Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call
Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) questions Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell during a House Financial Services Committee on February 27, 2019.
Two California House Democrats are asking the Department of Defense to explain its actions on tracking cases of military sexual assault, based on Prospect reporting that the Pentagon suppressed initial research into improving its internal assault database.
Last November, the Prospect reported that Pentagon officials had known for years that the military’s system for reporting sexual assaults was badly dysfunctional, leading to chronic underestimates of the scale of the problem. Yet when members of the Defense Digital Service (DDS), the Pentagon’s technology experts, provided initial recommendations on how to fix the reporting problems in 2016, top military officials dressed them down. The DDS staffers were subsequently reassigned and the project dropped. Some of the individuals who participated in the scotching of the report remain at the Pentagon, and the problems with the database continue.
According to estimates, 1 in 16 women (and 1 in 143 men) in the military experience a sexual assault incident annually, and for service academies that number increases to an appalling 1 in 6 women and 1 in 29 men.
“Poor data management makes it difficult for DOD leadership to understand the scope of the problem or respond effectively,” write Reps. Katie Porter (D-CA) and Jackie Speier (D-CA) in a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. This was buttressed by a report last May from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), finding that the data on military sexual assault that DOD is mandated by statute to collect was not comprehensive or accurate.
For example, the GAO pointed out that the database failed to include sexual assault incidents from intimate partners or family members, which are estimated to be more than one-sixth of all assaults. The agency also found gross technical incompetence—the system would crash if a single box was left blank on 14 different screens during the initial input, along with other bugs. And there was no way to search for trends in a particular region or branch of the armed forces.
The lead recommendation in that GAO report was to improve the tracking system, precisely what then–Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced as a priority in April 2016. “This project will help the department understand sexual assault data in a more meaningful way, also ultimately leading to more transparency between DOD advocates and others invested in this critical mission,” Carter said.
But the project barely got off the ground. The Defense Digital Service held briefings with stakeholders, but the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office cried foul that their turf was being taken over by digital upstarts; that leadership remains in place at DOD. Meanwhile, Carter’s chief of staff, according to Prospect reporting, told DDS staffers that the project was “wildly out of scope,” and that they should not have written down recommendations. Certain lines in DDS’s introduction, like the point that “DOD must remove any perverse incentives to hide or affect sexual assault reporting,” were removed.
From there, the project just floundered. DDS wanted to create a real-time database that could track sexual assault cases and advanced analysis of the data, but the concept went nowhere. Five years later, an independent review commission within the Pentagon recommended essentially the same thing.
“Allegations that the DDS report was buried by senior DOD leaders are concerning because they raise the possibility that DOD has deliberately slowed efforts to improve data on military sexual assault,” Porter and Speier write. In the letter, they ask Secretary Austin what the Pentagon is doing to improve the sexual assault incident database and data collection related to sexual assault and harassment more generally, and whether the Defense Digital Service is involved in that process.
The Defense Department did lay out a new process to mitigate military sexual assault last September, but a bipartisan group of eight senators criticized the Pentagon for its “vague approach and lax timeline.” The memo did call for the development of a “pulse survey” for real-time data sharing on sexual assault and harassment, but it didn’t foresee implementation until 2028.
Last year’s National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) included military justice reform provisions that made sexual harassment a crime, gave victims more visibility into actions taken by offenders, and required tracking of victim retaliation. The centerpiece of the reform pushed the decision to prosecute certain sexual crimes, including sexual assault, rape, murder, and domestic violence, out of the chain of command and into the hands of independent prosecutors.
Nothing in the reform provisions changed the state of sexual assault database tracking, which will hamper any efforts to fight the problem.
However, it fell short of the effort from Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) to move all sexual assault and harassment incidents out of the chain of command. Under the new rules, military commanders still retain court martial convening authority on all cases, and can select jury members in court martial cases resulting from these crimes, approve witnesses, and manage the trials. Gillibrand harshly criticized the “four men,” referring to the heads of the Armed Services Committees in the House and Senate, for watering down the reform.
Speier, for her part, called the changes in the NDAA “a giant leap forward,” while expressing disappointment that all cases weren’t pulled out of the chain of command. But nothing in the reform provisions changed the state of sexual assault database tracking, which will badly hamper any efforts to fight the problem. After all, it’s hard to combat crime if the crime is not reported.
The White House, which has made military sexual assault a priority, did not respond to a request for comment on whether they have weighed in with the Pentagon on the database issue. The Defense Department also has yet to comment to the Prospect on its progress.
