Without taking away from female victims, I wanted to present a more balanced, MRA-friendly post on the Deparment of Defense´s (often referred to as "the Pentagon´s") sexual assault statistics. The media can sometimes be a bit one-sided in the their reporting.

The statistics I am referencing come from the Department of Defense Annual Report on Sexual Assault in the MIlitary, Fiscal Year 2012.

Some Basic Figures

The Pentagon found that 26,000 servicemembers anonymously surveyed claimed to have been sexually assaulted. Of the claimants, 14,000 are male and 12,000 are female. Based on the proportional numbers of men and women in the military, the female claimants are very overrepresented (6.1%) compared to males (1.2%).

Though 26,000 servicemembers claim to have been sexually assaulted on the anonymous survey sent out to servicemembers, only 2,949 actual reports of abuse were made the preceding year. 88% of reports were made by females. Based on that figure, males are less likely to come forward.

The article HERE discusses these numbers.

Unfounded Allegations

17% of sexual assault reports made were determined to be unfounded. This is the term used in the Department of Defense for false allegations. The report describes unfounded allegations thus:

When the allegations in an Unrestricted Report are investigated, one possible outcome is that the evidence discovered by the investigation demonstrates that the accused person did not commit the offense. When this occurs, the allegations are determined to be unfounded, meaning false or baseless (see page 79, reference 1).

Interpret that excerpt as you like. For me, it suggests that the number of false allegations is actually much higher, because most cases will not involve concrete evidence of the accused´s innocence.

An article discussing the Department of Defense false allegation statistics is HERE

THANKS

Thanks for reading. I have provided links to reference documents below for anyone interested.

REFERENCES