Vermont National Guard. Again, Provost-Marshall team has been established. I put them on orders, meaning we have them in essence on active duty with us for a period of two months to get immediately as some of the initiatives we have in place to address the topics we're talking about today. Based on some recent information, I'm addressing a gap in the information flow between civil law enforcement and the Guard. Historically, we've had a great relationship with civil law enforcement. But what doesn't happen routinely is a communication when a Guard member is arrested or charged with a crime in Vermont. So I've sent a letter to Commissioner Shirling, and he in turn shared that with the heads of all law enforcement agencies in Vermont, to ask a question of somebody being arrested, are you currently serving in the Vermont National Guard? That in turn should prompt communication to our Provost-Marshall team and then allow us to much more expeditiously address adjudication on the military side. Aligned with that, I don't know what I don't know. Provost-Marshall, I've asked this team to the degree they can to initiate some research into looking into background checks on those who don't have a recent background check because of a security clearance renewal or a mobilization. If somebody comes on state active duty or they're mobilized for federal mission, that's part of the in-processing. Still remains a number of folks within the Guard that have not had an update to a background check. But I don't know yet Major Norris is working through this with local law enforcement to see what we can do to get at folks who have not, for instance, reported. They've been arrested for criminal activity. We have a duty to report. It doesn't always happen. This is not just Vermont. This is a nationwide. I brought this up last week with my counterparts in Little Rock, Arkansas at an adjunct general conference. This is, again, us leading the way in how we approach these things. We're publishing what we call the status of discipline to the force. This is something that we've never done as a Guard. Some other states do this. In essence, it's our version of a day in court. Our members don't know what happens with adjudication of those charged with a military offense, whether they're discharged, reduced in rank, forfeiture of pay. To me, that serves as a deterrent. I've seen this in climate surveys, so we're going to continue doing this. We're going to put it out quarterly and make sure that our members understand there is closure and there are consequences for those who choose to act poorly. We've published apps for both the Army and Air National Guard, and these are not specific to the National Guard or Uniform Service. Anybody can download these apps. What's important on the app, one thing that's apparent to anybody working in this field, certainly to me in this position, one in five sexual assaults get reported. There's a fear of coming forward and sharing information, and that is not acceptable. One of the ways we're getting at this is having within the app is a tile called Reach Up. You click on the tile and you can view anybody, military or otherwise, can furnish information to the State Equal Employment Manager, the Provost Marshall, the Inspector General, the Equal Opportunity Officer, or to me, and that at least gives us a place to start if we have somebody again acting contrary to our standards. And we're interviewing on Friday, actually, tomorrow, interviewing with the DoD Interim Review Committee, and this is part of the Secretary of Defense Ordered 90 Day Review policy and our approach to sexual harassment and sexual assault. So that's important for us. We were asked for by name, and as I mentioned to the caucuses, this is less about me. This is due to the efforts of the soldiers and members of our organization that we have working in this field in the innovation that they're bringing to drive change. So in turn, I share this, I'm on a General Officer Advisory Council. Again, Vermont was asked for with one other state to participate in this because of what we're doing. Again, I believe we're leading the way. And this is going to drive fundamental change within the National Guard. And of course, Friday, we'll certainly be able to inform the Department of Defense. And again, not just me speaking, it'll be members actually working here and talking to what works, what doesn't work in areas that we need to focus. For instance, a violence prevention integrator that I've asked for as part of a pilot through National Guard Bureau because another underreported crime is certainly in the military is that of domestic abuse. So I was raised in that environment. I understand the dynamic that goes with it, but we need to get at how we affect those behaviors. So having a violence integration specialist here would certainly help with that. And I will mention that tomorrow to the DOD team. I don't know that we'll get to gender report today. Again, we can set up another time if the session schedule allows for it. I believe we've made remarkable progress when it comes to gender equity in this organization. Again, we're leading the way. I think I've mentioned to the committee before the Vermont Army National Guard was the first guard state to open a combat arms battalion to the recruitment of women historically two-thirds of the organization because of the combat arms alignment are not open to the recruitment of women. But we've changed that. And following that, now we are one company, one small unit away from opening the entire brigade combat team to the recruitment of women. And the only thing required there is one woman leader in the rank of sergeant or above to join that unit. And then we will have two-thirds of the organization open that historically haven't been to the recruitment of women. It's going to be that significant. We just hired our second female F-35 fighter pilot. She'll be going to training soon. And then again, it's in the report. There's some subtleties there that won't be reflected. And again, probably worthy of another follow-up specifically to gender. But the growth of women in leadership positions in both the air and army, it's pretty significant and it's a remarkable change in the past two years. So we're looking forward to continuing that trend. And I certainly look forward to working with all the stakeholders in this, legislatively, the Vermont Commission on Women and other entities outside the guard to help us continue to grow opportunities for women in the organization. So with that, sir, I will stop. And I'll ask Major Norris and the Sergeant Officer to step out and I'll bring in Ms. Christina Fontaine, who's going to walk us through the sexual harassment and sexual assault report. And I work for Major Norris who is the Pro-O-Martial. It's a great privilege to have been selected for this position. It's the first ever in Vermont Guard. We are a dual service. We provide services both through the air and the army side. I've been a law enforcement officer since 1999, full-time with the middle-ranked police department. I'm currently currently a training coordinator and instructor with the Vermont Police Academy. We've had a couple weeks of being by firehose and trying to get smart and learning very quickly about a lot of different both opportunities, whose position, as well as how we can support the Agenda General and all the efforts and initiatives that have been started. We're working closely with both federal, state, and local agencies to make sure that the lines of communication are both open and available so that as we find out later on this discussion, that information is free-flowing and that we can use it as appropriately as possible from our side. Thank you very much. And Ron, I don't know if you got it up front, that Master Sergeant Ken Hawkins, I had it muted. Great. Thank you. Christina, welcome. Thank you. So, as I said, I'm Christina Fontaine. I'm the Joint Force Headquarters Sexual Assault Response Coordinator for the Vermont National Guard. I've been working in the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office since 2016. I started as the victim advocate coordinator and in 2019 was selected as the SART. So, this is my second time actually presenting myself, but I've attended the report for the last four years. So, I want to thank you all for making time. I know in a COVID world, it's a little bit different than the norm where we're in person and we're able to have a lot more back and forth conversation, but I think this is important and we're definitely happy to be able to present this information to you. So, our report is divided up into four main chapters, which is the executive summary, our reports, our organizational assessment, and then the addendum. And as General Knight stated, this year the addendum also includes the FY20 gender report, but today we're going to focus mainly on the first three chapters and we can refer to the addendum as needed. And that's how that today is going to go. So, this report looks at fiscal year 20, which goes from October 1st of 2019 through September 30th of 2020. And during that time, the National Guard consisted of approximately 3,300 members and approximately 1,100 of those were full-time. The rest of them were traditional drilling members, so that's the one weekend a month and two weeks in the summer or in out of the year. In fiscal year 20, the Vermont National Guard Sexual Assault Response Coordinator tracked three reports, which pertained to incidents that occurred in previous fiscal years. Five of our reports were Vermont National Guard service members as the accused. One case involved a civilian survivor and the rest of the cases involved Vermont National Guard service members as the survivor. In addition to that, the Equal Opportunity and Diversity Office processed four informal resolution requests and no service members filed reports relating to discrimination based on sexual orientation. And so before we go further into the report, I want to start off with going over a few definitions because there is a difference between the military and the state's definitions of sexual assault. So we've differentiated what those two definitions are and when we're talking about the military's definition of sexual assault, it encompasses five categories, which is rape, sexual assault, aggravated sexual contact, abusive sexual contact, enforceable sodomy, as well as attempts to commit these acts. And if you want further information on those, you can look at page one or page 15 of the report. So the Vermont statue includes felony crimes of sexual assault, aggravated sexual assault, and other crimes related to minors. There is a newer state statute, Chapter 13, Section 2601A, which established a misdemeanor and that similarly aligns with the military's definition of abusive sexual contact. So this edition of the statute brought the state's definition closer to the DoD's definition, but the DoD still does provide a bit of a broader language, which allows us to take action on incidents that might not be taken in by civilian law enforcement. So when a survivor comes forward, they're allowed the option to choose between a restricted report or an unrestricted report. Regardless of which report option they choose, the survivor will have access to counseling, medical, legal, and advocacy services. The main difference between the two options is that a restricted report remains confidential and an unrestricted report will involve an investigation by either local law enforcement or the Office of Complex Investigations, which is through the National Guard Bureau. The Office of Complex Investigations is a team of judge advocates or those with a law enforcement background that are trained specifically in investigating incidents of sexual assault. And if we go to local law enforcement or OCI is up to the survivor's preference, TAG is the one who actually will submit the request to OCI if that is what the survivor would like to participate in. The survivor also has the opportunity to decline to participate in either of the investigations and we fully support them whichever way that they choose. So there's also a subcategory under the restricted report that is called open with limited. And so this means that there's no official reporting document signed by a survivor. The most common case where this is seen is where there's a civilian victim with a military perpetrator because we can't provide services to civilian survivors unless they are dependent of a military member over the age of 18. The other scenario where this would happen is if there's a third party report. So somebody within the unit learns of a sexual assault and they go to their command or to the sapper office and officially file that report on behalf of the survivor who does not want to participate in a report. And then when we're talking about sexual harassment, that's a form of sex-based discrimination that involves unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct that is sexual in nature. For more information on the military's definition of sexual harassment, you can look on page 21 of the report. And also later in the report you'll see reference to formal and informal resolution requests. Both of these are reviewed by the National Guard Bureau following an investigation of unlawful discrimination by an agreed party. The primary difference is associated with the mandatory timelines for formal or informal requests. And if the complaint is made in writing or not in writing. So that was the brief overview of the executive summary. Now we're going to move on to chapter two, which starts on page three and that's where we get into a lot of our reporting information. So the National Defense Authorization Act from FY 11 required that the Secretary of Defense submit an annual report of sexual assaults that involve members of the armed services during the preceding year. So all of the reports that we are showing in here come from our Defense Sexual Assault Incident Database from FY 20. So the graph that is on page three represents each of the reports that we received in FY 20. So the color denotes the type of assault that was reported and then each call and report represents the different report types. And the red circles tell you if it was a Vermont National Guard Service member who was the reported offender. Any incident that doesn't have a red circle means that the incident was one where the offender was outside of the Vermont National Guard. And one thing that we have on here that's different than in other years is that we have one that's an RR to URR. That means that was one that was reported as restricted originally. And then the survivor came forward and decided to go unrestricted to get that investigation. So that's one of our other benefits that we have that restricted reporting option is the survivor can get the counseling services that they need, the medical services that they need. And then when they feel ready to come forward and get an investigation, they can go unrestricted at any time. So the sexual assault prevention response program began in 2010. And other reports received in FY 20. Three of the incidents occurred between FY 10 and FY 19. And three of the incidents occurred within FY 2020. So if we look at page four, there's two graphs on this page that are included to address requests from past legislative reports to show historical data. The graphs show all of the reports that we've received since the inception of the program in 2010. If you're looking at the graph on the top of the page, that shows the information based on when the reports were received. And then the second graph shows when the incidents occurred. So any of the reports that occurred prior to 2010 are reports that have come in for people making historical reports because there's now a program for them to come in and get that support. On page five, we have three other charts. And the first two charts are to provide additional information on our restricted and unrestricted reports that we received in FY 20. For instance, the top line is case number 00155. And that shows you that the incident occurred in 2020. The survivor who is a female was serving in the Vermont National Guard at the time of the incident as an 01 or the first rank in the officer track. The reported offender was a male who was also serving in the Vermont National Guard and he was an 03 or a captain, which is the third rank in the officer track. The reported incident in this one was rape. An LOD or a line of duty determination is a formal process that affirms that an injury was occurred while in a duty status. Most often, this is used for the VA to determine a disability rating. This survivor has chosen not to pursue an LOD at this time, but she is able to come back at any time to go through that process and receive an LOD. In addition, we always provide referrals out to civilian agencies or the VA's or vet centers. For example, Vermont network programs, depending on what county that person lives in. And so both of those first two charts on page five are laid out that way. And then on the third chart, that shows a summary of pending unrestricted cases or cases that have closed since the last time that we provided this report. So the first case, for example, is a carryover from FY17. And it is important to reiterate when looking at this case that the Vermont National Guard has to refer unrestricted reports out to outside entities for investigation first. The survivor chooses whether or not to participate in an investigation that is led by civilian law enforcement or if they want to participate with OCI. So all of those reports that are on that page at the bottom of page five are laid out in that way. The case number, when the incident occurred, what the allegation was and then what the disposition was. So in the first, the first two incidents on that page are awaiting process. They're not completely closed yet. And then the last three incidents have closed since the FY19 report. Can we talk through the acronyms for the disposition? If you want to. Mr. Chair, very quickly, if we look at the disposition, we live in an acronym world. I want to make clear to the committee. So NGBOB is the National Guard Bureau, Office of Complex Investigation, is the OCI. But a GOMAR is the General Officer Memorandum of Reprimand. Wohfer is a withdrawal of federal recognition. And essentially, you're removing the federal recognition of somebody as a commissioned officer. And then the OTH is an other than honorable discharge. I think that covers those acronyms. Thanks, sir. Great. Thank you. In FY20, we did not receive any reports from our members serving in a federal Title X status. However, that could change for FY21 because we do have members who are deployed on a Title X status. But in FY20, we did not receive any of those. And so now we're moving on to the sexual harassment portion of the report, which starts on page six. So as stated at the beginning, our Equal Opportunity and Diversity Office received four informal requests for sexual harassment. And that chart is showed at the beginning of page seven. You can look and see if there was incidents, informal requests, and formal requests. And this goes back for the last five years. So you can see from FY16 to FY20 how many of those types of reports we saw. In this page, it's also delineated by color for which fiscal year it occurred in. And then in the middle of page seven, there is the chart that's very similar to how the sexual assaults were laid out, where it has the case number, the incident year, the survivor, and the accused, and a description of the incident, as well as what happened, what the disposition was. On this case, the first three are finished. The last one on that page was pending investigation as of when this report was submitted in January. In FY20, there were no formal resolution requests for sexual harassment. And again, that just delineates between if the report was made in writing or not, and if the timeline is associated with that process. And then again, on page eight, another part of this report is to testify on if there was any discrimination based on sexual orientation. And in FY20, we did not have any informal or formal complaints of discrimination based on sexual orientation. So now we're moving on to the organizational assessment, which begins on page nine. The Vermont National Guard has developed an assessment strategy based on three measures of effectiveness or lines of effort that are pursued through measures of performance or training events. This is based on the military's information operations doctrine. And it's similar to many public health initiatives that are rolled out on the civilian side. These areas are designed specifically to target protective factors and risk factors for sexual violence that have been identified by the Center for Disease Control. We have a full list of what those protective and risk factors are that the CDC recognized on page 21. So the first measure of effectiveness that the Vermont National Guard has is to inform service members on how to create a climate where all members feel valued in order to promote well-being, connectedness, readiness, and lethality. So on the bottom of the page, you can see an example of the lines of effort, who the target audience is, and what the risk or protective factor is that is being addressed. On the top line, the effort is individual mandatory training. The target audience is every Vermont National Guard service member. And then the protective and risk factors are labeled with a plus sign or a minus sign. So for this one, empathy and concern is the protective factor, and the risk factors that are being targeted are the ones that are with the minus sign. So for example, the lack of institutional support. The second measure of effectiveness is protecting survivors of sexual assault in the Vermont National Guard by providing a trauma-informed response from initial report through the resolution in order to promote survivor confidence and resilience. The chart relating to measure of effectiveness number two lists the efforts and an assessment of what the effort entailed. So the first effort was our lean-in circles, and a description of what the lean-in circles are are on the right. The other thing that we wanted to highlight is the SAFR Council. That's a group of survivors who meet on a quarterly basis to look at our policy updates, talk about current happenings within the Guard, talk about current happenings within the world at large relating to sexual assault and things that we can do to better our program for new survivors who are coming in and making reports to make sure that we're providing the best care and the best response that we can. And then also the catch program. The catch program is something that's relatively new. It gives individuals who come forward and make a restricted report the option to anonymously name their offender or give identifying features if they don't know the name of their perpetrator. And then there's a group of special specially trained investigators at NCIS who will go through and try to make matches. And if there is a match somebody else names the same perpetrator, the both survivors are given a notification that somebody else has named the same offender. And this gives the survivors a chance to know I'm not alone in this and decide at that point if maybe they would like to go unrestricted because now they're not alone. They know that somebody else has also experienced this. And the survivor debrief with TAG. That's something that we've had a lot of great experience with individuals who come forward and maybe they just want leadership to be aware of shortcomings that led to their assault or they just want leadership to hear their voice and to know what they've experienced and how it continues to impact their service. We sit down with General Knight and it usually provides great outcomes. And then General Knight usually follows up with the survivors after our meetings for a couple of months to let them know that they're still on his mind and he's still trying to make things right for them as best as we can. So then the third measure of effectiveness is to engage the Vermont National Guard sexual assault and legal systems to ensure that program and offender accountability in order to promote justice, efficiency and effectiveness. The chart is laid out in the same way that MOE2 was. The effort is in the first line. On this chart is the domestic violence council and the description is listed on the right. So the Vermont domestic violence council is the statutorily required group that meets usually at the pavilion building, although during COVID we've been just meeting through Zoom. But the joint force headquarters and back both attend those meetings. And to ensure that the efforts are accurately working, we measure the program through multiple assessment efforts. Those are described on page 12 and 13. So through our inspection programs, units must demonstrate that they are meeting certain regulatory and state-based guidance. Currently we have 26 credentialed advocates. Nine also are identified and in different phases of credentialing. When we credential an advocate, there's a background screening that happens here within state and then it also goes up to National Guard Bureau to do more of a national level screening. And then they attend a 80-hour course and then once they come back, we submit all of their training to the National Organization for Victims Assistance, which is a civilian credentialing board that also credentials the military victim advocates. So then we also have an organizational climate survey. This is a commander's management tool that proactively assesses climate areas that can impact the organization's mission. Commanders at squadron on the airside and company level on the Army side or higher are required to conduct an initial assessment within six months of taking command and then every 24 months after. So it is mandatory for commanders to administer the assessment but it's optional for service members to actually participate in that. So commanders must offer that choice but we don't force anybody to answer the questions. The DEOX is another example of that which is the Defense Equal Opportunity Climate Survey. It poses 56 questions to measure 21 factors, nine are organizational effectiveness factors, six are equal opportunity and fair treatment factors and then six are sexual assault factors. We also have the unit risk inventory which assesses each soldier's risky behaviors such as alcohol and drug use, delinquency, sexual risk taking and suicidal behavior. The Center for Disease Control has identified 12 risk factors associated with sexual violence and of those 12, the unit risk inventories happen to measure four and because there's a greater than 60% participation rate from the Vermont Army National Guard, the unit risk inventory provides a confidence rate of over 98%. The trend analysis over the last four years can be seen on the bottom of page 12 and you can see that we're moving in the right direction. People are willing to answer these honestly because they are anonymous and then finally our program provides regular updates to senior leaders and key stakeholders to provide statistical data as well as identified best practices and initiated anticipated initiatives that are coming up between one quarter to the next and throughout the fiscal year. These briefings serve as an opportunity to ensure that there's understanding throughout leadership on what our team is doing as well as to hold the programs accountable for their efforts and then as stated the addendum contains more detail into the history, the definitions, the evolution of and focus of our programs and it's provided here for your reference as well as the gender report is in that this year. Pending any further questions, this concludes my portion of the report. Great, thank you Christina. Let's move right to and thank you General Knight for for teeing this up and for for getting us off. Let's move to, is it Nikki? I'm noticing by your phone or Nicole Sorrell. All right, sorry I did have to unmute. Yeah, I am here as the victim advocate coordinator in the office. I work alongside Christina. I wasn't prepared to speak actually I wasn't sure exactly what my brief is supposed to be on other than I support the team. We're doing a lot of great work with Sappam this month. I can certainly answer any questions or if Christina or General Knight had something specific they wanted me to speak to, I'm happy to do that. Nikki, if you have the opportunity would you I know some members of the committee who were on the caucus had the information from our earlier briefing but talk a little bit to the those in the committee who haven't heard it about the the pledge that that you've put together for the Vermont Guard. Sure, I'd be happy to. Yeah, so April is Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month as we were sort of starting to decide what are we going to do especially in a COVID world. I started doing some research and found a national movement Violence Against Women that had a pledge that people would sign saying that they're going to start believing people when they come forward to report a sexual assault. As General Knight said in the beginning only about one in five people come forward to report and a lot of that there's a multitude of reasons why they don't but a lot of that does have to do with the fear of not being believed and not feeling supported. So I read all about this national movement and thought we can do that here. Let's really tailor that to the Guard and I created a pledge. We sort of decided a little bit arbitrarily that we were going to name April 7th moving forward was going to be start believing day and we put out this pledge to leadership the different units and said you know April 7th take this pledge and then all month long keep taking it. Show people show our organization and show you know the nation really that we're going to support. We are an organization that supports sexual assault survivors and the pledge is really taken off. It is definitely more than I think we thought it could even be. General Knight was one of the first people to take it. A lot of most of the leadership team at the Joint Force headquarters took it. I took this great video this past week and I went out to several different units and I know Christina did her unit as well where we have full units that have just taken this pledge and are standing in front of a camera saying I believe and it's just such a powerful. It's a powerful thing to do in general and then to see the reflection back in some of these pictures and these videos and just the conversations that have been stemmed from it has just been really powerful and showing the commitment and the desire that our organization has to do to do the best they can and show that you know we're an organization that cares and it's it's been a real we've had a really wonderful response from it. Thanks Nikki. So Mr. Chair one thing that came out of this I went over to our regional training institute this past through a weekend where I believe the entirety of the regiment that was at least at drill signed their pledge and there was I've spoken with some of my counterparts in other states and some were questioning why we were doing this and they conflated taking a pledge to believe a survivor that there was somehow a nexus to a presumption of guilt for the alleged perpetrator. I think if you apply the numbers and Nikki you can validate this if I'm off base 98% of the allegations made were substantiated and two not to say that they weren't true there could be any number of reasons there wasn't evidence to support. I think that's significant I think that's vastly different than a presumption of guilt you pledge to believe and the system as adjudicated will figure out where the truth lies but the number of 98% coming back substantiated speaks volumes to me so I felt very comfortable taking a pledge. That's great thank you Nikki. The notion of the one in five is something that continues it's societal it's not specific to the guard but it is something that I think is um I think that's something that is is really important to try to create a safe space um so that people can come forward you know low numbers doesn't mean that it's not happening and that's important um I'm really glad that you acknowledge that. Yeah. Representative Toronto quick question before we move on to the next witness. Uh sure I just want to ask I think maybe General might um you touched on um uh fear of reporting and um it's nothing new in the military that oftentimes the chain of command is not responsive to complaints so my question is are we getting through to company commanders and and platoon sergeants to correct this or to reinforce their action uh the mandatory action that they must take when they get a re-receiver complaint of any kind? Yes sir I think we are there's there's some things um that that I see that that are transparent to you and the organization. Some of the discussions that I'm watching our young leaders have unsolicited I didn't prompt the discussion they're talking about it um and I've never seen this level of engagement before uh and again as look we can order I mentioned this the other day to the caucuses but we can order training I can mandate you be there but I can't make you listen um but when I see three young company commanders again unsolicited having a professional conversation between the three of them on how they get at it at their level and they're using terms like look we're the beacon of professionalism we have to be the representative of this organization that's an indicator to me that we're actually making progress um across the organization now that being said the other part of your question there is is are we reporting and then this is something that again I addressed the other day I don't believe I'm quite convinced actually we're not giving our our up and coming leaders the education and professional development they need to address things like this if I looked at the Fort Hood report for instance one of the significant shortcomings that permeates that is the lack of understanding of the differences between a restricted report and unrestricted report the timelines that go with those and what you're supposed to do as a leader what your obligations are so rather than engaging in these these large once every few years professional developments we're going to go to doing this quarterly it becomes very targeted and getting it specifically the things we're talking about here and giving them the tools um how do they do non-judicial punishment how do they administer military punishment for a military offense how do they take rank how can they make a member forfeit pay how can they discharge them properly uh so I've been in this organization this organization 31 years and nobody ever sat me down and said here's how you do it so I recognize that as a shortcoming I think we understand we understand that as an organization but that's a direction we're going is and again I share best practices with other states we're borrowing some some some programs from the Nevada Guard they've actually they stood up a basically a Guard Academy so we'll try to tailor something like that and make it feasible with a timeline but I believe an hour hour and a half once a quarter we'll very quickly get us where we need to go it's good to hear General thank you very much thank you sir Representative Murphy thank you Chair Stevens I um hope this is the time to ask this question in looking at the chart on page 12 and 13 with the Center for Disease Disease Control Risk Factors associated with sexual violence I I'm very pleased to see the progress being made on on all of those on page 12 but as you flip to 13 it did catch my eye in reading this that the suicidal ideation as well as attempted suicide had upticks which is a reverse of every other point and I just wondered if there was any specific spotlights actions that were being taken to I know it's it's something that 2020 has presented in all aspects of people's lives that this is a concern being seen and I wondered how we were looking at it in the Guard. Yes ma'am thank you for the question so I'm also on the General Officer Advisory Council there are two task forces one to address sexual harassment and sexual assault the other focusing on suicide prevention this is a tough one and this is impacted the Guard across the nation and certainly COVID hasn't helped with this but again when I look at the folks we have working to get at this and some of the innovation that they've brought within Vermont for instance Trish Dempsey who's our director of psychological health at the 158th fighter wing came up with the idea of doing testimonials and that's important because look what I got back from overseas I was not the same person I find no shame in it nobody comes back the same so I went to the vet center and I worked with them for two years to get back to at least a normal more normal semblance of what I was before I deployed if I can't tell people that how can we expect a junior member of this organization the Arrow Army to seek the help that they need or feel comfortable come we have to get at the stigma so that's that's a result of Trish Dempsey's efforts and then the team and we put together eight testimonials and there were seven of our members of the air guard and myself we provided our testimonials it's probably about a 45 minute presentation it was powerful enough it was for internal consumption the wing did what we call the resiliency tactical pause to specifically focus on this was directed by the Air Force they told you to do it they didn't tell you how to do it so that was the wings approach but the feedback that we received from our personnel in the Air National Guard was very positive getting at that stigma so I got permission from all the participants who provided the testimonials and I shared that with National Guard Bureau and that is just one indicator one one vignette of how we're working to get at this is focusing on the stigma and then again consistently reinforcing the message that we have resources out there and to use them one thing we haven't done and this is my perspective if somebody comes to us with a brain health issue they become not ready they are not a deployable resource so we will spend a lot of time working with them but usually it's the scarlet letter you go in you talk to a military provider hey I've got some things going on and I had to deal with it you are now not ready you have what we call a profile a duty limiting condition that's fine but we're not giving them the tools to become ready so there's a number of things going on and some of these are are challenging we're working we've gotten on a pilot program through National Guard Bureau I think we're the only state currently doing it working what we call a neural wave it's a lot electronic e-resonance therapy brain therapy unfortunately we've we've hit a road bump we have the equipment we have the folks trained but there are some limitations on what we can do because it's considered human testing as a pilot so we're working through with National Guard Bureau and the Department of Defense to get the appropriate protections in place to be able to do that and that'll take some time but again another one of the innovations that our folks have brought forward that I just have the opportunity to share thank you very much thank you ma'am all right um up next ken grag thank you everybody for the questions and let's move on to the second half here ken grag welcome back hey mr sure I've got I've got ken here with me he's on his computer yeah he's he's dialed in from his office but he's nothing nothing to share with the group today sir okay so do we have what about major kafferlin and and lieutenant colonel rigerio were they scheduled to testify no sir just here in support then yes sir it's about you know given the complexity sometimes the the military process of adjudication that's why I asked major kafferlin to be here okay no fair enough thank you for that clarification makes um makes me focus from um I don't know if you heard my dog I'm sorry um earlier just a few minutes ago um so I would like to we have two more questions lined up here um from representative walls and then bloomly thank you two things first of all comment and then a question uh general was very very pleased to hear your efforts on on suicide I had a son-in-law who was an active duty of coast guard member who had these issues he did not want to go to his command because he thought it would reflect poorly on his military career he called the military hotline it was washington's birthday weekend they told him to call back on monday he didn't make it so thank you for whatever you can do uh I have a question I'm curious when the guard is deployed is in there's an incident I would assume that's handled by the local command uh what a what role do you as the vermont guard do you have in that instance when when they're deployed so it's a good question sir we have about nine hundred and fifty members we will have about nine hundred and fifty total um by the beginning of june deployed on the army national guard side we're just starting to see some of our air guard folks come back uh from their six months deployment so when we're mobilized we fall under federal authority so title ten um traditional drilling members we fall under title 32 when you're in the title 10 I have no purview the governor has no purview you are absolutely right you are subject to the chain of command and military discipline within that chain of command not to say there is an information sharing going on so if there is for instance and correct christine you can correct me if I'm wrong if there is a incident of a sex-based offense um and and the survivor goes to the title 10 sexual assault response coordinator they in turn will share information with with christina so now we have the information um that we can take action when the person returns okay thank you that's what that that's what I was curious about to make sure you were aware of anything that happened and then you also had the ability to do something about it when that person was back in your command okay thank you we've also had like some of the historical reports that we've had were from the deployment that vermont went on in 2010 so people waited until they felt ready to come forward so that's another another option that they have is to wait until they are home but we do hope that they they get those services while they are deployed from the deployment sexual assault response coordinator as well thank you representative gloomily yes thank you um chair and thank you all for your testimony and um I like um representative walls I just I have a um a comment and then I have a question that I hope isn't too broad um I'm really impressed um and and touched by your leadership general knight um the issue of brain health and your willingness to come forward and tell your story and to um encourage others to do so to try to promote um uh using mental health services and um kind of openly can yeah acknowledging um that this is one of the um this is one of the challenges of of service um in in many fields um but certainly in the military and um anyway I just I just was really struck by that so I just wanted to thank you for that and then the second thing is that um you know I I know personally that you have done a lot of work both in the areas of um sexual harassment and violence um and in in terms of recruiting and you know lots of good forward motion and I'm wondering if you could identify the places where you feel you're not doing so well the places that are uh continue to be challenging and um you know one of the things one of the statistics that that is still disappointing to me and I'm I just in the broad scheme of things is that only 21 percent um of guard members are women so I anyway that that was one thing that I picked up on um and I I I know from talking to you in the past in my previous lives that this is you know I I know that this is of interest to you and and but I wanted to make sure that I didn't limit it to that like like what are you working on or maybe not able to work on that that you think is a priority and um you want to you want to devote more energy to in the coming months that's a great question man and ideally if you're not in session on Monday I'd love to have you over to camp johnson or I'll meet you someplace else and talk through in detail some of the things we're working on uh some of it involves the state of Vermont I'm working with dustin degree um I'll make it very succinct historically in my time in this organization we think too small we haven't gone big enough at no point have we as an organization gone to the Vermont commission on when took the legislature to the business roundtable to all of the key players in Vermont inclusive of state government and said hey can you help us grow the guard can you help me grow diversity um if I look and this again I'll talk big picture as an organization we do not focus sufficiently and this is the conversation I'm having with national guard bureau why are we not focusing more diligently on the prior service market when folks leave the the service if they're their first term they have a service obligation remaining why not continue your service in the guard by extension why not continue your service in the Vermont national guard either air or army um so that's part of it is we need to start selling Vermont I'll sell the guard uh that that we can do um but recruiting challenges to your point about the demographic um if that's significant focus as we have as an organization um in changing the climate and changing opportunities for women so being the first in the nation to open a combat arms battalion that's a big deal um in fact we're going to be the first I'm certain in the next few months to open the entire brigade so two-thirds that weren't open now are the challenge now becomes one of taking and building it because not every not every woman who joins the guard wants to be in combat arms those are special niche states but at least we're giving them the opportunity to do that um and if I look at the success of the air guard that's I think is probably more significant I look at the priority one task force which they established irrespective of rank gender ethnicity race that group focuses on recruiting they focus on retention and they focus on diversity and inclusion and and equity and opportunity so when I look at the increase and this to me is is pretty profound I have to look at the data I think it's in the report somewhere between 25 and 27 percent of new enlistments into the Air National Guard are women that's remarkable now if I look at the construct although 20.5 percent of the population about that maybe a little bit dated of the population of the Air National Guard are women when I look at who's in leadership positions 50 percent of the group chiefs these are the enines these senior enlisted leaders leading those colonel level commands are women 50 percent of the first sergeants these are the the master sergeants or EAs they're leading airmen women two F-35 fighter pilot candidates one in training while both going in training one is nearing completion um unheard of when I what particularly speaks volumes to me about the future of the organization is 42.9 percent of the lieutenants at the fighter wing are women so we're a learning organization and change takes time when I look at our history certainly in the Army National Guard side that's probably the bigger challenge for me right now is getting at that propensity to serve and giving folks the confidence and courage to come forward and say look I want to serve I want to step forward in my view again big picture I'll get off my soapbox here in a moment we can give you all the reasons to serve we can give you the incentives there's plenty of reasons to serve but I think the question we're not asking is why won't you and that's where I could probably use the most help is getting folks to understand what comes with servicing the guard it's hard they will understand that it's challenging but if I look at the response to COVID where would be where would we be we didn't have the guard 3.2 million meals this past summer with in conjunction with the Vermont food bank and we were happy to do that and we could do more if I had more people thank you ma'am yes thanks and I'll take you up on on a future conversation that'd be great thank you ma'am representative Toronto thank you Mr. Chair I just I just wanted to comment on um this report your report general the actions that you have taken in the two years you've been in office um your staff well informed well intended and I just wanted um let you know that that's that really sits well with me um and your peace on suicide prevention means a lot to me as well um you know uh PTSD wasn't discovered as a as a as a disorder until 12 years after I returned from my combat tour and I found it around with a lot of anger and a lot of uh issues for that period of time episodic depression triggers PTSD it very intensely and when that when you face that um it it just triggers everything and everything goes to hell so you know catching this and you know we all know that veteran suicide rates are considerably higher than average individuals and uh so the prevention medic measures that you are taking for your soldiers when they return from combat tours is uh very heartening for me um having suffered from that for a long time and hoping that other people won't have to suffer as long thank you general thank you happy to do it sir and and you know sir again this comes back to I'm frustrated by it um but getting that magnet magnetic e-residence therapy and I am not a behavior health specialist on the science of it but what I understand of it is is this therapy focuses on the areas of the brain where anxiety depression uh PTSD adjustment disorder resides um sometimes you know like in my case talk therapy isn't enough um and this is just a way for us to get at it special forces use it so I'm going to continue to pursue that pretty vigorously and I'm going to engage our congressional delegation to see if we can get expedite getting it fielded here thank you thank you general and I I mean this is long been um I don't come from a military family I support the people who serve and I support our veterans and I support any programs that are improving to help what happens to folks not only before they deploy but after um that's been a real focus I think of of our work here is to make sure especially during deployments that that families are taking care of the families have the expectations and and that when when the individuals come back that they have some form of um not just welcoming back from our society that's a that's a given I think for many of us here in Vermont but also just what is the institution able to do um we heard so much um especially at higher levels above above the Vermont National Guard where it was very difficult for veterans to get the help they needed when they came back and so whatever we can do on on this level is is obviously um much needed I I would like to return to the 20 percent reporting rate and and how we approach I'm part of part of building up women in the guard in particular having gender equity in the guard of some sort is and you asked why don't people serve and you know I have to imagine that in a highly unsafe and a highly unsafe job when when it has to be unsafe um that there's a question of of being normally normalized into the into the society into your culture and I see you trying to bring more bring more women in in particular in all these different roles um and perhaps sometimes the culture doesn't accept that and and I'm just and then eventually we get to normalization over time you know I think that's a normal way of looking at it but in the meantime when we see when we see what you had to deal with with what individual and and you talk about um under reporting or or when cases like that happened and and the guard wasn't to where you know I wonder is the support there for the for the survivors who had to make career choices that said this is too dangerous for me this isn't a safe place for me just as a workplace and they might have given up a career they might have given up a dream they might have given up benefits that that are um that they thought they were accruing because they had showed they had found a place to be and I'm just curious what kind of support what kind of supports can be in place for survivors of of some of the issues that we're talking about today moving forward you know including people who choose to have to leave well thank you Mr. Chair Christina what will answer at least a portion of that and then I'll add something at the end um so with these conversations I also um on drill weekends I'm a member of the guard in the army as a behavioral health specialist so that is we have a team of us that actually go out to units and provide behavioral health support on those drill weekends so it's not waiting until you're out to go to the VA or waiting until you're back from deployment so you're completely broken and try to help build up before anything really awful happens um for example I went down to DC at the request of the leadership that was down in DC as a behavioral health specialist they specifically requested hey this might be something that we need also you're a victim advocate so in case something happens we have you here you can provide training to make sure we try to prevent any assaults from happening as well as make sure that our soldiers are okay because a lot of the people who went down to DC were going on the deployment that's coming up so we wanted to make sure that our soldiers were getting that support and care that they needed before it becomes a bigger issue as for survivors when they experience something if they come forward and ask for help then that's what we our advocate team is wonderful our full-time staff is always on 24 seven to try to provide that help and we hope that we get to a point where people feel comfortable enough coming forward immediately after a report so that we can help try to prevent them from leaving a position that they absolutely love or leaving the garden entirely um we we'd like to have more people who want to do the job and want to do it well and don't want to hurt others rather than keeping perpetrators I think it's shown really clearly to me since I've been in this position that leadership here doesn't want to keep the perpetrators around if they are if it is substantive they are if I'm guilty if there's enough to show that there's any reason to kick them out that's that's what the leadership is going to try to do but I think what what's important there mr chair is again coming back one we haven't shared the status of a case according to the timeline for a survivor we're going to fix that and again that comes back to education and again big picture we're not sharing closure with the force there's no deterrent effect if they don't know what's going on so to get at that that's pretty straightforward this is what happened um we're redacted to such a degree that Privacy Act information is is protected um but I think folks need to know that somebody of x-rank from the Army National Guard did the following thing and this was the outcome um and I'll come back to what pristina said as to taking care of our survivors um hard conversation it's hard for them to come forward the importance of this I really can't understate this when I look at our most recent incident because that survivor came forward two additional came forward uh and the leopard doesn't change your spots um they are who they are and we didn't make them they came to us that way they brought their experiences they're upbringing our job is to the degree we can change the behavior sometimes we're not going to be able to do that and that's probably my greatest frustration especially with two-thirds of the organization as a part-time force we don't have purview over them when we get a month two weeks a year what they do during the rest of the month we won't see it as noted on vacation that's not reported um number of occasions depending on on the crime but we're working to fix that and again getting at the education piece and making sure that those commanders and those senior non-commissioned officers take the appropriate action when needed when and you'll notice that there's you know relatively uh slim reporting on sexual harassment or reports of any type of harassment I'm not naive I it's out there and I think our units and our leaders are doing the right thing they're addressing it at the unit level which is what we want be a leader stop the action counsel the person the problem is it doesn't get to mr. Jamison for reporting so I don't have a valid reporting mechanism I can tell you anecdotally that that reporting is probably it's probably under reported so again a matter of education good job thank you for addressing it reported no thank you for that I said it's it's a real um you know it just that the equity goes you know in making sure that that all soldiers have that have that place where they know that they're being heard and again feel like they're they're safe especially when it comes to this this kind of reporting we have two more questions here we have Representative Hango and Bloomley thank you um I really appreciate hearing in depth about the results of the outcome of this report um I want to go back for a minute to the recruitment and retention which really is a lot of what you were talking about just in terms of how to how to better support your force and in the mission that they do I just I do want you to know that we are doing what we can to really try to talk more about military careers to to youth and just to to really bring awareness to people throughout the state that the guard is is a wonderful career to have if you're so inclined and I think that's what what maybe communication has been missing for a long time and I know we've had conversations about this but I really I want to thank you all because you do bring a lot to our state and we're really grateful for that and whatever we can do to help try to to um foster that recruitment and retention please let us know what we can do thank you thank you ma'am Representative Bloomley hi yeah thank you I'm I just want to ask one follow-up question that has this is unrelated to what I what I asked before and and this relates to something that you talked about in the National Guard Caucus and here which is the um kind of a check to the self-report requirement and you know I so how well do you how well do you think that that system is going to work you know will law enforcement I mean are the are the pieces in place to make it possible for you to regularly get those well let's hope you don't get them regularly but but you know um is that going to be a difficult process to get law enforcement on online with that or is it just a matter of um being plugged into a database um I I'd realize that I was unclear about that well thank you for the question ma'am I think it's a little bit of both I think one is a system issue um so I believe fairly soon perhaps by one October um civil law enforcement in Vermont will be going over to a system called Valkor which is a computer-rated dispatch system so it reports engagements within um within the state system so it's actually recorded there are numerous systems um that our folks will have access to the question or the concern for us is is to make sure that we are doing it properly there has in most cases as I understand it in speaking with major Norris there has to be a reason to do a background check now whether that becomes a letter from me to the head of whoever runs the respective program asking during the military yes there's an expectation of privacy but there's also an expectation of conduct and if I can find the reason let's find out what I don't know um and if we can do that habitually once we get the first push out of the way I think that will become kind of our standing operating procedure the other side of this and one thing I've learned here um it's great I've communicated with Commissioner Shirling to the heads of law enforcement agencies I think they'll certainly be on board with adding to their process asking that question are you a member of the Vermont National Guard what I don't understand is who actually sets policy for law enforcement is it the criminal justice training council is it the attorney general or do they make recommendations uh where does it actually reside I think the request has been been certainly with support they understand it and again having the provost-martial team making that and building that habitual relationship is going to go a long way and I think the longer we do it the more comfortable we become whether it becomes routine and again it becomes a deterrent you might get arrested civilly you got bigger problems than that thank you thank you ma'am all right any further questions on the sexual assault report um at this time um I would like to thank the everybody from the guard who came but also who came to the National Guard caucus as well there's a whole different audience than I think you're usually able to get to within the state house and so I appreciate that that you were able to make the time to do that with them as well um that's kind of the reason why we have the caucus going is to make sure that more people understand the issues in front of the guard and and how we interplay with the legislature so thank you um general knight any any closing comments or from anybody on your team just about um I'll defer to the team first mr chair I would say again uh you know time being what it is if there's any time remaining in in the session we're happy to follow up on any other areas that were we're not answering questions if you have follow-up questions you can certainly reach out to us and we'll respond to you uh fairly quickly um may take a few days if it's something that's data research intensive but we're happy to do that uh anybody else on the call have anything to add to the committee so hearing on the last thing I offer mr chair it's the same thing that I mentioned to the caucuses there's a reason I asked for a legislative caucus um I think historically long as I've been in this organization we haven't had a great deal of of sustained engagement with the legislature outside of outside of the committee construct and I think that hasn't done us any favors um I think this is a good construct what's important in this for me uh at least in my view is we're setting the conditions whoever comes after me in this job there's an expectation of communication um and there's a level of communication that has to come with the position so uh we're here you don't get to go back and I think that's important when I and again I mentioned it to the caucuses the other day when I speak to my counterparts in other states they're absolutely fascinated by how we're doing things um when I tell them I asked for a legislative caucus they're like a what it's important um and they're actually taking notes so again I think Vermont's doing a lot of things right and we're sharing those best practices so again thanks to everybody I appreciate the opportunity to be here and thanks to all members of our team uh for taking time today and I see one more question from representative Byron close it out that representative not a question not a question but thank you mr chair um apologies for missing a portion of the meeting earlier um I was in our tax committee discussing amendment that actually has relevance to military in the guard ironically but I just wanted to get uh reiterate a lot of the points general light just made in his closing um the organization is doing a an outstanding job with addressing these issues head on the level of transparency um that I've seen and what others who have seen who have been here longer than me um is genuinely amazing so I just wanted to commend you on the good work I mean there's a lot of work left to be done this is a massive endeavor but um I just wanted to share those thoughts and say thank you thank you sir appreciate it all right general night team thank you so much for your time um we are uh grateful for the report we will take a look at it obviously more closely um if we do if and when we do have questions I mean with all the deployments going on you know again to the concerns that preparations are made and and you know all the accommodations that are needed for families and for members to transition back and forth is very important um and for in order to help them make sure that their service is is done with as few distractions as possible given given where they are um but thank you so much for your time and we will be in touch as always outstanding thanks mr chair take care everybody thank you all right committee Ron Ron are we on a kind of a um letting the next witnesses know that we're available situation here or are they coming in at a set time I can do both uh you know this time of year I give people a range I think I told them between 1045 and 11 because we had a lot of up to 90 minutes for this hearing so it's 1037 now I would assume you're going to take a break yes we are in the meantime I will I will message the two that we're taking a break and that will be back in at 10 of 10 of very good all right thanks everybody we'll see you in a little minute