Senior leaders focus on rebuilding trust as Defense Department pursues sexual assault reforms > US Department of Defense > Department of Defense News

The Defense Department remains focused on rebuilding the trust of service members as military justice reforms aimed at strengthening the department’s response to sexual assault take hold across the armed forces.

The special prosecutors’ offices, which independently prosecute sexual assaults and other serious crimes, reached full operational capacity last year.

The creation of these offices, which transferred criminal responsibility for certain serious crimes to independent, specially trained military lawyers, represents the most significant change to the Uniform Code of Military Justice since its introduction in 1950.

But months after reaching that milestone, Caroline Krass, the Pentagon’s general counsel, said senior leaders had not lost sight of the imperative to rebuild trust broken by the department’s handling of sexual assault cases in the past.

“Some have been humiliated and belittled because of their gender,” Krass said in her prepared remarks. “Others were sexually harassed or sexually assaulted by the very teammates and managers they trusted. Still others were ignored, not believed, or revictimized when they reported what had happened to them. And because of that, many others may not have reported it at all.”

“We are working to regain that trust,” she said.

Since taking office, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III has made combating sexual assault a top priority and taken a number of measures to reduce the spread of unwanted sexual contact across the ranks.

In 2021, Austin created the Independent Military Sexual Assault Review Commission to study the issue and provide recommendations to department leaders to reduce unwanted sexual contact.

As part of the review, experts interviewed hundreds of unit commanders, soldiers and survivors of sexual assault.

“They heard heartbreaking stories and ultimately discovered extensive evidence of the breach of trust I described,” Krass said of the review.

“The IRC has found a significant gap across departments between what senior leaders think happens under their command and what soldiers actually experience,” she said. “It has also found that victims do not trust commanders to deliver justice in cases of sexual harassment and sexual assault.”

Victims of sexual assault often believed that their commanders were more focused on logistics and combat readiness than on caring for their troops.

The review also found that soldiers were not convinced that commanders, who have no legal training, could be trusted to make decisions related to sexual assault, such as whether there is sufficient suspicion to charge someone with a crime.

In the same year, the commission made a series of recommendations to the department focusing on accountability, prevention, climate and culture, and victim care and support. Austin agreed with the IRC’s core recommendations and directed the department to complete implementation by fiscal year 2030.

Key recommendations include measures that place critical decisions in sexual assault cases in the hands of highly trained prosecutors who are independent of the military chain of command.

Congress passed a bill in 2021 to introduce reforms related to sexual assault and certain other serious crimes, and senior leaders across the Department of Defense immediately began implementing the changes.

The Special Trial Counsel offices within the Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force, which includes the Space Force, were set to become operational in December 2023.

The offices, which report directly to the civilian secretaries of their respective military branches, deal with a wide range of crimes, including murder, kidnapping and sexual misconduct. The offices will begin processing sexual harassment cases in January 2025.

Krass emphasized that the changes do not relieve anyone, including commanders and senior leaders, of the responsibility to detect and prevent sexual assault.

“They must create and maintain a leadership climate of dignity and respect, as recommended by the IRC, implement thoughtful strategies to prevent sexual harassment and assault, and ensure that victims who courageously come forward are treated with care and compassion,” Krass said. “Prevention is key, as is treating victims with respect.”

Krass called the changes to the military justice system “transformative reforms.”

“They modernize the military justice system and are a critical first step in making real, substantive progress in rebuilding trust between service members, their commanders and the rest of the department,” she said.

And there are signs that the department’s efforts to implement IRC reforms, including the establishment of special counsel offices, are having an impact on the prevalence of sexual assault in the ranks.

The department’s annual report on sexual assault in the military for fiscal year 2023, released last week, found that the prevalence of sexual assault among active duty personnel has declined compared to levels last measured in 2021, marking the first decline in nearly a decade.

The rate of unwanted sexual contacts among women with an active component decreased from 8.4% to 6.8% between 2021 and 2023. The rate of unwanted sexual contacts among men with an active component also appeared to decrease from 1.5% to 1.3%, but the change was not statistically significant.

Overall, according to Defense Department estimates, nearly 7,000 fewer soldiers will be victims of sexual assault in 2023 than in 2021.

“That’s 7,000 people who will not face the scourge of this crime,” said Beth Foster, executive director of the Office of Force Resiliency for the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness at the U.S. Department of Defense.

Foster credited Austin with her department-wide focus on sexual assault prevention, which she believes is moving the trend in the right direction.

This year’s report is the department’s first assessment of the prevalence of sexual assault since serious implementation of these recommendations began.

“The leadership of the ministry has made this a top priority issue and is fully committed to this work,” she said. “And this work is starting to flatten the curve.”

Defense Department officials said that while they were encouraged by the report, there remains much work to be done to eradicate sexual assault across the department.

“Last week, I convened the Deputy Secretary, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Service Secretaries, and Service Chiefs to discuss the findings of this report,” Austin said in a statement accompanying the report’s release. “I made clear that we are making significant progress, but we must redouble our efforts to end sexual assault and sexual harassment. This remains a core readiness issue across the joint force.”

“The only acceptable number of incidents of sexual assault or sexual harassment in the U.S. military is zero,” he said. “We owe it to all of our service members to get this right.”

In her speech last week, Krass once again stressed how important it is to continue to restore the trust of soldiers in all ranks.

“Soldiers trust that their colleagues will stand behind them, keep them out of harm’s way, and believe them when they say something is wrong,” Krass said. “They trust that their commanders will exercise their authority fairly. They trust their comrades with their lives.”

“This bond is at the core of what it means to serve in the U.S. military,” she said.