Training credited for reducing sexual misconduct at Air Force Academy

Female cadets at the Air Force Academy reported fewer sexual assaults and incidents of sexual harassment in the 2004-2005 academic year than their counterparts at the Naval and Military academies, according to a recently released Pentagon survey.

The Service Academy 2005 Sexual Harassment and Assault Survey, commissioned by the Defense Department, found that 4 percent of Air Force Academy cadets experienced some form of sexual assault, 49 percent encountered sexual harassment and 82 percent experienced sexist behavior.

Reports of sexual assault and harassment rocked the Colorado Springs, Colo., Air Force Academy two years ago, resulting in several investigations and triggering an effort to reform the military's policies and procedures for handling sexual misconduct.

By comparison, the other military academies have received little attention for occasional reports of sexual misconduct by students.

Nevertheless, 5 percent of female midshipmen at the Naval Academy said they were sexually assaulted, while 59 percent reported sexual harassment and 93 percent said they faced sexist behavior. Six percent of Military Academy female cadets reported sexual assault, 62 percent cited sexual harassment and 96 percent experienced sexist behavior.

About half of the men surveyed at each institution reported sexist behavior, while reports of sexual harassment ranged from 12 percent to 16 percent for men. Only 1 percent of the men said they were sexually assaulted.

More than 60 percent of female cadets and midshipmen at the Military Academy and the Naval Academy felt that their sexual harassment and assault training was either "slightly or not at all effective" in reducing or preventing sexual misconduct, while 54 percent of females at the Air Force Academy said their harassment training failed to help and 50 percent said the assault training was not useful.

The 124-page report mandated by Congress indicated that most cadets and midshipmen believe training has contributed to what the Pentagon said is a decline of sexual misconduct at the military service academies. This report cannot be compared directly to the last survey of its type -- conducted by the Defense Department Inspector General in the spring of 2004 -- because the time periods are not consistent, the Pentagon cautioned.

The survey's sample size was 2,049 female and 3,287 male students, with an 85 percent response rate.

According to Defense, the service academies increased their efforts to prevent sexual harassment and assault by implementing the department's new sexual assault policies and expanding training to include staff and faculty.

The "bottom line is that it looks like the academies have strong programs and progress is being made," said Roger Kaplan, spokesman for the Pentagon's Joint Task Force on Sexual Assault Prevention and Response, which collected comments from the service academies and compiled the survey results from the Defense Manpower Data Center for the final report.

Comments from Air Force cadets were particularly encouraging, Kaplan said, adding that he believes the institution's two-year head start on the other academies in implementing stepped-up training programs is the reason for its improved numbers.

"When you've had 18 to 24 months to implement your program, you're going to have more short-term results as opposed to West Point and Annapolis," Kaplan said.

But Anita Sanchez, a spokeswoman for the Newtown, Conn.-based Miles Foundation, a nonprofit group that assists victims of sexual assault in the military, said the academy's current training regime is incomplete because it focuses primarily on the victim, rather than on the behavior of the sex offender.

The task force's report on the entire Defense Department is due to Congress on March 15 and will be released to the public that afternoon, according to Kaplan.

The department expects it to contain more reports of sexual misconduct than last year due to the newly implemented limited confidentiality policy, which allows victims to come forward for help without automatically prompting an investigation.

A separate Defense report, released at the same time as the academy survey, found that nearly a fifth of the women serving in the military's reserve components experienced sexual harassment in year before the survey, 2 percent encountered sexual assault and 10 percent faced sexual discrimination.

The 2004 Sexual Harassment Survey of Reserve Component Members canvassed a random sample of 76,031 reserve component members from the Army National Guard, Army Reserve, Naval Reserve, Marine Corps Reserve, Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve from March 19 - June 21, 2004.

The reservists reported lower assault rates than in previous studies of reserve component veterans and paralleled the sexual assault rates cited in a 2002 department survey of active-duty service members.

While 60 percent of men surveyed for the 177-page report said sexual harassment had become less frequent in the military than at civilian jobs, only 46 percent of women said the problem in the military had become less common than at their civilian workplaces.

The survey - the first of its kind -- created a "baseline against which we can measure future progress," said David Chu, under Secretary of Defense for personnel and readiness.

The Miles Foundation reported in February 2005 that it had received 307 reports of sexual assaults from soldiers deployed overseas -- predominantly from female active-duty service members. But since then the group's intake office has dealt primarily with Reserve and National Guard members.

Reports of sexual misconduct in the military service academies:

Reports of sexual misconduct among the reserve components: