The statistics on sexual assault in the military are sobering in general â and they are nothing short of outrageous when they measure just how often justice is truly pursued on the behalf of survivors.
Here were some of the troubling findings in a 2020 report by the Department of Defense on sexual assaults in the military:
⢠Out of 795 sexual assault cases that were filed, 540 were pursued to a greater degree.
⢠Out of those 540 cases, 363 â or 67% â led to a trial involving at least one sexual assault charge.
⢠Out of the cases that went to trial, only 138 resulted in a sexual offense conviction.
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Vanessa Guillén's murder increased awareness of military sexual assault. The Military Justice Improvement and Increasing Prevention Act was introduced.
Private first class Kaylie Harris died by suicide after coming out as a lesbian (Facebook/Lilian Harris)
A lesbian soldier has tragically taken her own life following an alleged sexual assault by a military colleague days after she came out on Facebook.
Private first class Kaylie Harris was just 21 years old when she died by suicide on 2 May at a military base in Anchorage, Alaska. She’d been a soldier less than a year.
In the days that followed her death, Kaylie’s mother, Carey Harris, learned her daughter had filed a sexual assault complaint against a fellow service member, 10 days after she came out a lesbian on Facebook.