New information released this month offers a preliminary snapshot of the Marine Corps population most vulnerable to sex assaults and the circumstances under which these assaults occur.
As part of the Corps' progress report to the president on sexual assault prevention strategies, made public last week, officials published data about Marine Corps sexual assault victims gleaned from two relatively new tools: a voluntary, anonymous survey administered by Sexual Assault Response Coordinators, and an "8-day brief" that tracks the handling of sex assault cases once reported to a victim's chain of command. Versions of both tools, created by Marine officials, are being adapted by the Defense Department for all the services to use, Jensen said.
Data taken from 60 Marine Corps 8-day briefs completed in the third quarter of fiscal 2014 showed a few clear patterns. An overwhelming majority – 88 percent – of victims were junior Marines in ranks private to corporal. Nearly a third of victims in the data set were lance corporals, and nearly half were between the ages of 20 and 24. Most had more than a year in service. Three-quarters of victims were female.
Col. Scott Jensen, branch head for the Marines' Sexual Assault Prevention and Response program, said this data snapshot was in keeping with the demographics of the Corps, the youngest and most junior of all the military services.
"We have the largest population of the at-risk demographics, so that all carries water," Jensen said. " … Ultimately, what we need to do is use our demographics understanding to do targeted prevention strategies towards those who are at risk of being offenders, those who are at risk of being victims, and make sure we have good response capabilities in those areas."
Notably, 63 percent of victims during the time frame indicated their assaults included some kind of alcohol involvement, a trend that helped to prompt the Marine Corps to limit the sale and availability of alcohol on base in 2013.
Other data revealed in the report is less easy to interpret. According the the 8-day briefs, 37 percent of offenders were identified by victims as coming from their unit, while the origin of the rest was marked "unknown." The data also showed that 57 percent of assaults reportedly took place aboard military installations or ships, while 36 percent took place off-base. Location wasn't specified in seven percent of cases.
Jensen cautioned against drawing conclusions from this data as it was a small sample size and large "unknown" data sets made the findings less definite. However, he said, these data points could be instructive if more rigorous information collection bears them out.
"We're finding that in today's society particularly, people don't want to hang out with their same members of their units after hours. They develop different groups of friends, they have different groups of acquaintances," he said. "And so the idea that a Marine is with their unit 24/7 and therefore all good and bad things are happening within members of their unit may be a misnomer."
Data culled from the Marines' victim advocacy survey between Nov. 2013 and March 2014 showed that just six percent of victims contacted a member of their command immediately following the assault. Ten percent contacted a chaplain, help line, or member of law enforcement; 18 percent reached out to a military victim's advocate, and 27 percent spoke to a friend.
Jensen said this data snapshot met his expectations, as the Marines encourage victims to seek out a friend or advocate who won't be required to make an official unrestricted report about the incident, particularly if the victim isn't ready to do so.
"We even talk strategies with supervisors in our leadership, that if you suspect someone is coming to you to talk about a sexual assault, you need to have in your hip pocket a tool set that allows you to … perhaps steer them toward someone who can ultimately maintain that confidentiality," he said. "That's to ensure that we don't unintentionally place victims in an unrestricted report status that then immediately triggers an investigation."
Created in late 2012, the 8-day brief has helped Marine commanders to ensure that sexual assault cases were being handled appropriately and thoroughly at every step of the process, Jensen said. A Pentagon memo released this year gave all the services until Jan. 5 to adopt a DoD-wide version of the system, renamed the "Sexual Assault Incident Response Oversight Report." Earlier this year, the DoD added more questions to the Victim Advocacy Survey to make the more robust Survivor Experience Survey, which was implemented across the services earlier this year.
DoD spokeswoman Laura Seal said the department had worked with all the services to develop its version of the new tools.
Marine officials will continue to monitor data from these two sources on an ongoing basis, and use the findings to inform their own prevention efforts, Jensen said. He said he also intends to look looked forward to looking deeper into available data, including that collected by the Rand Corp. on behalf of the entire Defense Department in advance of the services' report to the president.
"We really need to see to make sure we are pointed in the right direction with our performance and response efforts," he said. "We know what the topline data tells us, but we haven't seen the fidelity underneath to see what Marines are saying compared to perhaps what other services might be saying."
