Thursday, December 25, 2014

New data on sexual assault in the U.S. armed forces

Sen. Kerstin Gillibrand (D.-NY)
The Washington Post is running charts showing a sharp increase in sexual assaults in the U.S. armed forces. "The numbers have taken a dramatic upswing in the past two fiscal years. But advocates and the Pentagon warn that the number of victims is probably higher because women often don't report assaults."


Perhaps these data will cause some (5+) of the 45 Senators who voted against cloture on Sen. Kerstin Gillibrand's Military Justice Improvement Act earlier this year to have second thoughts.
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2 comments:

  1. Dwight SullivanDecember 26, 2014 at 5:47 PM

    The text of the Post's piece is potentially misleading. The Post stated: "The president receives an annual report from the Defense Department on sexual assault in the military. The numbers have taken a dramatic upswing in the past two fiscal years." What dramatically increased was the number of reports of unwanted sexual contact. The RAND survey estimates that, using apples-to-apples comparisons, the number of incidents of unwanted sexual contact declined by 27 percent from Fiscal Year 2012 to Fiscal Year 2014.

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  2. Dwight SullivanDecember 26, 2014 at 6:30 PM

    A follow-up: By my count, there are 13 Senators who voted on cloture on the Military Justice Improvement Act who will not return for the 114th Congress. 10 of them (9 Democrats and 1 Republican) voted for cloture while 3 (1 Democrat and 2 Republicans) voted against. All 10 departing Senators who voted for cloture are being replaced by Republicans. I know one of those Republicans -- Senator-elect Ernst of Iowa -- supports the MJIA. I am not aware of the positions of any of the other 12 incoming Senators on the bill. (While the House Armed Services Committee voted on two proposals that could serve as useful proxies for the MJIA, it doesn't appear that any of the 8 newly elected Senators who served in the House were on HASC.) All three of the outgoing Senators who voted against cloture are being replaced by members of the same party.Two of the outgoing Senators who voted for cloture (Sen. Udall of Colorado and Sen. Hagan of North Carolina) served on SASC. Two of the outgoing Senators who voted against cloture (Sen. Levin of Michigan and Sen. Chambliss of Georgia) served on SASC.

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