SHAMEFUL

Sexual Assault Reports in U.S. Military Spike 13%

Nearly 36,000 service members said they’d experienced unwanted sexual contact in 2021.

Reported sexual assaults in the U.S. military increased by 13 percent last year, according to a report. Disclosures made to the Associated Press from a confidential survey also revealed that 36,000 service members said they had experienced unwanted sexual contact in 2021, a huge increase on the roughly 20,000 who said they’d had such experiences in a similar survey in 2019. Unnamed defense officials attributed the worrying rise in alleged sexual assaults across the armed forces to significant increases in reports in the Army and Navy when bases emerged from pandemic restrictions and public venues reopened. The overall increase was largely driven by an almost 26 percent spike in reports involving Army soldiers—the biggest increase the service has seen since 2013.