Reports of sexual assault by U.S. military personnel have increased significantly

The U.S. Department of Defense’s annual report on sexual assault within the U.S. military released on September 1 shows that the number of reports of sexual assault by U.S. military personnel has increased significantly.

The report shows that in fiscal year 2021, from October 1, 2020 to September 30, 2021, the U.S. Department of Defense received 8,866 reports of sexual assault by U.S. military personnel, 13% more than the previous fiscal year. The situation of several major military services has deteriorated. Among them, the number of reports of sexual assault by personnel in the US Army has increased the most, reaching 25.6%; followed by the US Navy, with an increase of 9.2%; the number of reports of sexual assault by the Marine Corps and the Air Force also increased slightly.

According to the report, more than 8 percent of active-duty women and about 1.5 percent of active-duty men in the U.S. military said they had experienced some form of non-consensual sexual contact in the year before taking the survey. The report concluded that sexual assault and harassment persisted within the U.S. military and “corrupted” the military.

For a long time, there have been frequent incidents of sexual assault by U.S. military personnel, but the U.S. military has neglected internal supervision and resisted external investigation and supervision, and a large number of sexual assault victims cannot be treated fairly. At the same time, the U.S. troops stationed overseas rely on the extraterritorial jurisdiction agreement with the host country to cover up the crimes of sexual assault committed by their personnel against local people.