Reported sexual assaults in the United States military jumped 50 percent last year, the Pentagon said on Thursday, and officials welcomed the spike as a sign that a high-level crackdown has made victims more confident their attackers will be prosecuted, according to the Associated Press.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said the jump in reported sexual assaults to 5,061 in the 2013 fiscal year from 3,374 the previous year, was "unprecedented," the AP reported.
Hagel also announced six new directives to expand the fight, including an alcohol policy review and an effort to encourage reporting by male victims, according to the AP. Men are thought to represent about half of the victims of military sexual assault but made up only 14 percent of the reports that were investigated.
"We believe victims are growing more confident in our system," Hagel told a Pentagon news conference, the AP reported. "Because these crimes are underreported, we took steps to increase reporting and that's what we're seeing."
A total 484 cases went to trial in the 2013 fiscal year that ended on September 30 and 370 people were convicted of an offense, the report said, according to the AP. Last year there were 302 trials and 238 convictions.
Sexual assault is vastly underreported, and a separate military survey conducted in 2012 concluded there were some 26,000 sex crimes in the military that year, from rape to abusive sexual contact, the AP reported. The survey is conducted every two years, so there was no survey with the annual report this year to use as a basis for projecting total sex crimes in the services.
The figures last year provoked outrage and led to a broad effort across the military to crack down on sex crimes and sexual misbehavior,but despite the push, a number of high-profile officers are being investigated for their actions, according to the AP.
