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Pentagon grapples with retaliation in sex assault cases

 
Published May 2, 2015

WASHINGTON — It's not against the law or military regulations to choose not to sit with someone in a dining hall or to unfriend them on Facebook, but in the aftermath of a sexual assault, a victim could interpret those moves as retaliation.

In these days when a tweet or Instagram photo can be wielded as weapons, the Pentagon is struggling to define retaliation and rein in bullying or other behavior that victims perceive as vengeful. At the same time, military leaders are expanding efforts to better train their lower- and mid-level commanders to detect and deal with retaliation, while also insuring that other, more innocent actions are not misinterpreted by assault victims.

On Friday, the Pentagon released a deeper analysis of the sexual assault survey data made public in December. That report acknowledges the difficulties in gathering data about retaliation, including problems with how some of the survey questions may have been misinterpreted and that incidents of retaliation may have been overcounted.

It's a thorny problem for the military, in the aftermath of a RAND study that concluded that about 60 percent of sexual assault victims believe they have faced retaliation.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter unveiled four new initiatives to focus training more directly on the differences in assaults on men and women.

The survey showed that unwanted sexual contact against men usually involves multiple assailants on more than one occasion, happens during work hours at their duty station and is more often described by the victim as hazing or an effort to humiliate them. Incidents described by women are usually after work hours, off the base and often involve alcohol use by either the victim or the perpetrator.