# Why has the military sexual assault rate jumped nearly 40%?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-has-the-military-sexual-assault-rate-jumped-nearly-40/833390>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [May 2, 2019, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-has-the-military-sexual-assault-rate-jumped-nearly-40/833390 "2019-05-02T21:34:46Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 4

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\
**Post date:** [May 10, 2019, 10:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-has-the-military-sexual-assault-rate-jumped-nearly-40/833390/61 "2019-05-10T10:37:45Z")

</div>

A similar jump in years past:

“The Pentagon estimated that 26,000 service members experienced unwanted sexual contact in 2012, rising from 19,000 in 2010”

> **[Sexual assault in the United States military](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_assault_in_the_United_States_military)**
>
> Sexual assault in the United States armed forces is an ongoing issue which has received extensive media coverage in the past. A 2012 Pentagon survey found that approximately 26,000 women and men were sexually assaulted that year; of those, only 3,374 cases were reported. In 2013, a new Pentagon report found that 5,061 troops reported cases of assault. Of the reported cases, only 484 cases went to trial; 376 resulted in convictions. Another investigation found that one in five women in the A ...

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\
**Post date:** [May 11, 2019, 7:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-has-the-military-sexual-assault-rate-jumped-nearly-40/833390/62 "2019-05-11T07:58:42Z")

</div>

> [@DinoR](#):
>
> Female sex offenders in the military are part of the problem in a way that they just aren’t in civilian life.

Are they? I realize that according to statistics I’ve been assaulted more often than most other women, but those assaults include women acting alone and women acting with men as well as men acting alone or in an all-male group. Men acting alone are still the most common, mind you.

The ratios may be different, but when one of the issues is low reporting and differences in how attacks are classified and/or counted in different contexts, it’s difficult to know. We need better data.

[Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-has-the-military-sexual-assault-rate-jumped-nearly-40/833390.md?page=3)