Hard Target: Class arms women with defensive, offensive skills

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Vernon Cunningham
  • 82nd Training Wing Public Affairs
SHEPPARD AIR FORCE BASE, Texas --  The Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office continued to arm female Airmen with tools to help prevent sexual assault through its Target Hardening classes Nov. 15 at the Solid Rock Café.
 
SAPRO utilizes up to eight trained instructors to teach Team Sheppard female members how to raise their situational awareness and make themselves into a hard target.
 
Barbara King, SAPRO chief, said the program was developed at Goodfellow Air Force Base, Texas, and, upon hearing about it at the 2007 Sexual Assault Response Coordinator conference, decided to adopt it at Sheppard in April 2008 during Sexual Assault Awareness Month. Over the past six months, they put the program together and classes are offered twice a month, Ms. King said.
 
"The Target Hardening course has two purposes," she said. "It is a true preventative program where it educates participants on actual scenarios (and) that assaults (do) happen in the Sheppard area. It also gives them real tools they can use in the worst case scenario."
 
Click to hear 2nd Lt. Jacinta Anderson-Lujuno, SAPRO deputy chief, explain Target Hardening's main message to Team Sheppard.
 
Target Hardening instructors Senior Airman Billy Chisum, volunteer from the 882nd Training Support Squadron, and Staff Sgt. Leigh Wamsley, volunteer from the 382nd Training Support Squadron, teach students concepts in order to help them recognize possible threatening situations. The instructors also teach a variety of basic defensive, and some offensive, martial arts moves to increase their ability to get away from an attacker.
 
Airman Chisum teaches the class for a combination of professional and personal reasons.
 
"I want my students to be able to go somewhere with the knowledge that if they, or one of their wingmen, are in a situation, (they will know) things that they can do to prevent sexual assault or a rape from happening," Airman Chisum said. "It's also nice to be able to have some of this knowledge to teach my daughters, when they get older, some things that they can do to defend themselves from others."
 
Click to hear Staff Sgt. Julia Hall, Target Hardening victim advocate, talk about the class and watch a session led by instructors Senior Airman Chisum and Staff Sgt. Wamsley.
 
Sergeant Hall said there needed to be more of a focus on prevention.
 
"The target hardening program allows us to provide women with good methods of being more aware of their surroundings, not being a soft target, and how to deal with situations when they are presented with them," said Sergeant Hall. "It's a way to give women a sense of empowerment."
 
Ms. King said SAPRO does a lot of preventative efforts. Airmen in Training get two-hour training the first week they are here. However, the informal environment of the Target Hardening class gives a more meaningful interaction with the Airmen than a classroom environment by giving them the opportunity to talk to the SAPRO representatives, Ms. King said.
 
One of the scenarios Target Hardening instructors go through involves having the female Airmen put on "beer goggles." These goggles, which have been altered to impair vision and offset equilibrium, are used to simulate different stages of being drunk. Instructors use this tool to show how the Wingman concept can falter when situational awareness is clouded by too much alcohol use.
 
"Ninety-two percent of the recent cases that get reported to SAPRO involved alcohol," Ms. King said. "(This) is an opportunity to talk about the impact drinking has for making you a soft target."

Ms. King said the target audiences are the 18-24 age group and the Airmen in Training on Sheppard. They would like to give this as a skill set they can have throughout their career, she said.
 
The program is available to any female dependents, civilian employees and contractors and military. 

The following clips are comments from students who attended the course:
Airman 1st Class Markeya Lucas-Drisdom
Airman 1st Class Leslie Wood