Statistics can tell a compelling story. Or they can hide one. It depends on who’s interpreting the numbers.
So it is with the story of sexual assault in the military, a problem that may be getting worse, may be getting better or may have been worse than we ever knew.
But beyond dueling interpretations, we do know this: Military efforts to reduce and deal more effectively with sexual assault are still lacking in transparency.
The Defense Department’s annual report on sexual assault in the military was released Friday. It said sex crimes are decreasing and more victims are reporting them. Service members, the Pentagon said, are showing more confidence in the military-justice system, trusting that offenders will be brought to justice.
But the problem has hardly disappeared. Last year’s National Defense Research Institute anonymous survey found about 20,000 active-duty service members reporting they were sexually assaulted in the previous year. About 60 percent of them said they experienced retaliation.
At Fort Bragg, sexual assault and harassment reports increased slightly, from 103 in 2012 to 107 in 2013. In the first three questers of 2014, there were 96 reports, but post officials refused to release the final numbers for the year, or any data on dispositions, saying the partial numbers were released by mistake. The Department of the Army also refused to release the complete 2014 report.
On Monday, U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a New York Democrat, said sexual crimes in the military are far more prevalent than the Defense Department has reported. She said spouses of service members and women who live or work near military bases are especially vulnerable to sexual assault, but “remain in the shadows” because they aren’t counted in the surveys.
Gillibrand also lashed out at the Pentagon for refusing to provide information she requested on assault cases. She said her staff analyzed 107 cases — more than half with female civilian victims — and found lenient punishments or none at all. Less than a quarter of the cases went to trial. Only 11 resulted in a conviction.
Dan Christensen, former chief prosecutor for the Air Force and now president of Protect Our Defenders, said Gillibrand’s report “should be a wake-up call for President Obama and anybody that thinks the military can solve this problem without creating an independent and impartial justice system.”
Sadly, it appears he’s right. There may be signs of progress but they’re small and not satisfying. Tougher measures may be in order. It will start with transparency. There will be no solutions without a full, public accounting of the problem.
From The Fayetteville Observer via The Associated Press.
