Stephanie Hines- Reports of Sexual Assault in the Military

    Reports of sexual assault in the military increased sharply during the last fiscal year, new Pentagon figures showed Wednesday, just weeks before a defense bill with provisions to tackle the problem is expected to reach the Senate floor.

    According to New York Times, there were 3,553 sexual assault complaints reported to the Defense Department in the first three quarters of the fiscal year, from October 2012 through June, a nearly 50 percent increase over the same period a year earlier. Defense Department officials said the numbers had continued to rise. 

 

The numbers included sexual assaults by civilians on service members and by service members on civilians. Sexual assault was defined in the report as rape, sodomy and other unwanted sexual contact, including touching of private body parts. It did not include sexual harassment, which is handled by another office in the military

    In 2012, surveyed Active Duty Members of the military anonymously revealed 26,000 records of unwanted sexual contact.  This included coerced and abusive sexual contact, aggravated sexual assault and rape. This is all prohibited by military law. In one study, 37 percent of female veterans report being raped at least twice. Additionally, 14 percent of female veterans report experiences of gang rape. Most women do not report it because no one saw it and they needed to move on.

   “ I, along with a group of women, were sexually harassed by a civilian worker on base.  The result:  they gave, the perpetrator a list of our names and told him not to talk to us.  They gave the guy our names!!  This, of course, was after telling us we were imagining it and should move on.  But, after nine women came forward with notarized statements, they "resolved" it.” Said one military rape victim.    

      

       But it is not just women being raped. 76 percent of men who were sexually assaulted did not report their attacks.  Why don’t men report rape? Police say fear of stigma and labeling as reasons why so many rapes where men are the victims end up never being reported, to police or anyone else, and add that such crimes are more common than many people might think. The Pentagon estimates that 85 percent of sexual assault crimes go unreported.

This cartoon shows how women in the military are basically put in chains  due to how far up they are on the food chain  and whether or not they can report it.