"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%."