The Defense Department’s (DOD) report on sexual assault in the military found that reports of such assaults in the ranks rose significantly in 2021, about 13 percent over the previous year.
The prevalence of sexual assaults in the U.S. military is only getting worse, with service members expressing limited confidence in the system to bring perpetrators to justice, according to the Pentagon’s latest annual report on the issue, released Thursday and cited by The HILL.
The Defense Department’s (DOD) report on sexual assault in the military found that reports of such assaults in the ranks rose significantly in 2021, about 13 percent over the previous year.
What’s more, 8.4 percent of female service members had unwanted sexual contact in 2021, the highest rate since the department began tracking figures in 2006. For men, it was at 1.5 percent, the second-highest figure since 2006.
The data is a stark reminder that despite efforts by the Pentagon to address the long-standing problem, curtailing sexual assaults in the military has so far evaded officials.
“These numbers are tragic and extremely disappointing,” Elizabeth Foster, DOD’s director of force resiliency, told reporters ahead of the document’s release.
“On an individual level, it is devastating to conceptualize that these numbers means that over 35,000 service members’ lives and careers were irrevocably changed by these crimes.”
Overall, out of nearly 35,900 estimated incidents, there were 8,866 sexual assault reports from Oct. 1, 2020, to Sept. 30, 2021. That adds up to less than a quarter of incidents being reported.
The spike was largely driven by the Army, where reports of sexual assault increased 25.6 percent from fiscal year 2020 to fiscal year 2021.
The Navy, meanwhile, experienced a 9.2 percent increase of reported sexual assaults, while the Air Force and the Marines each had a roughly 2 percent increase.
Unsurprisingly, confidence in the military’s response to sexual assault is waning, with only 39 percent of female service members saying they trust those in their chain of command to “treat them with dignity and respect” after an incident, compared with 66 percent in 2018.
For male troops during the same time period, only 63 percent were confident they would be treated well after reporting an assault, down from 82 percent in 2018.
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