By the Numbers - May 4, 2015

By the Numbers - May 4, 2015

116,000
and
20,300

Respectively, the number of Service members who were sexually harassed last year and the number who were sexually assaulted, according to a new RAND Corporation report -- Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment in the U.S. Military (Volume 2. Estimates for Department of Defense Service Members from the 2014 RAND Military Workplace Study).

This volume presents results from this survey for active- and reserve-component service members in the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps. It includes estimates of the number of service members who experienced sexual assault, sexual harassment, or gender discrimination in the past year, as well as detailed information about the characteristics of those incidents, decisions to report, and experiences with response and legal systems for both male and female service members. It also describes service members' beliefs and attitudes about these problems.

Among the survey findings:

  • "...men who are assaulted are more likely than women to experience multiple assaults and to describe an event as hazing or intended to abuse or humiliate them."
  • "Men and women in the Air Force experience substantially lower rates of sexual assault than those in the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps..."
  • "52% of active-component women perceived that they experienced professional or social retaliation after reporting a sexual assault."
  • "The reserve component had significantly lower rates of sexual assault in the past year than the active component."
  • The majority of sexual assaults, for both the active- and reserve-component members, were perpetrated by other military personnel and occurred in military settings.