Sexual assault and sexual harassment at the US military service academies

ABSTRACT

As hybrids of civilian colleges and the military, the United States military service academies provide a unique lens through which to examine sexual harassment and assault. They are also lightning rods for scrutiny and criticism, and testing grounds for innovation, intervention, and change. In this article, the authors provide an introduction to the academies and consider cultural and contextual factors, including masculinity and tokenism, that may influence student attitudes and experiences regarding these issues. In addition, they examine reports spanning almost a decade that show how rates of sexual harassment and assault have changed and make comparisons to both the broader military and civilian colleges and universities when possible. Finally, the authors discuss relevant prevention and response efforts at each institution, address implications, and suggest ways forward.

KEYWORDS:

• Sexual assault
• sexual harassment
• military service academies

Notes

^1. The MSAs are specifically exempt from Title IX in 20 USC 1681(a)(4). They are exempt from other requirements in Title 20 US Code (e.g. Clery Act/Campus SaVE Act (20 USC 1092)), because those only apply to colleges/universities in which students receive federal student aid.

^2. We restrict our focus to these three institutions, because they all fall under the DoD, whereas the Coast Guard is under Homeland Security and has a different mandate.

^3. The proportion of women at the MSAs is higher than the proportion of women in the active duty military. In Fiscal Year 2015, 15.1% of enlisted personnel and 17.7% of the officer corps were women (DoD, 2016c).

^4. Kanter (1977) initially predicted that 15% was the cut-off for tokens; subsequent research has suggested that not only is the situation more complex than simply counting numbers, but that representation of the minority group needs to be closer to 35%, if not more, to eliminate the effects of tokenism (Yoder, 2002).

^5. The U.S. Coast Guard Academy is also surveyed and their results are included in the report. However, as previously mentioned, they are excluded from this discussion.

^6. The DMDC report notes “Although this term does not appear in the [UCMJ] it is used as an umbrella term intended to include certain acts prohibited by the UCMJ” (p. 3). The report also implies that USC is a proxy measure for the range of crimes that constitute SA in military law, and the term sexual assault is used in other DoD reports using these data.

^7. The DMDC report intentionally does not make statistical comparisons across MSAs or report effect sizes, nor is enough data provided for the authors to make these comparisons.

^8. The trend of sophomore women being at greater risk for USC than freshmen holds for all of the MSAs according to the most recent report for academic year 2015–2016. At USMA, 12.7% of sophomore women vs. 5.8% of freshmen women reported an experience with USC. At USNA, 17.6% of sophomore women vs. 7.0% of freshmen women reported the same; at USAFA, 15.4% of sophomore women vs. 8.8% of freshmen women experienced USC (Van Winkle et al., 2017).

^9. There is some evidence to suggest that this is true for SAs of men as well, although the evidence is not as strong as for women (Krahé, Waizenhöfer, & Möller, 2003; Larimer, Lydum, Anderson, & Turner, 1999).

^10. The numbers of people experiencing various forms of sexist behavior does not directly translate to the number of people experiencing SH, as for something to qualify as SH the respondent must both have experienced a sexist behavior and said that they perceived that behavior to be SH.

^11. This is a formal process involving documentation, as compared to an informal disclosure, such as to a friend. Informal disclosures do not get counted toward number of reports. For more information see Miller, Farris, and Williams, in this issue.

^12. Notably, survivors can make a report at any time, so the reports received in 2013–2014 include incidents that occurred within that time frame, and potentially some that occurred earlier. In addition, individual respondent indications of “reporting” on a survey document have not aligned well with Restricted and Unrestricted Reporting totals tracked by the DoD in MSA Annual Reports. This is likely due to some confusion by the respondent of what constitutes a report and who may receive an official report.

^13. The recent American Association of Universities (AAU) report on SA/SH on college campuses (Cantor et al., 2015) also found low overall reporting rates. However, those rates are not directly comparable to the MSA reporting numbers cited above because the AAU report does not distinguish the type of agency that received the report, thus making it impossible to determine if those reports are equivalent to a formal military report. In addition, accounting procedures at civilian institutions may not capture confidential or restricted reports (if these are an option) as do military statistics.

^14. The question asks “Did you report this situation to any military authority or organization?”.

^15. It was also cited by men, but to a lesser extent (numbers not available).

^16. In the Army this function is called SHARP (Sexual Harassment/Assault Response and Prevention). Notably, this office handles both SH and SA whereas the two are handled separately in the other service branches. In addition, any incident determined to include intimate partner violence is handled by the Family Advocacy Program.

^17. The program goes beyond the minimum DoD requirements in terms of content (see first author for further details). SHAPE peer educators receive an additional 72 hours of formal education and training annually.

^18. Currently, there are related but independent efforts by faculty that tend to be topic specific (e.g., rape myth acceptance) rather than more comprehensive program assessment (e.g., Carroll & Clark, 2006; Rosenstein, 2015; Rosenstein & Carroll, 2015).

^19. This information is valuable as data from the civilian sector indicate that LGBT individuals are at elevated risk of sexual violence (Ford & Soto-Marquez, 2016; Rothman, Exner, & Baughman, 2011; Stotzer, 2009).