{"id":73830,"date":"2023-04-27T20:40:30","date_gmt":"2023-04-27T20:40:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/navytimes\/uncategorized\/2023\/04\/27\/sexual-assault-in-the-military-keeps-rising-while-prosecutions-fall\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T14:36:22","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T14:36:22","slug":"sexual-assault-in-the-military-keeps-rising-while-prosecutions-fall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/navytimes\/news\/your-navy\/2023\/04\/27\/sexual-assault-in-the-military-keeps-rising-while-prosecutions-fall\/","title":{"rendered":"Sexual assault in the military keeps rising while prosecutions fall"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Cases of reported sexual assault in the military keep rising, but you wouldn\u2019t think so if you look at how many suspected perpetrators actually end up being tried, much less punished for their alleged crimes. The services charged fewer suspected sexual assault perpetrators<\/a> with crimes in 2022 than in the previous decade, according to data released Thursday in the Pentagon\u2019s congressionally mandated annual sexual assault report<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While reported sexual assaults have increased over the past 10 years<\/a>, and the percentage of substantiated reports has remained relatively stable, the number of cases prosecuted <\/b>has been cut nearly in half.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those numbers of prosecutions have continued to fall even as lawmakers and rights advocates pushed to take the power of prosecution out of the hands of individual military commanders, and hand it to an independent sexual assault prosecutor\u2019s office<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat change was largely due to the perception that when a military commander makes these makes these prosecution decisions, that they are not expert attorneys in these cases,\u201d Dr. Nate Galbreath, deputy director of DoD\u2019s Sexual Assault and Prevention Office, told reporters Thursday. \u201cIn <\/b>addition to that …<\/b> commanders have a difficult choice between believing victims allegation versus people that they might know in their unit.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the past decades, investigators found probable cause to bring charges in the majority of sexual assault cases. Rates of reliability averaged roughly two-thirds, ranging from the highest, 76% of reported assaults substantiated by investigators in 2014, to the lowest of 62% cases in 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What has changed significantly over that time is how commanders have elected to handle those reports. In 2012, 68% of substantiated investigations resulted in criminal charges. In 2022, just 37% of them did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conversely, the numbers of non-judicial and administrative punishments, including separations, have risen. In 2012, 18% of cases resulted in non-judicial punishment, versus 35% in 2022. For administrative action, the number has climbed from 15% to 28%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One reason there are fewer prosecutions is that survivors don\u2019t want to go through the second trauma of the trial process, Galbreath said. A third of substantiated sexual assault reports never see charges or punishment because the survivors declined to participate in prosecutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The military\u2019s sexual assault response process weighs the input of survivors when a report is substantiated: those survivors <\/b>may voice their preference to see their attackers receive a lesser, non-criminal punishment rather than having to face them in court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur feedback from the leadership within the special victims counsel, and programs of the victim legal counsel, is that this is the voice of the victim being heard,\u201d Galbreath said. \u201cTheir willingness to support administrative actions and discharges or non judicial punishments and less confrontational forms of accountability action is something that we\u2019re seeing over and over.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2022, out of 7,378 reports, 2,117 were recommended for command action, the data shows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Galbreath acknowledged that the feedback from special victim advocates is anecdotal, and that his office does not drill down into each of those cases to ascertain whether the decisions were made based on the commander\u2019s opinion or the survivor\u2019s wishes, nor does it survey survivors on how they came to their decisions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Small uptick in reports in 2022<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Overall, the data shows that reports of sexual assault were up about 1% last year across the services, a bit of a leveling off after the previous year\u2019s report saw a 15% jump over 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\t