Washington – The number of Sexual aggressions reported throughout the United States Army Downloaded by almost 4% last year, fed by a significant fall in the army, according to Associated Press. It was the second consecutive year with a decrease, reverting a worrying trend that has affected the Defense Department for more than a decade.
High American defense officials said that while the decrease is a good sign, The number of assaults reported It is still too high and the army needs to do more so that the victims denounce the crime often not revealed.
According to officials, there were 8,195 sexual aggressions reported in 2024 involving Army members, compared to 8,515 in 2023. In 2022, there were 8,942 reported sexual assaults, A spike that generalized alarm and led to New programs and an infusion of funds to try to fight the problem.
The officials spoke about anonymity because the report has not been published publicly.
According to the data obtained by the AP, the general decrease was due to a 13% drop in the sexual aggressions reported throughout the Army, which is the largest military service.
All other services saw increases. The Navy had the largest leap of 4.3%, while the Air Force had an increase of 2.2%and Marines’s body increased by less than 1%.
Of the total of 8,195, there were 512 members of the service who reported an assault that occurred before entering the army. The Pentagon encourages reports so that victims can obtain any support they need. In addition, 641 were civilians who said they were attacked by an army member.
While the informed assaults decreased, the number of sexual harassment complaints went from 2,980 in 2023 to 3,014 last year. The majority were presented by members of the service, and the vast majority of the defendants were men.
The last report also reflects the first full year since the new prosecution procedures have been in force, putting independent lawyers in charge of these decisions and accompanying the commanders after years of pressure from the congress.
The change, resisted for a long time by the leaders of the Pentagon, was finally forced by frustrated legislators who believed that the commanders would not take the complaints of the victims seriously or try to protect the alleged perpetrators in their units.
The authorities said it is too early to say what effect these changes in the prosecution process have.
The number of cases in which the misconduct was justified increased a bit last year during the total of 2023. The number of discharges and administrative actions against alleged perpetrators continued to increase, and the charges of the martial court decreased, both trends date back several years.
The authorities indicated that almost three quarters of the martial cases court ended in convictions, a slight increase with respect to the previous year.
The reports of sexual assault in the army have increased for much of the last decade, except for a small decrease in 2020, during the closure of the COVID-19 pandemic. Authorities say they are optimistic about recent decreases, but they say that much more work should be done.
While it is difficult to point out any reason for the two -year decrease, the Department of Defense has been making a series of changes during the past year that officials, according to officials, may be contributing to change. The services are using an infusion of more than $ 1 billion to improve programs and hire up to 2,500 personnel as part of a new “prevention workforce” and place them in military facilities worldwide.
Until now, around 1,400 have been hired for that work, but that process has stagnated this year due to the Trump administration. Personnel budget and cuts throughout the federal government. Defense officials said they are working to spread existing workers to reduce the gaps until more can be hired.
The Pentagon publishes a report every year on the number of sexual aggressions reported by or on troops. But because sexual aggression is a highly little reported crime, the department also conducts a confidential survey every two years to obtain a clearer image of the problem. That survey, which is conducted online, came out last year, so it was not carried out this year.
Last year’s survey said that more than 29,000 members of the active service service said they had experienced unwanted sexual contact in the previous year, compared to almost 36,000 in the 2021 survey, according to several defense officials. The decrease was the first in eight years.
But officials said the survey also indicates that a large number of service members never present a report.
Defense officials have long argued that an increase in reported assaults is a positive trend because many people are reluctant to inform them, both in the army and in society in general. A greater report, they say, shows that there is more confidence in the report system and greater comfort with supporting the victims.
