WASHINGTON — A new military study says that reports of rapes and sexual assaults in the military increased 8 percent in the fiscal year ending September 2014, Obama administration officials said.

The results are bound to draw attention, coming just a year after a 50 percent increase in the reporting of rapes and sexual assaults, but proponents of keeping jurisdiction over such matters within the military chain of command said the report suggested that victims were more willing to file complaints than in the past.


 More than 5,400 sexual assaults were reported in 2014, compared with around 5,000 the year before, officials said. The study, which was first reported by The Associated Press, will be released Thursday by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.

In 2012, a confidential Pentagon survey estimated that 26,000 men and women were sexually assaulted. Of those, 3,375 cases were reported. By contrast, 5,061 cases were reported last year, and 5,400 this year. The Pentagon estimated that 19,000 men and women were sexually assaulted in 2014. 

White House and Pentagon officials have chosen to portray increases in reporting as a sign that victims are more comfortable reporting assault and that the Pentagon is taking the problem seriously.
“Pending the report’s public release tomorrow, assuming news accounts are correct, reporting of assaults being up and incidents being down are exactly the combination we’re looking for,” Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, said in an email on Wednesday. But critics say that military studies on the issue have significant limitations, and that the increases may mean there are more cases of assault.

Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, unsuccessfully pushed a bill this year that would have taken the prosecution of sexual assault cases out of the military chain of command.

“For a year now, we have heard how the reforms in the previous defense bill were going to protect victims and make retaliation a crime,” Ms. Gillibrand said in a statement Wednesday night. “It should be sending a screaming red flag to everyone when 62 percent of those who say they reported a crime were retaliated against — nearly two-thirds — the exact same number as last year.”

While Ms. Gillibrand’s attempt to have independent military prosecutors oversee sexual assault cases failed, she came close to garnering the 60 votes needed to move her bill forward. A group of senators joined forces with Ms. Gillibrand, among them two Republicans, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky and Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa.
-NYT