Sexual Assaults at Service Academies Are Finally Down, But Female Cadets Still Wary of Reporting

The Pentagon said Thursday it has managed to make a major dent in the number of sexual assaults at the nation's three service academies, but its newly released data also show that, despite the progress, problems with culture and climate still linger.

"For the first time in 10 years, the department is seeing a decrease in sexual assault prevalence at the military service academies," Beth Foster, the executive director of the Pentagon's Office of Force Resiliency, told reporters. That decrease disrupted "what had been an alarming increasing trend in sexual assault at the academies."

However, this year's data presented by Foster and her colleagues also showed that women still broadly distrust academy leaders with their reports of sexual assault and, of the 783 cadets that experienced an assault, only 103 chose to actually file a report.

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The main progress reported by the Pentagon was a decline in the total number of incidents of sexual assault across the three military service academies.

In 2024, the percentage of women who experienced unwanted sexual contact at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Naval Academy and Air Force Academy fell to about 13% compared to about 21% last year, according to data presented to reporters.

For men, the same statistic fell from 4.4% to 3.6%.

The number of incidents of unwanted sexual conduct -- a term that encompasses everything from unwanted touching to sexual penetration -- has been on a steady rise at the academies since 2014, when the rate was only about 8% of women and 1% of men.

Last year's data, according to Foster, showed an "alarming increase" in this statistic, and that led Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to order an investigation into what was going on at the academies.

Foster says that "those visits found that it was overall climate and training environment that was driving the increase in sexual assault."

Specifically, "the climate was really characterized by a sense of lack of trust, lack of transparency, and a lot of mixed messages," Dr. Andra Tharp, the senior prevention adviser for the Office of Force Resiliency, told reporters.

"The message that the cadets and Midshipmen were getting about how to treat each other, how to hold each other accountable, was not aligned with the message the senior leaders were trying to set," she said.

Given that so few cadets actually report assaults, and even fewer cases get prosecuted, the issue of sexual assault at the nation's premier military schools is often discussed in sterile or statistical terms.

However, cases that are prosecuted and become public show that some perpetrators are able to commit multiple assaults for long periods of time before they face any sort of prosecution.

In September, officials at West Point charged Cadet Jorge Hurtado for allegedly groping cadets' breasts, genitals and other body parts on or near the campus -- all without their consent -- over the span of nearly two years between December 2020 and October 2022.

In April, another West Point cadet, Tyjaha Batiste, pleaded guilty to eight sexual misconduct charges and was sentenced to 21 months in prison and dismissal from the Army.

One key factor, and one that Pentagon officials have yet to address in any meaningful way, is that most women don't trust their leaders to actually deal with a reported sexual assault.

In 2024, only 41% of women at all three academies said they trusted their leadership to ensure their safety after making a report and 37% trusted them to protect their privacy -- although both those figures have gone up since 2022.

Foster said that she and other officials at the Pentagon see these latest figures as an encouraging sign "that we've bent the curve and that we're starting to see the prevalence of sexual assault decrease at the academies," but she readily noted that "we've got a lot more work to do."

Officials highlighted efforts to work prevention efforts more thoroughly into the curriculum at each academy and offer cadets more time with instructors and military leaders so that they can better learn from their example.

Foster said that the Air Force Academy is "focusing on developing cadet leadership intentionally and thoughtfully through each year" of a cadet's time at the school.

Similarly, at West Point, "they've been very focused on ensuring that we're ingraining prevention curriculum throughout the cadet life cycle and ensuring that that curriculum isn't just treated as sort of a nice thing to do or kind of an after-hour of training, but that it is a core part of military leadership training," she said.

In addition to being clear-eyed about the work they still need to do, Foster also warned that "unless we continue to institutionalize that work ... there is a possibility that these rates and this trend could go right back up again."

The remark comes as many top Pentagon officials prepare to leave and make way for the incoming Trump administration, whose newly appointed officials would have wide latitude over any ongoing efforts to deal with the issue.

The man nominated to replace Austin, former Fox News host and Army officer Pete Hegseth, has not spoken directly on the issue of sexual assault at the academies. However, he has faced allegations of a sexual assault and sexist behavior.

In mid-November, a lawyer for Hegseth confirmed that he made a payment to a woman in exchange for not publicizing allegations of a 2017 incident in which he allegedly prevented a woman from leaving his hotel room, took her phone and sexually assaulted her.

Hegseth's lawyer did not deny that Hegseth and the woman had sex but insisted it was consensual.

The incident came weeks after his second wife, Samantha, had filed for divorce and about a month after he had a daughter with Fox News producer Jennifer Rauchet, to whom he is currently married.

In his latest book, published in June, Hegseth also made anecdotal claims on behalf of a male friend who was allegedly wrongly accused of sexual assault or harassment by two women in an Army Reserve Officers' Training Corps program while he was teaching at a university in Virginia.

"He soon realized the biggest danger to his career was female cadets at ROTC," Hegseth wrote about his friend.

In early December, The New Yorker reported that Hegseth was forced out as president of the advocacy group "Concerned Veterans for America" over a variety of issues that included sexist behavior, and "that, under Hegseth's leadership, the organization became a hostile workplace that ignored serious accusations of impropriety, including an allegation made by a female employee that another employee on Hegseth's staff had attempted to sexually assault her at [a] Louisiana strip club."

When asked if she was concerned whether a new administration could wipe out the progress they've made on the issue, Foster said that she wasn't "going to speculate what, what will or will not happen in the next administration."

"What I will offer is that I think any incoming leader will see the same data that we've seen, which is that combating sexual assault and harassment and combating the risk factors that lead to sexual assault and harassment is essential to maintaining an effective, ready and lethal force," she said.

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