The Department of Defense inspector general has found that the various military branches have not done enough for the victims of sexual assault, among other similar crimes.
The findings of the investigation were released on Wednesday. It was originally launched to determine whether the Department of Defense and military services were in compliance with federal law and DOD policy for Special Victim Investigation and Prosecution.
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Federal law requires each of the military branches to have specific investigators, judge advocates, and assistant staff who have additional training in special victim crimes.
The inspector general found that the Military Criminal Investigative Organization, the Naval Criminal Investigative Organization, the Army Criminal Investigation Division, and the Office of Special investigations did not consistently assign lead investigators who were certified for such cases.
“We found that the DoD cannot ensure that all victims of sexual assault are receiving support services available to them,” Sean O’Donnell, the acting Department of Defense IG, said in a release. “We also found that the DoD cannot ensure that all commanders and investigators are making decisions based on the best possible information because of, among other things, inexperienced or untrained prosecutors.”
The inspector general found that the Army did not ensure that the prosecutor was certified in special victim investigation and prosecution cases in roughly half of the cases during a two-year period that ended last year. The Navy did the same in 59% of cases over the same time, compared to the Air Force, which had an untrained prosecutor in more than 90% of cases, while the Marine Corps only had untrained prosecutors slightly more than 10% of the time.
“The prosecutors assigned to handle the cases we reviewed were generally junior in grade, less experienced, and lacking specialized training specific to special victim cases,” the report reads. “This occurred because the number of available specially trained special victim prosecutors has not kept pace with the increased number of special victim investigations.”
By not addressing the “increased workload,” military leaders relied on “prosecutors who are not specifically trained to handle cases involving covered offenses,” and as such, there was an “increased” risk that investigators “did not receive the best legal advice with respect to the critical investigative step,” it added.
The inspector general recommended that the criminal investigative branches “conduct reviews to determine the resource requirements to train, certify, and sign additional criminal investigators to serve as lead investigators in investigations of covered offenses,” that they should develop standardized procedures for how investigators should document communications with others, and for the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness to review as to whether the Department of Defense’s now-defunct requirement that Special Victim Investigation and Prosecution-certified prosecutors participate in notifications and consultations should be reinstated.
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The inspector general’s findings were released days after an Air Force survey found that more than half of the Air Force and Space Force personnel who participated in a recent survey had experienced behaviors that met the criteria of “interpersonal violence.”
The study found that 54% of personnel overall — 66% of women, 48% of men, and 63% of those who didn’t share their gender — acknowledged having experienced interpersonal violence, which includes harassment, sexual assault, dating or familial violence, hazing, and bullying, within the last two years.
