"Sexual assault is still a major issue for the military. Reports rose by 10 percent last year, though there is some discussion about whether that is an increase in the number of assaults or an increased willingness of troops to come forward and report them. That would be an improvement because victims of rape in the military often face retaliation, sometimes even a less than honorable discharge from the military.
Among those veterans there is another number that is going up: the people getting their records corrected to show they served honorably.
Sexual assault and harassment affects female troops at a higher rate. But because the military is still mostly male, it's men who make up a much larger number of victims among the thousands of sexual assaults each year. Women report the crime more than twice as much as men.
This makes Heath Phillips, who speaks publicly about his experience, rare.
Phillips was sexually assaulted repeatedly by a group of sailors right after he joined the Navy.
...'The military are finally catching up with the notion that all of his behavior was driven by post-traumatic stress disorder and the trauma he was experiencing,' said his lawyer, Coco Culhane with the Veteran Advocacy Project."
Read the full article here. For more information on this topic, see VAWnet's Sexual Violence in the Military special collection.
