Military policies toward sexual assault and harassment in uniform continue to fall short, two recent Pentagon Inspector General reports said.
One report last month said the Navy and Marine Corps don't document and track harassment claims effectively. Another released last week found that the military overall failed to quickly transfer victims of sexual assault to other units about 50% of the time.
Josh Connolly, the vice president of nonprofit Protect our Defenders, said the reports revealed the Pentagon wasn't taking these issues seriously enough.
"It's stories like this and these two reports that highlight the lack of seriousness and rigor that the various services are handling this issue," Connolly said. "There is no ambiguity as to what the law is, nor ambiguity as to whether they ... followed that law. And the answer is no, they did not."
The 2019 National Defense Authorization Act mandated the Pentagon to standardize expedited transfers for sexual assault victims. The policy states commanders must respond to requests within five days and process transfers from within a week to a month, depending on whether the transfer requires the service member to relocate.
While the services did respond most of the time, the Inspector General found that more than half of the transfers didn't occur within the week for local transfers or the month for relocations.
In a report published in April, the Inspector General found "gaps" in Navy and Marine Corps sexual harassment reporting policies that limited the services' ability to document and track complaints.
Pentagon leaders defended their policies in their written responses to the Inspector General.
The acting undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, Ashish Vazirani, said certain situations — such as the school needs of children and the need to finish military training — could explain why some transfers are delayed. He said military commanders and victims need flexibility.
The Navy and Marine Corps said all their harassment policies are currently being overhauled.
New Pentagon rules stripping military commanders from sexual assault investigations and decisions on whether to prosecute alleged offenders came into effect last year.
Connolly said even with such a big change, the services need to address a larger cultural problem and that more oversight is needed.
"This is really a toxic culture problem and one fix — as big as that is — isn't going to necessarily fix the problem," he said. "(Congress) should be able to meaningfully hold to account the military. This should be very concerning for legislators on the armed services committee."
Before joining Protect our Defenders — a human rights organization focused on military justice — Connolly was chief of staff for former California representative Jackie Speier. Speier, who left Congress last year, was an advocate for many reforms in how the military handles sexual harassment and assault.
In 2020, she introduced the "I am Vanessa Guillén Act," parts of which were signed into law in 2022. The law is named after the 20-year-old Army specialist murdered by a fellow soldier at Fort Hood, Texas in 2020. Before her murder, Guillén had complained about persistent harassment.
