Sexual Harassment in the Armed Forces

I will be focusing mainly on the legislative perspective while my partners will be focusing on the chain of command and separation of sexes in the armed forces.

Sexual assault is an act in which a person intentionally sexually touches another person without that person’s consent, or physically forces a person to engage in a sexual act against their will. When women experience sexual assault in the armed forces, they usually go through military sexual trauma (MST). This can include symptoms of depression, PTSD, or other types of disorders. Women consequently may have a hard time coming back to their usual selves after experiencing such a traumatic event. Sexually assaulted women that report their incidents do not seem to be getting the right amount of help from authorities, which is why this problem is so important globally.

According to CNN, there has been an increase of reports of sexual assault in the last year while the number of victims experiencing sexual assault has been decreasing in the United States military. The data collected by the Pentagon showed an increase of 10% in reports in every branch of the armed forces; the Marines having the highest over 14% and the lowest in the Army with an 8.4% increase in sexual assault reports. In the study, 53% of about 2,000 subjects of sexual assault with sufficient evidence to receive disciplinary actions, received action on a sexual assault charge. However, many people complain of the decline of conviction rates even when there is enough evidence of possible convictions against these subjects, where they have decreased from 4.2% to 4% even when reports of sexual assault keep increasing.

There are two sides of the augmentation of reports. It could be inferred that there are now more reports because victims are now finally getting the courage to speak up about their mistreatment in the present, which is a good thing. On the other hand, it could easily mean that more of these incidents are still happening in the present and victims are speaking up. Besides, just because victims are reporting their traumatic experiences does not mean that they are getting their justice; if anything, they are getting left in the dust, ignored. In fact, 70% of the representative sample of victims that report do experience some sort of retaliation, whether it is personal or professional.

 This graph shown here by my side is data from the fiscal year 2014. Only 5% of the victims that report these cases of sexual assault actually have the offenders convicted. We can infer that the lack of representation and care about this problem is very little or that it is extremely hard to get evidence to back these victims up. Even though this piece of evidence is considerably outdated, the situation about this problem is still very similar now.

Like the United States, the German military, also known as Bundeswehr, has seen an increase in reports of sexual assault. With over 60,000 soldiers, there was an 80% increase in the reports. In 2016, there were 128 reports, whereas there were 234 reports in 2017. In addition, there is a large range of these types of reports, going from non-consensual contact to rape, where it also increased from 5 to 11 reports in the years 2016 and 2017, respectively.

Because of the great increase on reports between only these two years, there might a similar increase of reports in the future surveys and statistics. However, it is not safe to say that these reports are all recent. A number of reports consists of sexual assault or harassment that has taken place years ago or even decades ago. In fact, so many of these cases have little to no proof, it is almost impossible to help these women get the help they deserve. Therefore, the increase of reports of sexual assault or harassment cannot be perceived as such a positive result.

Germany got rid of conscription in 2011 because it was thought that it was not needed anymore. However, more problems have risen in the German military, like Neo-Nazism, xenophobia, including sexual misconduct. As previously said, some reports are from past years but there are still cases that have happened recently or in the past couple of years. Likewise, if reports increase at a constant and rapid rate and the cases are from recent years, conscription is definitely something to consider. This will not only help set a better image on the German military, but it will help its accountability. Nevertheless, the Bundeswehr’s conditions when conscription was in place before 2011 were not effective and safe, so implementing conscription again could be difficult and risky at the same time.

Australia is known to be one of the countries that have the highest number of allegations or reports of sexual assault in their military, the Australian Defense Federation, or ADF. Moreover, out of about 2200 plausible allegations only 36 instances were confirmed to be from 1991 to 1998. This means that majority of the allegations are relatively new. In addition, approximately 1100 of the accused offenders still serve in the ADF in permanent ranks, active reserves, and in standby reserves. Finally, most of the female victims were between 17 and 20 years of age.

This information allows me to infer that the report shows statistics that might set an unsafe image on Australia’s military, specifically in women’s points of views, possibly decreasing the number of women in the military in the future. This data is extremely effective because it includes many types of statistics on the topic of sexual assault, like statistics on the victims, cases, accused offenders, etc. This helps imagine a clear situation that is currently happening in the country.

Australia has an organization called DVA, standing for Department of Veterans’ Affairs. This organization helps provide services and support to victims of sexual assault, sexual abuse, physical abuse, and so on. In fact, the special service of Open Arms gives free support, including “confidential counselling, case management and group programs to around 20,000” members of the ADV, whether they are veterans or still serving, according to the DVA. While this may be true, the DVA declines and refuses to take part in cases because of the lack of corroborative evidence or witnesses.

All things considered, I have come up with possible solutions to this ongoing local and global problem. First, heavier punishments, such as losing the job, should be implemented for convicted offenders. This way, there will be less soldiers with bad intentions, and it will allow the career of an accused offender to not be in the way of the prosecution. Prosecutions should be based on facts, not the quality of the accused offender’s career. Furthermore, bills for victims to have better access to legal benefits can help the process of a prosecution or analysis of a case be faster and more efficient, saving the victim’s time as opposed to waiting for years for the case to possibly not even be tried. And finally, legalizing conscription can be an ultimate resource where women would not be subject to being drafted. Therefore, there would be no women in a military to be sexually assaulted or harassed.

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