The number of reported sexual assaults in the military rose 8 percent in the past year, which the Pentagon said is a sign of significant progress but is likely to increase pressure for changes in how the cases are handled.
There were 5,983 cases reported in fiscal 2014, up from 5,518 in the previous year, according to a study released Thursday.
Pentagon officials attributed the increase to greater efforts to encourage victims to come forward, prevent retaliation and make prosecutions more victim-friendly.
“In this particular crime, an increase in reporting is a good thing,” said Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Snow, head of the Pentagon’s Sexual Assault and Prevention Response Office.
“The Department of Defense has been taking aggressive action over the past year and a half to stop sexual assault,” Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said. “We believe that our efforts to prevent sexual assault are beginning to have an impact.”
But sexual assaults are “still heavily underreported,” Hagel noted, announcing a series of directives to help prevent retaliation against service members reporting sexual assaults, including new procedures to engage commanders, training for junior leaders, a study of the climate at military installations and efforts to increase awareness of the issue among the troops.
“We must continually reinforce accountability up and down the chain of command,” he said.
A separate survey by the RAND Corp. released Thursday estimated that about 20,000 of the 1.3 million active-duty service members experienced one or more sexual assaults in the past year, including those by other service members, civilians and spouses, including 4.9 percent of active-duty women and 1 percent of active-duty men.
The RAND study compiled responses from about 170,000 service members, or 30 percent, of the 560,000 asked to participate.
A 2012 survey estimated that about 26,000 service members had been subjected to “unwanted sexual conduct,” which covered a much broader range of behaviors. The 2014 RAND study sampled respondents with similar questions and found that rates of unwanted sexual contact for active-duty women declined from 6.1 percent in 2012 to 4.3 percent in 2014. The rate for men stayed about the same, moving from 1.2 percent in 2012 to 0.9 percent in 2014.
The Pentagon has been under pressure from lawmakers to do a better job of handling sexual assault cases. The annual defense authorization bill being considered Thursday by the House would require commanders to be judged on their handling of sexual assaults as part of routine performance reviews, allow victims of sexual assault a say in whether those cases are prosecuted in military or civilian courts, and create a Defense Department advisory committee on the handling of sexual assault cases.
Response from lawmakers was mixed. “Reporting of assaults being up and incidents of assault being down are exactly the combination we’re looking for,” said Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., one of several lawmakers who have been pressing the Pentagon.
But Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., sponsor of legislation that would take responsibility for prosecuting sexual assaults out of the hands of commanders, was not impressed.
“There is no other mission in the world for our military where this much failure would be allowed. Enough is enough,” she said.
