| Tiffany Jackson, pictured in her uniform, was raped, which set her on a trajectory of drugs and homelessness. |  |
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N.Y. TIMES
The problem of sexual assault in the military leapt to the forefront in Washington on Tuesday as the Pentagon released a survey estimating that 26,000 people in the armed forces were sexually assaulted last year, up from 19,000 in 2010, and an angry President Obama and Congress demanded action.
The study, based on a confidential survey sent to
108,000 active-duty service members, was released two days after the officer in
charge of sexual assault prevention programs for the Air Force was arrested and
charged with sexual battery for grabbing a woman’s breasts and buttocks in an
Arlington, Va., parking lot.
At a White House news conference, Mr. Obama expressed
exasperation with the Pentagon’s attempts to bring sexual assault under control.
“The bottom line is, I have no tolerance for this,”
Mr. Obama said in answer to a question about the survey. “If we find out
somebody’s engaging in this stuff, they’ve got to be held accountable,
prosecuted, stripped of their positions, court-martialed, fired, dishonorably
discharged. Period.”In a separate report made public on Tuesday, the military recorded 3,374 sexual assault reports last year, up from 3,192 in 2011, suggesting that many victims continue not to report the crimes for fear of retribution or a lack of justice under the department’s system for prosecution.
The numbers come as the Pentagon prepares to integrate women formally into what had been all-male domains of combat, making the effective monitoring, policing and prosecuting of sexual misconduct all the more pressing.
Pentagon officials said nearly 26,000 active-duty men and women had responded to the sexual assault survey. Of those, 6.1 percent of women and 1.2 percent of men said they had experienced sexual assault in the past year, which the survey defined as everything from rape to “unwanted sexual touching” of genitalia, breasts, buttocks or inner thighs.
Pentagon officials could not explain the jump in
assaults of women, although they believed that more victims, both men and women,
were making the choice to come forward. In the general population, about 0.2
percent of American women over age 12 were victims of sexual assault in 2010,
the most recent year for which data is available, according to the Justice
Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Read more at:
Veterans Testify on Rapes and Scant Hope of Justice