DOD Media Roundtable Academic Program Year 23-24 Service Academy Gender Relations Survey ReportDOD Launches SciTechCONNECT to Revolutionize Defense Innovation CollaborationDOD[...]

MODERATOR: Good morning, everybody. Before we start the interview, I wanted to cover some ground rules. Today's briefing will be on the record and will cover details on the department's release of the Service Academy sexual assault report. We will be recording the interview and be publishing the transcript later today. We have several subject matter experts and department leaders here on the line that will be running through the slide deck. And with that I'll turn it over to Jade for any other additional things.

MODERATOR: Okay, today we have Beth Foster, the Executive Director for the Office of Force Resiliency for the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness; Dr. Nate Galbreath, Director for the Department of Defense Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office; Dr. Andrea Tharp, who is the Senior Prevention Advisor for the Office of Force Resiliency and Sexual Assault Prevention Response Office. and Ms. Lisa Davis, Deputy Director Health and Resiliency Research for the Office of People Analytics. With that, I'll turn it over to Ms. Foster.

BETH FOSTER: Great. Well, good morning, everyone. Thank you all so much for joining us today. We are here to brief you on the top-line data from the academic program year 2023-2024 Annual Report on Sexual Harassment and Sexual Violence at the Military Service Academies. As you may have seen, we are looking at some encouraging data this year.

For the first time in 10 years, the department is seeing a decrease in sexual assault prevalence at the military service academies. This disrupts what had been an alarming increasing trend in sexual assault at the academies. As you know, Secretary Austin has made combating sexual assault and harassment a priority since day one on the job. The department has instituted numerous reforms, and with congress's support, the department has made an unprecedented resource investment in this mission.

Secretary Austin has also been particularly focused on this work at the military service academies. In 2023, when the 2022 sexual assault report was released and showed a dramatic increase in sexual assault at the service academies, Secretary Austin directed my team to immediately do on-site installation evaluations at the academies to determine root cause.

We found that it was the overall climate and training environment across the service academies that was undermining their ability to prevent these harmful behaviors. Sexual assault was really ultimately a lagging indicator of what was a poor climate. As a result, Secretary Austin tasked the military departments with taking a number of actions to address climate at the academies, and also stood up the Climate Transformation Task Force to oversee implementation of these actions.

And he did this not just because it was the right thing to do, but Secretary Austin and department leaders also recognized that our cadets and midshipmen must learn to build healthy climates. This is a key part of ensuring our future leaders are ready to lead on day one in a complex threat environment.

Our teams throughout the military depend on unit cohesion and trust to be effective. This is core to leadership at any level. The data we will share with you today demonstrates the focus and commitment from department leaders on this issue is starting to have an impact, but we have a lot more work to do. While we are making progress, the prevalence of sexual assault and harassment is still far too high.

What this data tells us is that this is a difficult problem to solve, but it is not an impossible problem to solve. If we continue to institutionalize the work underway and sustain our focus and commitment, we can continue to drive down the prevalence of sexual assault at our academies. Moreover, this continued focus will ensure that our cadets and midshipmen are fully prepared and ready to lead amidst the challenges of complex and uncertain environments.

Now before we dive into the slides here, I will caveat that today we are just releasing a top line of the report data. Most notably, this includes the results of the Service Academy Gender Relations Survey and the sexual assault reporting data from the service academies.

The full Military Service Academy report will be released in accordance with typical timelines on or about February 2025. But given the scope of the work underway at the academies and near-term implementation deadlines, we wanted to get this data in the hands of academy stakeholders as quickly as possible. We'll provide the full report as soon as it's published next year. And I want to emphasize that most of the salient data from the report is included in our briefing today.

Now if you go to slide 2, this slide really reiterates a lot of what I just articulated. So, before we dive into the data, I wanted to show you where our focus has been in the past two years. To quickly recap, in 2023, the 2022 report showed an alarming increase. The secretary directed us to immediately do on-site installation evaluations at the academies.

Those visits found that it was overall climate and training environment that was driving the increase in sexual assault. In August 2023, the SecDef directed the military departments to implement a number of different recommendations at the academies. Those actions are required to be complete by August 2025, and implementation is currently underway.

As I said, the SecDef also stood up the Climate Transformation Task Force, or CTTF, to oversee implementation. On this slide, what I really want to draw your attention to is that we've highlighted some of the key actions that are being implemented at the academies. A couple of important things to note here. While there are some common themes across academies, each institution has its own climate and its own ecosystem. This means their needs are different and the actions that they are taking will look a little bit different.

The SecDef directed broad recommendations at the academies, but that is necessarily going to be implemented in different ways at each academy. This list is not exhaustive that you see here. In some cases, there are hundreds of different actions being implemented at the academies. And you'll see throughout the slide deck that we've provided some examples of actions that the academies are taking, but these are just examples.

We're not recommending new actions at the academies in this report, but the data that we'll discuss today shows us that we are on the right track, but we need to institutionalize these reforms and continue implementation to continue to see success.

Now if you go to slide 3, this slide offers a little bit of background on the report to contextualize the data that you're about to review. The key point here, and this should be very familiar to a lot of you, is that this is a congressionally required report, and the assessments that are congressionally required vary by year.

So, in odd years, we conduct a scientific survey to assess sexual assault prevalence. That is this year's report, that's the data we're discussing here today. In even years, we do assessments of policy and program compliance. That report will be released in 2026. So, that's kind of the next report iteration.

Now, when we think about when we measure progress on our sexual assault program, we look at two key metrics. We look at sexual assault prevalence, that's the estimated number of cadets and midshipmen that experience sexual assault, and we measure that via scientific survey. Of course, what we want to see with sexual assault prevalence is we want to see that number decrease.

The other key metric that we look at and that we'll be discussing today is the sexual assault reporting rate. That is the number of victimized cadets and midshipmen who make a restricted or unrestricted report of sexual assault. What we want to see at this stage of our program is that we want to see that number increase, because it means that our cadets and mids trust the system and that they are getting the care and advocacy and support that they need.

So, those are the two metrics we'll be discussing today. And with that let me turn it over to Lisa Davis who's going to walk through the data in the report.

LISA DAVIS: Thank you, ma'am. Before we get into the results today, I wanted to provide a brief background about the Service Academy Gender Relations Survey. This survey is congressionally required, and the Office of People Analytics has been conducting it on behalf of the department since 2006 and is the official survey to measure the past year prevalence of sexual assault, sexual harassment and gender discrimination at the academies. These key measures reflect over a decade and a half of rigorous assessment to produce reliable and valid estimates of these harmful behaviors.

We conduct the survey on site using a paper and pen survey at the DOD academies every even calendar year in March and April. We are at each academy for one calendar week where students are required to attend a survey session to hear a short informational briefing about the survey, but choosing to complete the survey is completely voluntary.

The overall response rate this year was 88 percent. We weight the survey results to the full population of students at the academies using industry standard scientific methods, so the results presented are representative and generalizable to the academy population. Given the very high response rates on the survey, the weighting adjustments are quite small.

No major changes were made to the content of the survey between 2022 and 2024. Therefore, results shown today can be trended back to 2022, and we highlight any statistically significant differences over time.

Moving on to slide 4, here we have on the survey, the primary metric we obtained is the past year experience of unwanted sexual contact, or USC. This is a proxy measure for sexual assault and asks whether individuals experienced a range of unwanted behaviors at any point in the past academic program year under conditions where they could not or did not consent. The behaviors include unwanted sexual touching, attempted penetration and completed penetration.

In 2024, we saw a significant decrease in experiences of unwanted sexual contact among both women and men at the academies where the rate among women went from 21.4 percent in 2022, down to 13.3 percent in 2024. And among men went from 4.4 percent down to 3.6 percent in 2024. This represents an estimated 783 students who experienced unwanted sexual contact in 2024 compared to an estimated 1,136 students in 2022.

The decrease in rates we are seeing this year is the first in nearly a decade. That said, the estimated number of students indicating a USC experience in the past year is still comparatively high. In fact, it is the second highest estimated number of students experiencing unwanted sexual contact on record.

Moving to slide 5, this slide presents the overall unwanted sexual contact rates by academy and gender. You can see that we saw significant decreases in unwanted sexual contact across all academies for women, but only significant decreases were found among West Point and Air Force men. Rates among naval academy men remains statistically unchanged.

Moving to slide 6, on the top of the slide, we show the overall USC rates broken down by the type of experience. These categories are mutually exclusive. Individuals who experience more than one type of unwanted sexual contact are only counted in the most severe category they indicated, with penetrative treated as most severe followed by attempted penetration and unwanted touching.

Among women, the decrease in overall unwanted sexual contact prevalence was seen across all types of unwanted sexual contact, where for men significant decreases were found for attempted and completed penetrative crimes. Rates of unwanted sexual touching remain statistically unchanged for men.

Those individuals who experienced unwanted sexual contact in the past academic program year are asked on the survey to provide more context about their assault. Because many victims have had more than one unwanted sexual contact experience, to reduce burden we ask for details regarding the one experience that they consider to be the worst or most serious. We sometimes refer to this as the one situation.

The table in the middle of the slide summarizes who was offending in that one situation and when and where the one situation took place. Largely consistent with past survey results, women tell us that their alleged offenders were most often a male student acting alone. Men tell us that their alleged offenders were most often a male or female student acting alone.

Cadets and mids say they typically knew the alleged offender from another class or activity and the individual was most often in the same class year. The situation most often took place on campus in a dorm or living area, or at some other location off campus, and most frequently occurred after duty hours on a weekend or holiday.

Incident characteristics can help inform and refine actions underway to address the climate at the academy and to further prevent harmful behaviors from occurring. Before we move on, Dr. Tharp will provide a brief explanation of the information presented in the OSIE recommendations you will find on each slide. Dr. Tharp?

ANDRA THARP: Good morning. Since 2023, Actions to transform the climate at the Military Service Academies following the recommendations of the on-site installation evaluations have been underway in earnest. So, for each key finding on this and subsequent slides, in the footer we provide one of the 2023 recommendations and an example of the work that's underway.

So, we highlight this for two reasons. First, we attribute some of the positive progress to the work underway. And second, we want to underscore the continued implementation of these actions aligns with the current findings. In this way, the data will help the military departments continue to hone and refine our approaches to improve climate, prevent harmful behaviors and develop leaders of character. So, with that, I'll pass it back to Ms. Davis.

LISA DAVIS: Thank you, Dr. Tharpe. Turning to slide 7, on this slide, we have the unwanted sexual contact rates broken down by class year for both women and men. Rates of unwanted sexual contact significantly decreased for women across all class years where for men we only saw significant decreases among sophomores and juniors.

Despite these decreases, sophomore and junior women remain at higher risk for experiencing unwanted sexual contact. I would note that we typically see the highest rates among sophomores, but this year we also saw a shift to the highest rates also being among - being seen among juniors. Among men, sophomores and seniors were more likely to experience unwanted sexual contact in 2024.

On slide 8, we also measure prevalence of sexual harassment and gender discrimination. And here you can see the rates of sexual harassment on the left and gender discrimination on the right, both overall and by academy. In 2024, prevalence estimates for both sexual harassment and gender discrimination were significantly lower for men and women at all academies, however, rates remain high compared to previous years.

On slide 9, shifting to the climate at the academies, the survey also asked students to what extent they think people at the academy make honest and reasonable efforts to stop sexual assault and sexual harassment, or in other words, do they lead by example, stress the importance of preventing sexual assault and harassment and encourage reporting.

In 2024, we saw perceptions increase for both women and men across all groups, suggesting that there is a community level effort that is observable to students. However, differences in perceptions still exist between women and men at the academies.

On slide 10, finally here the survey asked students to what extent they would trust the academy, should they experience sexual assault in the future, to protect their privacy, ensure their safety and treat them with dignity and respect following the reported incident. In 2024, both women and men indicated having greater trust in the academy than they did in 2022, although women remain less - much less trusting than men. And now Dr. Galbreath will provide some information about trends and prevalence in the reporting of sexual assault.

NATE GALBREATH: Good morning. On slide number 11, I'll just briefly describe to you some of the data that you see. Going across the top of the chart, in those diamonds, you'll see our estimated prevalence rates and numbers over the past administrations of the surveys. And as you can see, you can see the trends over time and that increasing trend over the past 10 years that we've been describing in 2021-2022 with the highest numbers being about 1,136 cadets and midshipmen indicating a past year experience of unwanted sexual contact.

Compared to this year that's significantly higher. We had a decrease down to 783, but as Ms. Davis mentioned, you'll notice that that is the second highest number as far as our estimates go with regard to the number of cadets and midshipmen indicating a past year experience. And this just simply tells us there is much more work to be done with regard to decreasing rates of sexual assault and sexual harassment at the academies.

Across the bottom on the red line are the number of reports that we receive. These could be either a restricted or unrestricted report of sexual assault. And you will see that we received 103 reports of sexual assault from cadets and midshipmen for an incident that occurred during their military service at the academy. Overall, that 103 is about 13 percent of the 783 individuals we estimated experienced unwanted sexual contact last year. So, that's a 13 percent reporting rate, slightly down from 2021-2022.

103 reports, however, are not all reports that we receive at the academy. And over in that gray box in the bottom right hand corner, you'll see the rest of the types of reports that we received, including eight cadets and midshipmen who reported a sexual assault that occurred prior to military service and then an additional 15 reports from prep school students, active duty service members and civilians who alleged a sexual assault perpetrated by a cadet or midshipman, for a total overall of 126 reports of sexual assault this year. With that being said, I'm going to hand it back to Ms. Foster.

BETH FOSTER: Great. Well, I'll just finish where I started and emphasize that, while we are encouraged by what we're seeing here, while we're certainly encouraged to see that we've bent the curve and that we're starting to see the prevalence of sexual assault decrease at the academies, we've got a lot more work to do. And if we're going to continue to drive down these rates, we need to sustain the progress that we're making.

We need to sustain the commitment, the investment, and we need to institutionalize these reforms. We believe this data indicates that we are on the right track, that the recommendations and the reforms that are underway are having an impact. But unless we continue to institutionalize that work, there is a possibility that these rates and this trend could go right back up again. And so, this is something that we need to continue to focus on moving forward. So, with that, we look forward to answering your questions.

MODERATOR: Thank you, Ms. Foster. And with that I will - for the first question, Lita from AP.

Q: Hi, good morning. Thanks for doing this. Two questions, one sort of a specific numbers question to whoever wants to field it. I know you all like to focus on the number of reports filed by actual students, etc., but can you just go back and say the total number in 2022, 2023 and 2024 that correspond with the 126 total reports of sexual assaults?

Some of the numbers that I saw in some of the data today were a bit different than the annual reports and I'm just wondering if some of those have shifted. And then I have a second - I have another question.

NATE GALBREATH: Lita, the difference between this report and the annual report is that the annual report gives you a fiscal year snapshot. And so, this report is a subset of that, but it's on the academic program year calendar, which is June 1 to May 31 instead of a fiscal year. So as a result, there's a little bit of data that doesn't come in from that fiscal year approach. And so, it's all the same, it's all being reported, but this is a subset of what's going on in the annual report. But it's taken on that academic program year snapshot. So, the numbers don't exactly match.

Q: So, I guess I'm a little confused. You have 126 total reports of sexual assault, correct. In 2023, the number in the report was 166. And in 2022 the number was 206. Are those accurate as of now?

NATE GALBREATH: So, in the - if you turn to the backup slide of 2023, you can see the number of reports over time that we have. I'm not exactly sure what you're looking at as far as which report. But the trend of reporting data is on slide number 23.

Q: Okay, and then just sort of broadly overall, it just gets confusing when you parse out 126 versus 103, and then each year the numbers seem to shift. But can any of you point to either one or two of the changes that have been made that you think were the most impactful? Thanks.

BETH FOSTER: Yeah, Lita, this is Beth. So, I think it really varies by academy and the changes that we highlighted on that slide number 2 are the changes that we think are among the most impactful. So, for example, at the Air Force Academy, they've moved from a fourth-class system to a four-class system, which really means that they're focusing on

developing cadet leadership intentionally and thoughtfully through each year of that time at the academy, which is a bit of a different approach that they had taken in past years.

Now I'll say West Point and the Naval Academy had already moved away from that fourth-class system. And so, the Air Force Academy is sort of catching up with some of the other military academies by making that shift. The other thing at West Point, for example, 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-hours training, but that it is a core part of military leadership training.

And then the Naval Academy is also really emphasizing ensuring that those cadets have more examples of leadership and they've done that in large part by increasing the number of companies. So, they've got more officers around, more NCOs that they can look to as examples of military leadership. Dr. Tharp, is there anything that you want to add there?

ANDRA THARP: Yes, ma'am, the only two things I'd add in terms of really institutionalizing change is the preparation for those officers overseeing the cadets and midshipmen has been - is being revamped to align with policy and really honing in on kind of teaching cadets and midshipmen and modeling how to build those healthy climates and those healthy teams, as well as placing prevention workforce at all of the academies, which will help sustain some of these changes and evaluate the impact over time, over.

NATE GALBREATH: And just briefly to follow up, Lita. The numbers that you cited out of the 2022-2023 report - those are accurate for the total number of reports received. What we're showing you on slide 23 are the number of reports from cadets and midshipmen actively enrolled reporting an incident for something that occurred during their military service.

The rest of the total number reports are - they're listed on slide number 11, for a total of 126. And that will trend with the other data that you just mentioned for the total number of reports. And the rest of the - in our report that's coming out in February, you'll see the rest of all of that in context. And if you continue to have any questions, just let PA know and we'll get you the info.

MODERATOR: Josh, before you call on another reporter - reporters, if you can limit your questions to one question and one follow up, we'll greatly appreciate that. Back to you, Josh.

MODERATOR: Thanks, Jade. Patty from Task & Purpose.

Q: Hi, thank you for taking my question. I'm trying to compare - you obviously talked about the reporting trends decreasing, in the slide it has one in eight students reported sexual assault in 2024. Do you have a similar number for 2022 or the previous years?

NATE GALBREATH: That's correct. If you look on slide number 11, it's about the same percentage. So, if we're going to do the math there, it's about one in eight still.

Q: OK. And I guess kind of in that - on the line of questioning, for reporting in general, how should we take kind of the 88 percent of survey - of respondents actually responding to the survey and then reporting trends. How should we kind of contextualize that in kind of the decrease that we're seeing?

NATE GALBREATH: What I would say is that reporting actually - because these are all estimates as far as our prevalence goes. I would say that reporting rates are about the same, even though they kind of maybe came down a bit as far as 1 percentage point goes. And what I would say is that compared to the active force, our rates of reporting are much lower at the academy. So, we think that there's more work to be done there, over.

MODERATOR: Okay, with the next question, Haley from CNN.

Q: Thank you so much. I just want to triple check to make sure that I'm looking at this correctly. So, of the 783 people who experienced sexual assault, only 103 reported it. Is that right?

NATE GALBREATH: That's accurate.

Q: Okay, thank you. And then more broadly, when we were hearing at the beginning of the briefing talking about the climate and that sexual assault was found to be an indicator of poor climate at the academies, can you just kind of expand on that a little bit? What exactly did you find when you were looking at the climate? When you say there was a poor climate, what - and in what way? If you could just provide a little bit more detail on that.

BETH FOSTER: Yeah, absolutely. So, Haley, I'm going to turn you to Dr. Tharp to speak more on that. I will also add that we have a report that details this in great detail that we released last August, that is the Military Service Academy on-site installation evaluation report that you can find online. But Dr. Tharp, do you want to answer Haley's question?

ANDRA THARP: Sure, excellent. So, what we found as we outlined in the on-site installation evaluation report is that when we went out the climate was really characterized by a sense of lack of trust, lack of transparency and a lot of mixed messages. So, senior leaders may be sending one message, but 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.

So, what we saw is that this came up not just in terms of sexual assault and sexual harassment, but in other harmful behaviors, self-harm, access to help seeking, encouragement of help seeking. And that really spoke to a need to really relook across the whole ecosystem, how that that climate was being - kind of how that healthy climate was being maintained and assessed.

Which is really why the report recommended such a comprehensive approach across so many leaders to include the cadets and midshipmen, their TAC officers, AOCs, senior leaders, monitoring social media, that really comprehensive approach. And that approach really may look a little different than if we had just said, OK, we're only going to look at sexual assault and sexual harassment. This is a much more holistic look that we believe is having more holistic impacts across the climate of the service academies, over.

MODERATOR: The next question, Konstantin, Military.com.

Q: Thanks all. So, one of the things that I sort of gathered from everybody's presentation here is that, while progress is being made at least in some quarters, this needs to be sustained and maintained, and effort still needs to be put into this in years to come. We find ourselves - you guys are doing this briefing amid a transition of administrations.

I'd love for you guys to sort of speak to that climate. Are the programs, the changes that you guys are briefing us on, can the incoming administration sort of wipe these away with the stroke of a pen? How permanent are they? Or what expectation do you guys have that this stuff will survive into the next administration? Thanks.

BETH FOSTER: Yeah, so Konstantin, I'm not going to speculate what will or will not happen in the next administration. But I think 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.

And so, again, I don't know what will happen, but we've had broad support for this work beyond just the political leadership in the building. There's been a great deal of recognition that in order to achieve the department's mission, we need to focus on this. And in particular at the academies, if we're going to produce the leaders that we need to lead in this complex and dynamic threat environment, we need to address this issue. This is a part of leadership, and so I expect that any leader would recognize and see that.

MODERATOR: Thanks, Konstantin, and I'm going to turn it back over to Jade.

MODERATOR: OK, before we close out this media roundtable, we will release the Secretary of Defense's statement on this initial report later this afternoon. At 11:15, the embargo breaks on this reporting. Thank you. Thanks, all.

MODERATOR: And Jade, Patty had another question if we have time. I don't know what our timetable - OK, Patty?

MODERATOR: We'll take it.

Q: Thank you. One of the other things that I noticed is the trends for minorities in terms of racial minorities and then gender minorities seems to be persistently bad. Is there any kind of targeted programs or efforts kind of to combat that?

BETH FOSTER: Yeah, absolutely, Patty. And I think what you're pointing to is that one of the things that we need to consider in our work at the academies is that they're not homogeneous, they are not sort of monolithic. And so, our programing at the academies needs to consider that there is sort of no one standard experience, although that may be a sort of conventional thinking in the academy - in the academy space. So, Dr. Tharp, do you want to speak to how some of the CTTF actions are addressing that?

ANDRA THARP: Sure. So, one of the on-site installation evaluation recommendations was to ensure that the academies take a whole of academy approach, of really understanding how different groups may experience climate differently and tailor their prevention to those unique needs. Now, the mechanism that we're using across the entire department for that is to place prevention workforce at the local level.

We know, not just at the service academies, but at all installations and ships, that there are unique risk and protective factors that may be contributing to climate and harmful behaviors. And it really takes putting an expert at that local level to understand the data, to take the best practices that are out there and adapt to those unique needs.

So, between kind of the focus that the academies have taken by ensuring that they're taking a whole of academy approach, and by placing these experts at the academies to help tailor the approaches, over time we believe that will enhance our ability to meet the unique needs of these subgroups that may be at enhanced risk.

MODERATOR: Thank you, Dr. Tharp. And with that, this concludes the media roundtable. As a reminder, this was - the roundtable was on the record attributed to the individuals that spoke. We will publish a transcript later today on Defense.gov, and if you have any additional follow-up questions, please feel free to reach out to us. Thank you.

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