{"id":23631,"date":"2020-02-12T23:27:40","date_gmt":"2020-02-12T23:27:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/airforcetimes\/uncategorized\/2020\/02\/12\/military-still-struggles-to-handle-kid-on-kid-sex-assaults\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T06:06:51","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T06:06:51","slug":"military-still-struggles-to-handle-kid-on-kid-sex-assaults","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/airforcetimes\/news\/2020\/02\/12\/military-still-struggles-to-handle-kid-on-kid-sex-assaults\/","title":{"rendered":"Military still struggles to handle kid-on-kid sex assaults"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The U.S. Department of Defense is struggling to change how it handles the abuse of military kids, including cases involving sexual assault by other children, according to a report commissioned by Congress. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The military has been slow to implement reforms that lawmakers mandated more than a year ago, said the report released Wednesday by the U.S. Government Accountability Office. The Pentagon still doesn\u2019t know the extent of child-on-child sexual assaults<\/a>, in part because some officials dismiss incidents without reporting them and the Pentagon has no one place to track all cases that have been logged. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Worldwide, more than 1.2 million school-age children live with military families, many on large bases that include schools, recreation centers, playgrounds and other trappings of civilian life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the report credited the Pentagon and some armed services for making policy changes on paper, it concluded how ground-level change was lagging. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019d say their intentions are good. They\u2019re starting to make progress,\u201d said Brenda Farrell, the report\u2019s primary author. \u201cBut it has a long way to go in order to get it to the point where they have oversight in place to be able to say that things are actually improving or that they\u2019ve got this particular area under control.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\t