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Sexual Assault in U.S. Military Isn’t Going Away as a Problem

Numbers of reported offenses are up, though troop surveys indicate that percentage of personnel who make accusations also has increased dramatically
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FILE Photo credit U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Armando A. Schwier-Morales

Reported sexual assaults in the military are at an all-time high as the Pentagon wrestles with a problem officials say has only recently been addressed and critics say hasn’t been fully recognized.
The depth and persistence of the military’s problem has taken on new relevance this year as allegations of sexual assault and harassment have rocked other parts of society, including business, entertainment and politics.
The number of reported sexual assaults in the military has risen from approximately 3,000 a year in 2007 to more than twice that in 2016, according to Pentagon records. The rate of offenses likely has declined, however, according to troop surveys, as the percentage of those reporting assaults has tripled.

Harassment likely remains an underreported issue, with only 601 complaints filed in 2016 of the more-than 100,000 incidents experts estimate took place. Military officials said harassment must be better addressed because unwelcome behavior can pave the way for assault.
“We look at it as a continuum of harm, sexual harassment being often a precursor for sexual assault and more serious behavior,” said Elizabeth Van Winkle, who is acting as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Readiness. “It’s problematic behaviors that are unacceptable in the military community and certainly against our values. So we do hold them in the same regard.”
Arguably the watershed event on the broader issue was the Tailhook Association conference in Las Vegas in 1991, where some 100 U.S. Navy and Marine Corps aviators allegedly sexually assaulted dozens of men and women. As a result, some top Navy officials saw their careers end abruptly.
Public attention eventually faded, however, and many underlying institutional issues went unresolved, including the perception that senior officers didn’t take the issue seriously and that victims had little support to speak out.
It wasn’t until the mid-2000s that complaints by troops in to war zones prompted then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to order steps to address the problem of assault.
“What the country is going through now is something that we really started to go through in 2005,” said Nathan Galbreath, deputy director of the Defense Department’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response program, created that year. “It occurs much more often than is ever recorded to law enforcement or any authority. That’s true for the civilian sector as well as it is the military sector.”
In the mid 2000s, the Pentagon began taking surveys of troops about assault in the ranks and instituted mandatory training.
But the culture only slowly responded. While the program mandated annual training for troops, the required classes often were seen as a waste of time or even as a joke among some troops and lower-level commanders.
“We have demonstrated one thing: Death by PowerPoint does not change behavior,” Mr. Galbreath said, referring to the courses.
These basic requirements remain, though the department has updated them and increased focus on changing the attitude of officers and senior noncommissioned officers.
During the Obama administration, as complaints arose at colleges across the U.S., the White House pushed educators to use lessons learned by the Pentagon, including its extensive use of surveys and its reporting system.
Yet, there are limits to what civilians can learn from the military, experts said. The Defense Department is 85% male, a much larger percentage than most civilian industries. And two of the most effective tools the military has used—no-cost lawyers for victims and base transfers—don’t generally have parallels in the civilian criminal-justice system.
Moreover, military leaders are judged in performance reviews on how they deal with these issues, and an offender in military court is more likely to face charges for things that wouldn’t be brought in civilian court, including unwanted touching and forced kissing.
“Most prosecutors don’t have the resources to prosecute those cases,” said Brad Carson, the Pentagon’s the acting Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness from 2015—16. The military, he said, does.
Critics also have faulted another unique feature of military justice: the power of commanders to ignore the advice of lawyers and decide whether many criminal cases move forward.
For all the time and money invested in military sexual assault prevention, some female service members have said they may never truly feel safe, particularly in combat zones where there are even fewer women. To avoid harassment or assault, women service members have said they still use a buddy system when walking across a base.
The Pentagon says the internal surveys show a decrease over time in assault and an increase in the numbers of people willing to report offenses. That combination shows success, officials say, because it means people are now more willing to step forward.
“If people feel like they can’t report, then bad behavior is going to be more common,” said Andrew Morral, a senior behavioral scientist at Rand Corp., which has studied the issue in the military.
The military sometimes struggles to define the line between harassment and assault. That ambiguity affects how cases are handled: Harassment is an issue for human resources; assault is a legal matter. And defining which is which often falls to the discretion of a local-unit commander, creating what some say is a nonstandardized process but others see as allowing more flexibility in sensitive cases.
Mr. Morral said Defense Department numbers showed about 1,000 complaints of sexual harassment in one recent year, 2013. But Rand estimates based on a broader analysis that there actually were as many as 115,000 troops on active duty that year who experienced harassment.
Many harassment victims said they still think nothing will be done if they make a complaint, according to a 2014 Rand survey.
The majority of women who step forward said they have faced retaliation, said Lydia Watts, CEO of the Service Women’s Action Network. She added that the military still has a culture of complicity that also protects offenders.
“People who would never commit a sexual assault feel justified in saying, ‘Why did you ruin my buddy’s career?’ ’’ she said, adding that peers need to speak up when they see wrongdoing. “If you’re observing this behavior, it’s not enough to just say, ‘Hey, don’t go have a drink with him alone.’ ’’
Rand’s research showed a potentially important link between seemingly minor harassment incidents and eventual assaults. One-third of assault victims said their offender first harassed them.
—Nancy A. Youssef and Chris Gordon contributed to this article.
Write to Ben Kesling at benjamin.kesling@wsj.com
 https://www.wsj.com/articles/sexual-assault-in-military-isnt-going-away-as-a-problem-1514502528?cx_testId=16&cx_testVariant=cx&cx_artPos=2&cx_tag=collabctx&cx_navSource=newsReel#cxrecs_s

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