A recent military report on sexual assault in the military shocked many in Washington and around the nation, but a leading expert on military personnel says the prevalence of men assaulting other men is one of the major headlines in this study.
The extended analysis of the report first appeared in Monday’s edition of the The Washington Times.
The Defense Department survey of sexual assault in the military during Fiscal 2012 estimated 26,000 assaults took place in the Armed Forces. Nearly three thousand of them were formally reported. Just over six percent of women reported being victims of assault and 1.2 percent of men said the same. Given the much larger number of men in the military, those numbers suggest 14,000 of the assaults in the Pentagon study happened to men.
In the assaults formally reported, 88 percent came from women and 12 percent from men. The numbers are getting dramatically worse.
“The number of reports of sexual assaults among military personnel have actually increased by 129 percent since 2004,” said Center for Military Readiness President Elaine Donnelly, who points out the number of formal reports of sexual assault jumped from 1,275 to 2,949 in just eight years. She says when factoring in civilians working for or around the military, the increase in that time is 98 percent.
Women are identified as the attacker in just two percent of all assaults, meaning the vast majority of men who suffer assault are targeted by other men.
“So we’ve got a male-on-male problem here. The Department of Defense doesn’t want to comment on this. They know that the numbers are there. They say that they care, but all the attention is usually given to the female members of the military who are subjected to sexual assault,” said Donnelly.
The Washington Times article, which also includes analysis from Aaron Belkin, who heads The Palm Center. He says the rise in male-on-male sexual assault does not reflect the increase of homosexuals in the military but rather those assaults are “somewhat similar to prison rape.”
“Well, that’s a great slogan to use for recruiting young men into the military, isn’t it? It’s outrageous. And yet, the Department of Defense doesn’t quite know what to do with these figures and so they just sort of put them in there and hope nobody notices,” said Donnelly, who points out The Palm Center is a gay activist organization.
While Donnelly fiercely opposed repealing the ban on gays in the military, she says we need to keep monitoring the numbers to determine how much that policy change specifically contributes to the problem. She says the increase in sexual assaults against female service members should not be diminished either. Donnelly says a lot of work lies ahead to reverse this trend but the military and the federal government are kidding themselves if they don’t think some major policy decisions aren’t contributing to the rise in sexual violence.
“I think we have to start with the basics and that means basic training. Back in 1998, unanimously, the Kassebaum-Baker Commission came out with recommendation to separate basic training for Army, Air Force and Navy trainers, (to) do it like the Marines do. The Marines train basic training separately, male and female at Parris Island. That’s a good thing to do. It’s a good first start,” said Donnelly.
“Second, they should stop pretending that sexuality does not matter. You cannot solve a problem by extending it into the combat arms. The big push for women in combat, this argument that we have to have women in the infantry so they’ll be respected more and they won’t be assaulted,” said Donnelly, who says the push for women in combat that started more than a generation ago from then-Colorado Rep. Pat Schroeder has been thoroughly discredited.
“Respect for women in the military today is higher than ever, but the sexual assault numbers keep climbing up. I think before we start implementing a theory that’s been discredited. The members of the Pentagon and the people who make policy in Congress as well, they need to stop. They need to assess where we are, what has happened in the last two decades and they need to stop pretending that a lot of sensitivity training or highly paid consultants, that that is going to make a difference in the sex problems we’re seeing right now,” said Donnelly.
