According to a new report, a U.S soldier committed a violent sex crime every six hours and 40 minutes in 2011. This rise in violent sex crimes was accompanied by a rise in child abuse (43%), domestic violence (30%), and alcohol-related offenses (54%). Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta says that nearly 3,200 sexual assaults were reported by service members in 2011, but that the military’s actual estimate was closer to 19,000 because such assaults are “a very underreported crime.”
This is not just one bad apple or even a hundred bad apples. Yet, we are continually told that soldiers are role models and heroes.
