Resource Prevalence of Sexual Assault in the Military: Risk and Protective Factors, Data Sources, and Data Uses

This resource offers a brief overview of sexual assault prevalence in the military and includes details on risk and protective factors, data sources, and guidance on using these data in community problem assessments.

As shown in Figure 1, in 2018, 6.2 percent of women and 0.7 percent of men reported experiences consistent with the Uniform Code of Military Justice’s definition of sexual assault (Breslin et al., 2019).

Source: 2018 Workplace and Gender Relations Survey of Active Duty Members (WGRA) (Breslin et al., 2019)

20,500 estimated

13,000 Women (6.2% of 208,500)

7500 Men (0.7% of 1,080,000)

For service members who had experienced sexual assault in the past year, the remainder of the Department of Defense (DoD) survey asked them to focus on the worst or most serious assault they experienced (Breslin et al., 2019). As shown in Figure 2, servicemen who were sexually assaulted (38 percent) were more likely than servicewomen (21 percent) to describe their worst assault as a hazing or bullying incident that included sexual assault. The vast majority of female victims indicated that the assault was perpetrated by a man or a group of men (92 percent), whereas a slim majority of men were assaulted by a man or a group of men (52 percent). An additional 30 percent were assaulted by a woman or women only. Most victims described at least one of their assailants as a member of the military (89 percent for women, 71 percent for men). Sixty-two percent of women and 57 percent of men reported that the most serious sexual assault they experienced happened at a military installation or on a ship. However, many incidents also occurred at locations off base (47 percent for women, 38 percent for men). Finally, alcohol use by the survivor or perpetrator was involved in 62 percent of incidents involving women and 49 percent of incidents involving men.

Source: 2018 WGRA (Breslin et al., 2019)

Who was the perpetrator?

A man or group of men

Women responded 92%

Men responded 52%

Where did the assault occur?

Military installment or ship

Women responded 62%

Men responded 57%

How many said alcohol was involved?

Drugs or alcohol

Women responded 62%

Men responded 49%

How did victims describe the worst assault?

Hazing or bullying

Women responded 21%

Men responded 38%

As shown in Figure 3, most incidents of sexual assault were not officially reported to DoD (Breslin et al., 2019). Of the service members who had experienced sexual assault in the past year, 17 percent of male victims and 30 percent of female victims had reported the incident to DoD. The most common reasons for not reporting the incident were that “they wanted to forget about it and move on,” they “did not want more people to know,” or they “felt shamed or embarrassed.” Among servicewomen who had reported an event, 38 percent indicated experiencing events consistent with professional reprisal, 51 percent indicated experiencing events consistent with ostracism, and 34 percent indicated experiencing events consistent with maltreatment. The most-recent data available can be found at the DoD Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office (SAPRO) website.

Source: 2018 WGRA (Breslin et al., 2019).

How many victims reported the assault to DoD?

Women responded 31%

Men responded 15%

How many who reported the assault said they faced repercussions?

Ostracism

Active-duty members responded 62%

Maltreatment

Active-duty members responded 34%

Professional reprisal

Active-duty members responded 23%

Sexual Assault Risk and Protective Factors

In this review, we focus only on those risk factors for sexual assault that have been established via multiple high-quality studies. These are summarized in Table 1 below. There are many other risk and protective factors that have been studied by one or two researchers or have been described in one or two studies. By excluding them, we do not intend to communicate that they aren’t important or that they won’t prove useful in future prevention strategies.

Victimization

The group of people who are at highest risk for sexual assault are those who have already been sexually assaulted in the past (LeardMann et al., 2013; Merrill et al., 1999; Sadler et al., 2003). For example, in one study, Army women who had been sexually assaulted prior to enlistment experienced more sexual violence than Army women who had not been assaulted prior to enlistment (Kessler, 2014). The reason sexual assault victims are more likely to be assaulted again is not well understood. Some researchers think that perpetrators target people with certain characteristics (for example, sexual minorities; Morral and Schell, 2021) such that those people are at risk for being assaulted repeatedly over their lifetimes. There could be factors related to where a person lives or spends time that continue to confer risk over their lifetime (for example, living in a location with a high crime rate, frequently attending large social gatherings). Having been sexually assaulted might also change a person in a way that increases their risk. For example, victims who cope with the trauma by using alcohol could become vulnerable to future victimization during periods of intoxication.

Sexual assault victimization is also associated with demographic factors, such as gender, age, marital status, and sexual orientation. Servicewomen are about five times more likely than servicemen to be sexually assaulted (Jaycox, Schell, Morral, et al., 2015). Younger adults are at higher risk than older adults (Kimerling et al., 2007; LeardMann et al., 2013; Street, Rosellini, et al., 2016; Street, Stafford, et al., 2008), and, regardless of age, people who are single or divorced are at increased risk for sexual assault relative to married people (Kimerling et al., 2007; LeardMann et al., 2013; Street, Rosellini, et al., 2016; but see also Sadler et al., 2003, and Street, Stafford, et al., 2008). This could be due, in part, to the fact that younger and single adults are more likely to date or attend social gatherings, where they have increased exposure to potential perpetrators (Marx, Van Wie, and Gross, 1996). Finally, relative to people who identify as heterosexual, individuals who identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual are at elevated risk for sexual assault (Morral and Schell, 2021; Rothman, Exner, and Baughman, 2011).

With respect to military-specific characteristics, enlisted service members—particularly those at lower ranks—carry a greater risk than officers do (LeardMann et al., 2013; Jaycox, Schell, Morral, et al., 2015; Sadler et al., 2003; Street, Rosellini, et al., 2016). There is also converging evidence that members of the Air Force are at lower risk than members of other branches are (LeardMann et al., 2013; Schell and Morral, 2015). Some military settings also increase risk; basic training and transitioning between duty stations have been identified as periods of increased risk for sexual assault among both men and women (Kessler, 2014; Street, Rosellini, et al., 2016). Finally, a military setting in which a workgroup is disproportionately male confers greater risk than a setting with lower percentages of male service members (Sadler et al., 2003; Harned et al., 2002). Because most perpetrators of sexual assaults against service members are men (Jaycox, Schell, Morral, et al., 2015), this effect could be explained simply by noting that, as the proportion of potential offenders in an environment increases, so too does an individual’s risk of sexual assault. Others have focused on cultural factors, suggesting that workplaces that are disproportionately male might also be marked by hypermasculinity, sexual harassment, and male dominance in the power hierarchy (Turchik and Wilson, 2010).

Finally, alcohol use can increase vulnerability if it occurs in a setting with a nearby potential perpetrator. At high doses, alcohol users can be incapacitated or even unconscious and thus could have few means by which to resist or avoid an assault (McCauley et al., 2009; Mohler-Kuo et al., 2004). At lower doses, alcohol use can reduce attention to risk indicators (Davis et al., 2009; Testa, Livingston, and Collins, 2000), thereby decreasing the likelihood that the user will exit a risky encounter while escape is still possible. Finally, individuals observing someone drinking alcohol attribute more sexual intention to that person than they do to someone who is not drinking alcohol, and this social misperception increases the risk of offending (Corcoran and Thomas, 1991; DeSouza et al., 1992; Garcia and Kushnier, 1987; George, Gournic, and McAfee, 1988). For service members who had been sexually assaulted in the past year, 48 percent of women and 38 percent of men indicated that they had been drinking prior to the assault (Breslin et al., 2019).

Perpetration

As with the risk for victimization, one of the best predictors of whether someone is likely to perpetrate a sexual assault in the future is whether they have already sexually assaulted someone in the past (Gidycz, Warkentin, and Orchowski, 2007; Loh and Gidycz, 2006; Loh et al., 2005; Malamuth et al., 1995; White and Smith, 2004). For example, college men who had sexually assaulted someone in the past were nine times more likely to commit another sexual assault in the next semester of college than were young men without histories of sexual violence (Loh and Gidycz, 2006; White and Smith, 2004). Similar data are available from a military cohort of 2,925 male Navy recruits who were studied during their first two years of service (McWhorter et al., 2009). Overall, 13 percent of recruits self-reported that they had attempted or completed a rape by the end of their first year of service, and, of those who sexually assaulted someone in their first year of service, 71 percent reperpetrated during the second year of service (McWhorter et al., 2009). Comparable data for the remaining service branches have not been published. In addition, an individual who was themselves a victim of emotional or physical abuse as a child is more likely to perpetrate sexual violence as an adult (DeGue and DiLillo, 2004; Fineran and Bolen, 2006; Zakireh, Ronis, and Knight, 2008).

Another risk for perpetration is agreement with ideas that make sexual assault seem justifiable in some circumstances (for example, “If a girl leads you on, she deserves to be taught a lesson”) or that shift responsibility for the assault from the assailant to the victim (for example, “When a woman is raped, she usually did something careless to put herself in that situation”). The most common way in which researchers measure these attitudes is with a questionnaire called the Rape Myth Acceptance scale (Lonsway and Fizgerald, 1995). Many studies have shown that people who agree with these ideas are more likely to perpetrate sexual assault (Tharp et al., 2013; Suarez and Gadalla, 2010).

Among civilian sexual assault victims, about two-thirds indicated that the perpetrator was using alcohol at the time of the assault (Brecklin and Ullman, 2002; Tjaden and Thoennes, 2006). Researchers have shown in laboratory experiments that alcohol intoxication causes young men to become more aggressive, particularly young men who are also aggressive in their daily lives (Bushman and Cooper, 1990; Chermack and Giancola, 1997; Ito, Miller, and Pollock, 1996). For ethical reasons, researchers can’t study the effect of alcohol intoxication on sexual aggression directly, but they have found indirect evidence that alcohol use increases the risk of committing a sexual assault (Farris and Hepner, 2014). Young men who consumed alcohol in a controlled laboratory setting were more likely to believe that women depicted in study materials were sexually interested (even when those women were instructed to behave in a friendly, professional manner), took longer than men who had not consumed alcohol to identify that a sexual encounter in an audio track had turned into a date rape, and were more likely to indicate that they would sexually assault someone in a situation similar to a hypothetical date-rape scenario (Farris et al., 2008; Gross et al., 2001; Davis, 2010; Davis et al., 2012; Norris et al., 2002). Although most of this research has been conducted with college men, this group does share demographic characteristics with junior enlisted personnel. In addition, among victims of military sexual assaults, 52 percent of women and 38 percent of men indicated that the perpetrator had been drinking (Breslin et al., 2019), suggesting that alcohol use might be one important risk factor for predicting sexual assault (Farris and Hepner, 2014).

Finally, men with more dating and sexual partners were more likely to perpetrate a sexual assault than men with fewer dating or sexual partners (Tharp et al., 2013)

Using Data to Inform Community Problem Assessment for Sexual Assault Prevention

Making sense of the data you have and resolving conflicting information across sources can be difficult. Below are six questions to ask as you review your data.

1. What are the most relevant risk or protective factors for sexual assault at your location? Risk factors are aspects of personal behavior or lifestyle, relationships, or the larger environment that are associated with an increase in the occurrence of a problem behavior. Examples of sexual assault risk factors include alcohol misuse, dating and intimate partner violence, sexual harassment, and hostile masculinity. Protective factors are characteristics associated with a lower likelihood of problem behaviors or that reduce a risk factor's impact. Examples of sexual assault protective factors include healthy relationships, healthy masculinity, workplace civility, and climates of trust and respect.
2. What trends in your data suggest that the problem of sexual assault is changing? What is getting worse? What is getting better? What is staying the same?
3. How do the different data compare? What are areas of agreement? What are areas of disagreement?
4. Are there other considerations? For example, are there missing data or data problems?
5. What do the data, taken as a whole, suggest as priorities to address in your effort to strengthen sexual assault prevention at your site? How do the existing data support this prioritization?
6. Data limitations are important to consider. For example, the data might be old or available only for your branch of the military or DoD-wide and not for your site. Any inferences you make should draw on your understanding of your current local context in comparison with the data source.

References

Handbook Overview