Personal security

Number of Sexual Assaults at Military Academies Jumps by 50 Percent

A report released Thursday by the Defense Department and based on an anonymous survey found that the number of sexual assaults at three military academies had spiked by nearly 50 percent in the past two years, even as actual reports of those assaults remained low, a disheartening figure that undermined claims of progress since a national conversation about sexual assault and harassment in the military began two years ago.

According to the report, 747 cadets and midshipmen from the United States Military Academy at West Point, the United States Naval Academy, and the United States Air Force Academy responded that they had experienced unwanted sexual contact—a category that ranges from groping to rape—in the 2017–18 academic year. It marks a sharp increase from the 507 reported in the 2015–16 academic year.

According to the survey, about 16 percent of women and 2 percent of men at West Point had experienced unwanted sexual contact. Two years before, just 10 percent of women had said the same. The number of reports of sexual assault between those two years remained static, just over 110.