Sexual assault in the United States military

"After their attacks, victims also rarely see justice. Of the more than 6,200 sexual-assault reports made by United States service members in fiscal year 2020, only 50 — 0.8 percent — ended in sex-offense convictions under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, roughly one-third as many convictions as in 2019. It’s unclear why sexual-assault convictions have gone down, but it’s part of a much larger trend: Courts-martial dropped by 69 percent from 2007 to 2017, according to Military Times, perhaps because commanders are instead choosing administrative punishments, which are bureaucratically easier but also result in milder punishments for the perpetrators, such as deductions in rank or administrative discharges. Even when convicted, perpetrators often don’t spend time in prison. “Many people don’t receive a single day of confinement,” Christensen says. He pointed to the case of Brock Turner, the Stanford swimmer who was convicted of three counts of sexual assault but spent only three months in prison. “The uproar that was caused in California and across the nation by his sentence is kind of a weekly occurrence in the military,” he says. “That’s the lie that is perpetrated before Congress constantly — that ‘Oh, commanders are crushing these people. They want to hold them accountable,’” Christensen adds. “No, they don’t.” If you are having thoughts of suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 (TALK). You can find a list of additional resources at SpeakingOfSuicide dot com/resources"

"Reports of sexual assault in the US military jumped 13% from the previous fiscal year, driven by a sharp increase in reports from the US Army at a time when the service is already struggling to meet recruiting goals. In the Army, reports of sexual assault increased 25.6% from fiscal year 2020 to fiscal year 2021, according to data from the latest report on sexual assault in the military released on Thursday. When reporting unwanted sexual contact, women “overwhelmingly identified their alleged offenders as male,” with 91 percent of women reporting the unwanted contact had come from men. Less than half of men identified their alleged offenders as male, at 46 percent, and one-third of men reporting unwanted sexual contact identified their offenders as female, the report said."

"More incidents, less reporting, plummeting confidence in the system to get justice ― those are the takeaways from the Defense Department’s most recent annual sexual assault prevention and response report, released Thursday. For years, officials have couched increases in sexual assault reports by claiming that survivors are becoming more comfortable with reporting, but for 2021, that math doesn’t bear out. A survey measuring prevalence of sexual assault, including whether survivors filed reports, lines up neatly with official report counts, showing that not only is unwanted sexual contact rising, but fewer people are opting to report it, and fewer perpetrators are being legally punished. So this year, officials aren’t couching it anymore: it’s not good. The report estimates that more than 8% of female service members experienced unwanted sexual contact in 2021, the highest rate since the department began counting in 2004. For men, it was the second-highest figure, at 1.5%."