Military sexual assault cost US $3.6bn last year

A new study has found that U.S. failure to deal with sexual assaults in the military costs the country billions of dollars annually.

Only last year, the aftereffects of military sexual assaults cost the U.S. $3.6 billion, the RAND Corporation, an international research organization, said in its recent report.

The figure is comprised of the cost of medical and mental health services victims will possibly seek after an incident plus other “intangible costs.”

The cost is also based on the number of unpaid work days to be possibly taken off by military sexual assault victims due to the ordeal they have endured. The missed earnings are about $104.5 million loss per year, the study said.

According to a recent Defense Department, the number of sexual assaults occurred last year in the U.S. military was 26,000, compared to 19,000 in fiscal year 2011.

Dean Henderson, an American author and columnist at Veterans Today, believes generals and people at the top in the U.S. military are to blame for the rising sexual assault rate.

Kirby Dick, director of the film “The Invisible War” has recently written in an article that less than 15 percent of sexual abuse cases in the U.S. military are ever reported because the victims fear retaliation for reporting their cases.

Pentagon statistics indicate the problem of sexual assault has grown sharply in recent years, but military leaders and some politicians are deeply split over whether the trend means that radical changes are needed in the Uniform Code of Military Justice.