{"id":105592,"date":"2024-05-16T12:02:00","date_gmt":"2024-05-16T12:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/pentagon-report-to-show-significant-drop-in-unwanted-sexual-contact-in-military\/"},"modified":"2024-05-16T12:02:00","modified_gmt":"2024-05-16T12:02:00","slug":"pentagon-report-to-show-significant-drop-in-unwanted-sexual-contact-in-military","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/pentagon-report-to-show-significant-drop-in-unwanted-sexual-contact-in-military\/","title":{"rendered":"Pentagon report to show significant drop in unwanted sexual contact in military"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In this 2011 file photo, female U.S. Marines are shown marching. (Robert Nickelsberg\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

(WASHINGTON) — Soon to be released Pentagon figures will show a significant almost 19% reduction in the number of service members who say they have experienced some type of unwanted sexual contact over the previous survey conducted two years ago, according to a U.S. official.<\/p>\n

There was also a drop in the number of sexual assault reports involving service members filed last year, according to the official.<\/p>\n

Every two years, the U.S. military carries out an anonymous survey that Defense Department officials believe is a better indicator of the prevalence of sexual assault in the military than the annual reports where victims may be reluctant to step forward to report a sexual assault.<\/p>\n

This year’s survey indicated close to 29,000 reported unwanted sexual contacts, an almost 19% reduction from the 35,800 reported in the survey carried out in 2021.<\/p>\n

The Pentagon survey defines unwanted sexual contact as ranging from unwanted touching to rape.<\/p>\n

The reduction was the first in over eight years and drew comments from President Joe Biden as he met with senior U.S. military leaders at the White House on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

“I’m proud that for the first time in nearly a decade, rates of sexual assault and harassment … within active duty forces are down — are down because of your leadership,” he said.<\/p>\n

Separately, the number of reports of sexual assault also decreased in 2023 to 8,515 from 8,942 in 2022, according to the official.<\/p>\n

The Pentagon has increased the support and care it provides to victims of sexual assault and has raised the awareness encouraging victims to step forward with what is often underreported.<\/p>\n

But numbers of incidents and reports have gone up in years that those efforts have increased, so it\u2019s unclear what might be behind the new drop in numbers.<\/p>\n

The previous survey of sexual prevalence in the military showed a dramatic increase from 20,000 to 35,800, but defense officials noted that was because of changes in how the survey was carried out.<\/p>\n

That made full comparisons between those two surveys impossible until the upcoming release of this year’s survey.<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this 2011 file photo, female U.S. Marines are shown marching. (Robert Nickelsberg\/Getty Images) (WASHINGTON) — Soon to be released Pentagon figures will show a significant almost 19% reduction in the number of service members who say they have experienced some type of unwanted sexual contact over the previous surveyRead More →<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[156,31,2],"tags":[273,271,276,274,270,123,275,133,124,272,102,103],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105592"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105592\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}