ELIZABETH FOSTER: Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you all so much for joining us today. As Nicole mentioned, we're here to brief you on the Fiscal Year 2022 Annual Report on Sexual Assault in the Military. I'm joined today by Dr. Nate Galbreath, who is the director of our Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office, and Dr. Andra Tharp, who is the director of our Violence Prevention Cell.
This year's report, which is required annually by Congress, contains updates on the department's significant efforts to prevent and respond to sexual assault, as well as sexual assault reporting data and military justice case outcomes.
This year's report does not contain sexual assault prevalence data, which the department assesses via scientific survey, and this allows the department to better understand the full scope of this problem. Traditionally, that survey is conducted every other year and those numbers will be in next year's annual report.
In this year's report, the department received a total of 8,942 reports of sexual assault in Fiscal Year 22, which is an increase of 76 reports over the 8,866 received in Fiscal Year 21. This amounts to about a one percent increase in reports from FY 21 to FY 22.
It's important to keep in mind that this increase cannot be characterized as an increase in the prevalence of the crime of sexual assault within the military because the prevalence survey was not conducted in fiscal year 22. Next year's survey which will include that prevalence survey is really going to help us put these reporting numbers into greater context.
At this stage of our program, we are encouraged to see greater reporting because it means that our sexual assault victims are getting the care and advocacy they need, and it creates opportunity for accountability through the military justice process. As you all know, from day one on the job, Secretary Austin has prioritized stopping sexual assault in our military, and this year's report details the unprecedented investments the department is making to counter this problem and the significant progress we've made in the past year in implementing key reforms. This includes the standup of the Offices of Special Trial Counsel, building a dedicated and specialized prevention workforce and professionalizing and realigning our sexual assault response workforce. Change of this magnitude will take time, but we owe it to our service members to sustain momentum and ensure that these efforts are taking hold throughout the force.
So with that, I'm going to flip to slide three, and wanted to do quickly is just give you all a quick snapshot and overview of where we are at in this mission. A lot of this information you've seen from us before, so as you all know, Secretary Austin stood up the Independent Review Commission (IRC) on Sexual Assault in the Military to take a hard look at this issue and tell us what we needed to improve to get this right. They released their findings in July 2021. The secretary approved all 82 of their recommendations, and also put forward an implementation roadmap in September 2021.
Since then, the department has completed 21 of the IRC's recommendations, and the remaining recommendations are fully underway, so a lot of progress being made on those recommendations, and we're on track to complete those recommendations according to the timelines laid out in the secretary's implementation roadmap.
I want to emphasize that Congress authorized $479 million in FY 23 to support IRC recommendation implementation. This is funding for across the department, so to include the services as well as other DOD components.
That's hugely significant because that really, you know, put a huge monetary investment behind these programs, which is frankly something that has been missing in this mission space and has really allowed us to ensure that we can implement these recommendations with fidelity and with expediency.
The FY 24 President's budget request includes a request for $636 million to continue IRC implementation and continue to make sure we're implementing this quickly.
These investments, as I said at the top, you know, they are going to need time to take hold and it may be some time before we see the outcomes that these recommendations on some of our surveys and other metrics that we use to look at this behavior but we're excited about the progress that the department is making to get after this effort.
So if you go to Slide 4, I just want to spend a minute to level set on metrics and some of what you're going to see in this year's report. So as you all know, the department assesses sexual assault progress via two primary metrics.
So we look at sexual assault prevalence and I mentioned that word at the top and prevalence is the estimated number of service members that experience sexual assault, and we measure this by scientific surveys because sexual assault is an underreported crime. And so if we just look at reports, that doesn't really give us an accurate picture of the full scope of this problem but the scientific survey does. And of course, what we want to see with prevalence is we want to see that number go down.
We also look at reporting, which is the number of victimized service members that choose to file a restricted or unrestricted report, and as I mentioned at the top, reporting is really critical because it ensure that our service members who have been victimized are getting the care and support that they need. And so what we want to see at this stage in our program is that we want to see reporting increase because we know they're getting the care they need.
What I want to emphasize is just one more time is that you are not going to see those prevalence numbers in this year's report. That will be in next year's report. And we will actually be conducting this survey that will contribute to next year's report in the fourth quarter of FY 23, and look forward to briefing you all on that next year.
So really, what we've got for you today is some information on reporting, some information on military justice outcomes, and then we want to talk a little bit more about where we are in this unprecedented effort to implement the IRC's reforms.
So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Galbreath.
DR. NATHAN GALBREATH: Good morning, everyone. I'm going to be on Slide 5 now.
The data that you see here are the primary metrics that Ms. Foster described. And every year, we come to you and we update you with our changes in numbers and the data that we have. What I would point out to you is that we are the only jurisdiction in the country that regularly assesses the scope of the problem, the size of the problem that we have, and tells you how much of the problem we see each year in our reports to law enforcement and other DOD officials.
So in order to orient you to this data, across the top of the slide with the diamonds are our prevalence estimates, and those are the number of service members that we estimate experienced sexual assault in the year prior to being surveyed.
Last year, we saw that number go to almost 36,000 service members. Again, we changed a metric due to some work to streamline our survey, to be able to better assess and to increase response rates.
Overall, we can't necessarily trend backwards, but we do recognize that this is really one of the main reasons why the Secretary, on his first day in the department determined that we needed to do more to address sexual assault.
Now, across the bottom are the numbers of reports that we receive, including restricted and unrestricted reports, and this year, we had about a one percent increase from up to 7,378 reports from service members who reported an incident for something that occurred during their military service.
As you can see, prior to last year, our reporting number was about 20 percent of the overall prevalence, which means that's our reporting rate. About 20 percent of service members who experienced a sexual assault in the past year made a report to a sexual assault response coordinator or to a military criminal investigative organization.
Now, that being said, that's not all of the reports that we receive. In the bottom right hand corner of the slide, you'll see that we receive additional reports of sexual assault. And for 580 service members, they came in to report an incident that occurred to them prior to joining military service.
Our policy provides care and support and recovery-oriented services for anyone that reports a sexual assault, no matter when it might have occurred. In addition to that, we received 797 reports from civilians and foreign nationals who alleged sexual assault at the hands of a service member.
All total this year, we received 8,942 again, about a one percent increase over what we received last year.
I'm going to go ahead and go on to Slide number 6, and while this is a lot of data to understand, what I would offer to you is that every year, the department takes a snapshot of all of the sexual assault investigations and adjudications that completed in a given year. That snapshot is what we share with you year after year on this slide.
So on the left-hand side of the slide, what this data essentially tells you on the green line is that military commanders had sufficient jurisdiction over the accused and evidence to take some kind of action in 66 percent of cases this year. That's on the far right of that graph on the left-hand side of the screen.
And essentially, that number has largely stayed the same over time, with about one-third of cases not being able to be prosecuted largely because there was insufficient evidence of a crime to prosecute but also because perhaps victims had declined to further participate in the military justice process, and about one percent of our cases were determined to be unfounded, meaning false or baseless.
So what has changed over time though is how cases are being adjudicated in the military justice process. So if you follow over to the right-hand side of the slide, what you see over time is the distribution of cases being adjudicated with court martial actions, administrative actions and discharges, and non-judicial punishments.
And what you see for this year, about 37 percent of cases went into the court martial process with a preferral of charges to court martial about 35 percent of cases were addressed with administrative actions and/or discharges and about 28 percent were addressed with non-judicial punishment.
One of the things that has really fundamentally changed in our military justice process over time is the support that we provide to victims of sexual assault to help them become more informed about what their options are in the justice process. One of the things that we've seen year after year since 2015 with the addition of the Special Victims Counsel Program, which are attorneys that represent victims throughout the military justice process, is that victims have made it abundantly clear that they would like to help see the department hold their offenders appropriately accountable, but they'd like to do it through non-confrontational means. And that's essentially what we see in the percentages with administrative actions and discharges and nonjudicial punishment.
That being said, we do think that one of the chief concerns or one of the chief missions that the new Special Trial Counsel is going to be addressing is, how do we restore some of the faith back into the military justice process such that people will want to participate more often in court-martial processes.
And that was largely one of the changes that the IRC recommended and Congress put into law is providing a system where an independent prosecutor will now be making decisions about what cases -will be prosecuted and in what way. That change was largely due to the perception that when a military commander makes these prosecution decisions, that they are not expert attorneys in these cases. And in addition to that, that commanders have a difficult choice between believing a victim's allegation versus people that they might know in their unit.
So sending these cases to a more independent process like a district attorney set up in the civilian community was something that was seen as beneficial and being able to restore that perception of fairness back into the system.
So with that being said, I'm going to go ahead and go on to the next slide and pass it back over to Ms. Foster.
MS. FOSTER: Great. So, as I mentioned at the top of this, a big focus of this year's report is providing an update of where is in implementing actions of the Independent Review Commission. Because the IRC really gave us a roadmap that we need to get after this problem and tackle that problem comprehensively.
So looking at, you know, prevention, response, and also accountability. And so what we'd like to do today is provide a brief overview of where we are with some of the major lines of effort, specifically the Office of Special Trial Counsel prevention workforce and the response workforce.
So if you go to slide eight, I'm going to pass it back to Dr. Galbreath.
DR. GALBREATH: Very quickly, to give you a thumbnail sketch of where we're at with some of these recommendations. This last year like we said, there were about 82 recommendations facing the department. We conducted significant action to complete about 21 of them. We're continuing work on the remaining 61.
There are three major though efforts that fall under IRC recommendations. And the first one that we'll talk about is the Office of the Special Trial Counsel. This last year, each service had a one-star general or admiral appointed to lead as the Special Trial Counsel for their service. These will be the independent decision-makers that will decide how cases are prosecuted for sexual assault and other named offenses.
In addition to that, each of them stood up and office with staff. And this summer they'll be working to work through the process by which the cases will be coming to them and adjudicated when they take over responsibility for prosecutions in December of this year.
MS. FOSTER: So a major focus in our efforts around building the prevention workforce because this is a brand new capability for the department. We've really had to do some foundational work to build up this workforce and a lot of that revolved around our efforts to develop a new policy to support this.
So we published DODI 6400.11 in December of this year, which is really foundational to laying out, you know, what does the prevention workforce look like, what is the organization of this workforce at every echelon, what is the training that they will receive, how will they be credentialed, how will they continue to progress in their career as a prevention specialist.
We also laid out how leaders will interact with this workforce and what the competencies are that leaders need to possess as they interact and engage with this effort. We also focused on, you know, making some changes to our command climate assessment process and transitioning that work from our EO professionals to the prevention workforce, because that data is going to be really essential to ensuring that our prevention personnel are able to drive down those risk factors that are focused not just on sexual assault but across our spectrum of harmful behaviors.
We've been working hard to get those folks hired. We've hired over 350 personnel thus far, and that work is continuing and ongoing.
DR. GALBREATH: So the third major effort that the department's undertaking is a realignment and an expansion of its response workforce. These are the sexual assault response coordinators and victim advocates that are at installations throughout the world that help victims through the recovery process.
In short, the IRC told us that victim assistants effective victim assistants should be a full-time job for the department. And the problem set that they left us with to solve was that they recommended a decreased dependence on collateral duty, or part-time personnel, to provide victim assistance, increasing independence from command, and also increasing the quality and the extent of their skills to support victims through the process.
In October of 2021, the department directed the military services to conduct workforce studies to essentially address these issues and to create plans to realign their SARC and their VA workforce. We received results this last January and we're currently working with the services to determine how well their plans align with the recommendations of the IRC and also the guidance that we've provided.
Overall, we're all seeking to provide excellence in victim assistance throughout the department, and that's what this effort intends to deliver.
With that being said, just very briefly, I'll cover the information on the remaining slides. On Slide 9, what you see is some of the efforts that we undertook to encourage greater reporting and service used by military men.
This is something that we've been working on for quite a bit. We released a campaign called “Courage To Report Fuels Change” last January. We all recognized that posters and awareness campaigns don't solve sexual assault but they certainly can serve a purpose to increase awareness and get more people to assistance.
And that's exactly what we designed this campaign to do and that's also what we saw the result to be. As a matter of fact, what the chart basically shows you on this slide is the increase in use of the DOD's Safe Helpline, our 24/7 crisis support line where you can call, click or text for assistance and find out about what your options are for recovery and support, should you have experienced a sexual assault in the department.
On the next slide, you'll see, on Slide number 10, we had additional reports into the Catch a Serial Offender Program. This year, almost 700 submissions resulting in 28 matches between individuals that submitted the name of their offender or information about their offender -- perhaps a screen name from an app or something along those lines. All total now, we have about 1,600 submissions in the system.
We're always looking for a way to improve and increase, you know, our effectiveness with this program. So this year, we've met with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and the other military services to identify ways to make it easier for victims to submit information and also for investigators to identify alleged offenders. So overall, good progress there.
In addition this year, we had about 35,000 users contact the Safe Helpline for services. This is the DoD's primary means for crisis support to people impacted by sexual assault in the military community.
And finally, we have another operation within the Sexual Assault Prevention Response Office called DoD SPARX Prevention. This is a community of practice for prevention workers that are working in the mission to reduce sexual assault occurrence.
We have about 1,300 SPARX members right now but one of the other things that we do with this operation is to provide educational webinars and also provide that initial onboarding training for individuals that are going to be working in the prevention workforce.
So overall, some of the summary of some of the information in this year's annual report. And to wrap up, I'm going to turn it back to Ms. Foster.
MS. FOSTER: Yeah, thanks so much, Dr. Galbreath. And I think that's a really high level snapshot of the significant work that is underway at the department. You know, as I said at the top, we know that this isn't going to happen overnight. We certainly, if we could flip a switch and make this change instantly, we would, but we know this is going to take some time.
What I will say is that the department is building in some significant evaluation and oversight efforts to ensure that we are continuing to implement these recommendations with fidelity and that they are resulting in the change that we need to see.
So while it may take time to see those numbers shift on the force-wide assessments, we're doing things like our on-site installation evaluation effort, which is that granular installation level look of what's working on the ground, what isn't, and where do we need to change our programming and our resources to target the problems that we're seeing.
We're also continuing to, as we stand up these new efforts such as the prevention workforce, build in some rigorous evaluation efforts, because we know these are new capabilities, and we know that they may need to shift over time to ensure they're being fully responsive to the needs of the force. But we're building in those capabilities from the beginning which is going to be really helpful to ensure that we can implement this with fidelity.
So with that, I think I'll turn it back to Nicole and we can answer questions.
MODERATOR: All right. Thanks so much, again. So when I call on you, you get a question and a follow-up. So let's start with Meghann Myers from Military Times.
Q: Thanks so much. First, I just want to ask, you know, the 1 percent increase in reports, obviously without the context of prevalence, would you guys consider that statistically significant or statistically insignificant as a year-over-year figure?
DR. GALBREATH: We don't do any statistical testing with reports because there's no variance associated with them, that they are what they are. So bottom line is, is that we look for any increase as to be beneficial in that more reporting means more people getting support. In addition to that, it also gives the department an opportunity to hold offenders appropriately accountable.
Q: All right. And Dr. Galbreath, my follow-up is also for you. On the statistics of the fall of prosecutions and the rise of admin and NJP actions, you said you attribute that to survivors electing for those outcomes. Is that something that you drill down to in every substantiated report and keep tight data on whether that was a commander's decision or whether that decision was made with the influence of survivors or are you speaking more anecdotally?
DR. GALBREATH: I think it's a combination of both. And the reason I say that is that SAPRO captures outcomes of cases but we recognize that each case is adjudicated on its merits and -- decisions are made about how best to adjudicate that case in the military justice process.
Our feedback from the leadership within the Special Victims Counsel and programs of the Victim Legal Counsel is that this is the voice of the victim being heard. And that their willingness to support administrative actions and discharges or nonjudicial punishment, less confrontational forms of accountability action is something that we're saying over and over. And as I work with them and talk with them every year, this is a theme that we continue to hear.
Overall, I think this is something that we need that we go forward with the changes in the military justice process, that confidence that we'll support victims no matter what they choose or how they choose to participate is an important factor. But it's also something that if we want greater support of court-martial actions, we need to do more to support them and scaffold their assistance in that very confrontational setting, over.
Q: OK. So it would safe to say this anecdotally something that you hear from the response community, but this isn't something that you individually drill down to and survey? You know, you don't ask survivors whether this was their decision, whether this was something that someone suggested to them, you don't know about how those conversations went?
DR. GALBREATH: That's a fair characterization.
Q: OK. Thank you.
MODERATOR: Haley from CNN.
Q: Hi, thank you. I'm curious, I don't think I see this in the slides, but could you talk about service-specific reports? I think we saw elsewhere that the Army's reports had had decreased while the other services had increased. Is that correct?
DR. GALBREATH: That's correct. Army's total number of reports received this year was down about 9 percent from what they received last year. So they received 3,718 reports in total. Navy had a 9 percent increase in reports. Marine Corps, a 3.6 percent increase in reports. And Air Force, a 13 percent increase in reports.
Q: Gotcha. Thank you. And then also, I'm curious, I know this is kind of the question we hear like every year, but I realize there's a lot under way right now with the IRC recommendation implementations, and that that's ongoing. And like you said, you know, I realize this is not an overnight situation. But given that we're still seeing, you know, year after year somewhat of an increase, granted this year was smaller, I mean, what do you want to see happening right now on the ground that is unrelated to things that will take more time like the IRC recommendations?
Like what do commanders need to be doing more of? What do service members need to be doing more of to see these numbers really start to turn around?
MS. FOSTER: Haley, thank you so much for that question. I think that's really critical because, you know, at the end of the day, we can only do so much at the headquarters level, but you know, really, this is on our commanders' honor and COs, our frontline leaders to make sure that they are addressing this problem.
And, you know, the secretary says often, you know, we need to lead on this. And that is at every level of the department. Think the challenge that we hear so often though from our folks at our installations is that they want to get after this urgently. But they don't necessarily have the tools and resources to do so. And so that's what we're trying to get in their hands.
We're trying to get them additional assets, additional capabilities so that they know how to have some of these tough conversations. So they know how to focus in on the risk factors at their specific installation, and make sure that they're addressing those.
Q: All right. Thank you.
MODERATOR: Jeff Schogol?
Q: Thank you. This is a question for Dr. Galbreath. Looking at the slide on prosecutions, it looks like number of sexual assault cases where charges were referred to a court-martial have decreased from more than 70 percent to about this 36 percent figure. Now this happened this coincides with some 2012 changes to the UCMJ that were made to Article 120 that were supposed to make sexual assault cases easier to prosecute.
In retrospect, should we attribute the drop of martial for sexual assault to these changes in Article 120?
DR. GALBREATH: You know, Jeff, I am not an attorney, I'm a psychologist that reports on this data. I think there are multiple influences here. And I think the best source of information about that would come from the Defense Advisory Committee on the Investigation, Prosecution and Defense of Adult Sexual Assault Crimes. They have been following this data and the changes over time a bit more closely.
What I would offer is I don't think you're completely, you know, inaccurate with your statement is that certainly the multiple changes in the UCMJ. One of those changes in 2012 was made to increase the options that commanders have to be able to use to address crimes. And so there was a big uptick in the kinds in those actions, I think, in those years.
Since that time, there certainly have been changes, both in case law and in other activities within the department, which has probably contributed to those overall decreases in cases going to court-martial for adjudication.
And so, you know, one of those influences is the Special Victims' Counsel program, like I talked about, but there are others out there that a more learned attorney would be able to inform you about than I.
Q: If I could ask a quick follow-up. It looks like, if I read it right, the number of -- or the prevalence in 2021 was something like 36,000 cases. Is it possible that the reason why these -- the prevalence keeps going up is that service members know that the chances of them being prosecuted for sexual assault keep going down?
DR. GALBREATH: I don't think I could make that connection, Jeff, and as a matter of fact, if you look back in the years after 2012, that we had decreasing periods of prevalence between 2012 and 2016. I think one of the things that we're seeing in U.S. society as a whole is a change in overall in risk of sexual assault.
We're not only seeing it in the department, we're also seeing it in civilian communities as well. And while there hasn't been a really good sexual assault study done in the civilian community since the end of the COVID pandemic response measures, what I would tell you is, last year, the Youth Risk Behavior Survey that came out of CDC made it very clear that high school girls are experiencing increased levels of sexual assault and sexual abuse.
Because this is our recruiting population, this is also something that impacts our numbers as well. So it would be hard to point to one single thing. Over.
Q: Thank you.
MODERATOR: Heather Mongilio
Q: Thanks so much. So for my first question, in the past year, the DOD put out a change in reporting allowing for some more restricted reporting. Can you talk about how that has affected reporting or just sexual assault in general in FY 2022?
MS. FOSTER: Heather, I'm going to pass it to Dr. Galbreath.
DR. GALBREATH: So fundamentally, the changes in restricted reporting that we affected this past year essentially allow an individual whose allegation or whose sexual assault was disclosed by a third party, it allows them to maintain a restricted report of sexual assault.
I don't have a way really to assess the impact of that policy change right now but what I can tell you is that this policy does allow an individual who wants to maintain a restricted report and does not want to participate in the justice process to keep that and to make it very clear if they do not want to participate any further.
And in those situations, we've created at the request of Congress, a way to allow them to formally notify criminal investigators that they no longer wish to participate, and if the identity of the alleged offender is not known to the criminal investigators, they may, upon reviewing the status of their investigation, choose to close that investigation and stop investigating, or if they do know, they are required to continue that investigation.
So it's a very fine point but we thought it was very important, coming out of the Sexual Assault Accountability and Investigations Task Force to give victims a way to kind of keep their restricted report following a disclosure by a third party. Over.
Q: Great. And then just to follow up so I know that this year is when the Special Trial Counsel is supposed to be implemented but can you talk about what the commanderS. what evidence the Department of Defense has for believing that the commanders were the issue and why the Department of Defense believes that having a Special Trial Counsel instead will make it so that more people have faith in this system?
MS. FOSTER: Yeah, so thanks for the question, and I'll just answer quickly and then pass it to Dr. Galbreath. You know, you all are well familiar with the Independent Review Commission on Sexual Assault in the Military and, you know, this was one of their most striking findings, was that this was a change that was going to be necessary to help reduce and eventually eliminate sexual assault from our force. And so I'll pass it to Dr. Galbreath for more information on that.
DR. GALBREATH: So if you take a look at the IRC report from July of 2021, one of the things that the IRC cited was the understanding that, for years, confidence that a allegation of sexual assault would be taken seriously has been decreasing throughout the department.
This was largely due to the perception that if when presented with an allegation of sexual assault, was a commander the best person to decide whether or not on the merits of a particular case and how to adjudicate it.
The IRC's opinion was that justice would be better served and fairness preserved if this decision was handed to an independent prosecutor who could make a decision that was free from any kind of influence, that as a result, the Special Trial Counsel all report directly to the Secretary of the military service. And so, you know, largely free from any kind of command influence.
So that was -- that was their rationale, and the goal was to essentially restore that perception of fairness and hopefully bring more people forward to have their cases heard. Over.
Q: Thanks.