Dan Jeffries asked for Anna Mullany's sources for the statement [“We aren't more civilized in our behavior,” Response, June 1] that “One in three women in the military are raped by fellow service members.”
I don't know what Mullany's source is, or whether the correct figure is “one in three,” but there's a lot of evidence that military women face astounding levels of sexual harassment, assault, and rape.
Two examples:
• In 2008, CNN reported that U.S. Rep. Jane Harman, D-California, told a House panel investigating the way the military handles reports of sexual assault that “My jaw dropped when the doctors told me that 41 percent of the female veterans seen [at a VA hospital in the Los Angeles area] say they were victims of sexual assault while serving in the military. Twenty-nine percent say they were raped during their military service.”
• In 2021, The New York Times reported that “nearly one in four servicewomen reports experiencing sexual assault in the military, and more than half report experiencing harassment, according to a meta-analysis of 69 studies published in 2018 in the journal Trauma, Violence & Abuse.”
We are unlikely to ever know exactly how many military women are raped. Clearly, however, that number is inexcusably high.