Army
A U.S. Army sapper uses a mine detector to check the road in advance of a dismounted patrol near Combat Outpost Terra Nova in the Arghandab Valley north of Kandahar, April 8, 2011. Reuters

Sexual assault programs in the U.S. Army are crippled by bureaucratic complications, such as not enough staff and investigations that taken an excessively long time, according to a report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office released Monday. The GAO investigated sexual assault prevention and response programs in the Army National Guard and the Army Reserve — the institutions have been criticized for the way they’ve handled accusations of rape and sexual assault in the past. Victims have reportedly kept silent about instances of assault, fearing retaliation.

The report outlined four main criticisms in the way the Army’s sexual response programs work:

  • The Guard assigns two full-time staff members for each state, despite the fact that there’s a wide range of soldiers from state-to-state. Two full-time staffers work in Rhode Island, which has about 2,000 soldiers. But Texas — a state with about 18,600 soldiers — also has two full-time staffers. The GAO report found similar inconsistencies in the Reserve.
  • In both the Guard and the Reserve, the budget for funding is not communicated well to those staffers. This means that the sexual assault staff members are at a loss when it comes to planning and allocating program money.
  • Investigations take too long to complete in the Guard, the report found. Over half of sexual assault cases — 57 percent — took six to nine months to complete in 2015. This was in part because the Guard did not have enough staff members.
  • Finally, some victims of sexual assault are eligible for follow-up care, and some are not. But 80 percent of the victims were forced to wait for excessively long periods of time to find out whether they were eligible in the first place.

The GAO report also listed six recommendations to fix these problems: to conduct an evaluation in the way that program staff are used; to better communicate funding from the top down; to develop clear guidance on budget development; to include a discussion of the budget in the mid-year review; to speed up the timeliness of investigations; and to make sure sexual assault victims get quicker access to health care services.

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