Rape is a horrible crime and those who commit it should go to prison. However, the inference the US Military if rife with sexual predators is a charge in the same category as the claim the US Military is a racist organization. It is a charge motivated by politics, and thus never to be blindly accepted.
As is usual when a news outlet takes aim at the military, there are a number of flaws in the reporting. From the OP article, quote:
"Between 2007 and 2016, the Department of Defense collected more than 6,000 reports of sexual assault and sustained harassment."
However if you read the actual DoD report you find this, quote from page 20:
"Of the 5,350 Service members making a report in FY16, 556 reports involved incidents that occurred before the member entered military service."
The WUSA article does not make that distinction. Why should the military have its reputation tarnished as a result of sexual assault or harassment incidents which took place outside of the military? To advance the narrative, of course.
In addition the DoD report uses the actual number of reported incidents to extrapolate that if X number of reports were made, then the actual number of sexual assaults were actually Y.
A chart found on page 12 of the report cites these numbers for FY 2016, quote:
Estimated Number of Service Member Victims: (about) 14,900 (of which)
32 percent of those victims reported the incident while 68 percent did not report the incident.
The logical question. If 68 percent of victims did not report the incident which rendered them a victim, how does anyone know the incident actually took place? What methodology is the DOD using to extrapolate the problem of sexual assault in the military is far worse than the provable numbers demand?
Within the same chart it is reported 27 percent of those who reported some form of incident:
"Experienced behavior, but was not consistent with circumstances that military law prohibits."
What does that even mean? Ok, never mind, I know exactly what that means. It means the incidents of sexual assault and harassment are so nebulously defined as to include everything from "he looked at me funny" to actual rape.
Spare me the standard response. AlexDTX makes a valid point. Shoving men and women together for combat training is a recipe for disaster. I was fortunate in that when I went through Basic, AIT, and Ranger School integrated training had not yet been implemented, but in subsequent years I had to work with female trainees. It is nightmare, because each and every phase of training must be implemented with the goal of insuring no event can possibly occur for which a female trainee can subsequently claim sexual assault.
The perfect example of this is training to assist wounded soldiers. One of the training demands, at least when I went through, was the requirement to, while wearing full combat gear to include accounting for your weapon, pick up a fellow soldier, drape them over your shoulders, and carry them fifty yards. When working with female soldiers an inherent and unnecessary element of danger has been introduced, the fact that somewhere during the process of picking a woman up and draping her over your shoulders, your hand may slip and contact some part of her body you otherwise wouldn't come in contact with. This is an actual concern, and NCO's actually brief the little darlings concerning this potential prior to them being the object to be carried, that such incidental contact is not designed but an inherent part of actual combat which falls under the umbrella of "who gives a ...."
I guarantee you if in combat a female soldier takes a bullet to the hip her first thought isn't going to be "the guy carrying off the battlefield better not touch my butt!" But in training such an incident winds up on a DoD report designated "not consistent with circumstances that military law prohibits."
From page 27 of the report, quote:
"Men are far more likely to characterize the one sexual assault situation that had the largest effect on them, henceforth referred to as the “one situation,” as hazing or bullying than are women. More specifically, 27 percent of men who indicated experiencing sexual assault characterized the one situation as hazing compared to only 9 percent of women, and 39 percent of men who indicated experiencing sexual assault characterized the one situation as bullying compared to 24 percent of women."
I was hoping to find a detailed configuration listing the forms the reported incidents took, as in percent of groping incidents as opposed to percent of a snide or insensitive comment. At one time in my career I worked with and was attached to the 20th Special Forces Group, and we were engaged in prep cycles for a deployment. The group had a few women attached to the HQ element who were also present. Special Forces operators, to include Rangers, are not typically known for being politically correct. During a briefing concerning how women were typically treated by members of the Taliban, one of the operators made a comment about which part of the enemies anatomy he would shoot off. At that time the females present just nodded their heads and moved on. Today that comment would, in all probability, be reported as sexual assault or harassment. Sometimes this harassment crap gets carried too far, and I found the DoD report deficient in that it failed to differentiate between types of incidents. Seriously, what these people are reporting is an important factor, but the DoD report leaves the reader guessing.
This pattern continues. From page 15 of the report, quote:
"Five percent of active duty Service members indicated in the 2016 WGRA that they identify as either lesbian, gay, bisexual,and/or transgender. Survey findings show that Service members identifying as LGBT are statistically more likely to indicate experiencing sexual assault than members who do not identify as LGBT. The overall sexual assault estimated prevalence rate for active duty members identifying as LGBT is 4.5 percent, compared to 0.8 percent for those who do not identify as LGBT. An estimated 6.3 percent of women who identify as LGBT and 3.5 percent of men who identify as LGBT indicated experiencing sexual assault in 2016, compared to 3.5 percent and 0.3 percent of those who do not identify as LGBT, respectively."
However again the DoD report does not specify by percentage who is committing the acts which are being reported. In other words, we are left to guess. Are those conducting the "assaults" other LGBT soldiers, are all they all evil white men. The default assumption we are supposed to embrace is, due to the political agenda inherent in this issue, is the latter.
I find it interesting the WUSA article did not include the women's last name. If they had, we could run a search of the criminal data base and see if their cases ever made it to trial, and if so the result of that trial.
Military Charges More Men with Bogus Rape Claims to Show it Takes Sexual Assault Seriously
WASHINGTON — By the time Marine Staff Sgt. Jamie Walton went to trial on rape charges, his accuser had changed her story several times.
A military lawyer who evaluated the case told Walton’s commander they didn’t have enough evidence to go to trial on sexual assault charges. The prosecutor even agreed. But the Marines ignored the advice.
“Everyone knew I didn’t rape her,” said Walton, who was acquitted of the charge last year. “But they went ahead with the trial anyway.”
Walton’s questionable prosecution clashes with the public’s perception of a soft-on-rape military. A McClatchy Newspapers analysis found that the military is prosecuting a growing number of rape and sexual assault allegations, including highly contested cases that would be unlikely to go to trial in many civilian courts.
However, most of the accused aren’t being convicted of serious crimes.
Such results are provoking cynicism within the armed forces that the politics of rape are tainting a military justice system that’s as old as the country itself.
Politics infects all issues in today's world, including this one.
You start off by saying that what the male soldiers did was bad but ultimately you blame the women who were raped.
He did no such thing.
