Weeks after Martha McSally went public about being raped by a superior in the Air Force, she will now be a part of a task force focused on helping to fix the problem.
"In one case, I was preyed upon and raped by a superior officer,” McSally said in Washington. After the startling revelation, she said she is pushing for changes before the Senate starts to mark up a defense bill in 60 days.
McSally is far from the only victim. According to a 2017 report from the Department of Defense, sexual assaults have gone up over the last seven years, including an increase of more than 9 percent between 2016 to 2017.
“The rate of reporting is going up and we don’t know the denominator. So we don’t know if the rate of assaults are going up or if people are trusting the system more,” McSally said.
Trusting the system is a problem. According to the DOD report, only around a third of the estimated assaults are reported.
This is a strong improvement from only an estimated fourteenth of cases being reported in 2006.
Trina McDonald is another military sexual assault survivor.
“I was thrown in the Bering Sea and left for dead, basically saying, 'You’re not going to say anything,' 'You’re not going to talk anybody,' and I was scared to death,” McDonald said.
McDonald believes the reporting numbers are lower than estimated because of the fear of reporting and potential retaliation.
McDonald said she is "50/50" on whether McSally's task force will provide any real results.
“At this point, it's been decades and decades of data with no action,”
McSally did not offer many details on what she would like to see changed on Thursday but said she did want to keep commanders as part of the process of reporting sexual assaults in the military.
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, you can call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800.656.HOPE (4673) where trained professionals can provide confidential support, help you find a local healthcare facility that's trained to care for survivors, connect you with local resources and provide legal information.