About 135,000 sexual assaults happen inside US military in 11 years

SANAA, Jul. 03 (YPA) – About 135,000 sexual assaults and 509,000 cases of sexual harassment have been happened inside the US military for the last 11 years, according to the US Army’s Independent Commission of Inquiry’s report.

This committee was formed to investigate the cases of sexual harassment in the US military after Lloyd Austin took over the Ministry of Defense.

The report pointed out that a previous report issued in 2010 had stated that solving the issue of harassment in the army would take about 10 years.

The report added that the Ministry of Defense estimates that 65,400 women and 69,600 men out of the 135,000 people have been subjected to sexual assault and nearly 223,000 women and 286,000 men out of 509,000 ones have been subjected to harassment.

There was a partial decline in 2016 in these incidents, but in 2018, over 20,000 military personnel, including 13,000 women, were subjected to sexual harassment or assault.

The report confirmed that 8,000 reports of sexual harassment were registered annually on average, while there were 1,781 reports registered in 2020. It indicated that the military justice system is insufficient to consider harassment cases, and that US leaders failed to find a solution to this problem.

Following the report, the minister Austin published a circular, in which it would work to authorize the civilian judiciary to consider cases of harassment and sexual assault in the army, by making an amendment to the Military Judiciary Law.

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