The total number of reported sexual assaults in the Department of the Air Force ticked up about two percent in 2024 while still being lower than the total from 2022, as Pentagon officials say a hiring freeze on federal government civilian employees limits their ability to fill critical sexual assault prevention and response jobs.
The total number of reported sexual assaults across the military declined four percent, according to the fiscal 2024 edition of an annual report on sexual assault and harassment data briefed to the media on May 1. The estimated prevalence of sexual assaults in ‘24 was not calculated in time for the new report.
The goal is for the estimated prevalence to decline, but officials actually want to see an increase in the reporting rate, since it indicates victims feel they can receive the resources they need and hold offenders accountable.
“We’re still reporting at historically high rates,” Dr. Nathan Galbreath, director of the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office (SAPRO), told reporters. “And so even though we’d like to see the number of reports increase, I’m still very satisfied that our military members know that they can come forward, they can report in any number of ways and get the help that they need to recover.”
Number of Reported Sexual Assaults
| Year | DOD | Department of the Air Force |
|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 8195 | 1879 |
| 2023 | 8515 | 1838 |
| 2022 | 8942 | 1928 |
| 2021 | 8866 | 1701 |
| 2020 | 7816 | 1661 |
Against the backdrop of the report are changes to the sexual assault prevention and response workforce, including response coordinators, victim advocates, and special victims’ counsels, who help guide and support victims through the investigation, recovery, and justice processes.
“For the prevention workforce, each of the military departments did have targets that they were aiming to hit in terms of hiring each year,” Dr. Andra Tharp, director of the Office of Command Climate and Well-Being Integration, said during a media roundtable. “So any kind of pause is going to impact their ability to hit those targets.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directed the civilian hiring freeze in late February in alignment with President Donald Trump’s efforts “to make the federal government more efficient and responsive,” the secretary wrote in a Feb. 28 memo. Since then, there have been what Tharp described as “multiple waves of off-ramps” including two deferred resignation programs and a widespread firing of probationary employees.
Meanwhile, about 300 prevention workforce positions on the USAJobs website are essentially on hold, she added—though the Air Force and possibly other departments have successfully bid for exemptions for prevention positions.
While victims’ counsels are uniformed attorneys, the other roles are held by both uniformed and civilian employees. Data shows that full-time SAPR workers are vastly more effective than “collateral” workers who have other primary duties.
“Our survey of sexual assault responders this year again confirmed that our full-time sexual assault response coordinators and victim advocates delivered the vast majority of services to victims,” Galbreath said. “Exceptionally few collateral duty personnel assisted victims, with the median number of victims served being zero.”
The full-time SAPR workforce stood at 1,648 in 2024, with plans to grow to 2,600 by fiscal 2027. Meanwhile, the Pentagon aims to cut the collateral, or part-time, workforce from 18,897 in 2024 to 3,400 in 2027, limited to ships, submarines, and other hard-to-fill locations. The move should save hundreds of thousands of hours in training time every year, Galbreath said.
These are demanding positions: an annex to the May 1 report found that about half of SARCs and victim advocates felt burnout, along with 74 percent of victims’ counsels. Victims’ counsels are particularly strained, Galbreath said, leading SAPRO to ask the services to “review and update where needed their resourcing and training of these important personnel to help reduce some of the stress that they’re experiencing.”
SAPRO is still assessing how the waves of off-ramps will affect these issues: “we’re really trying to get our arms around the total impacts of that,” Tharp said.
Galbreath said he sent information to the military departments on April 30 encouraging them to seek exemptions for the sexual assault response workforce. OSD did not respond in time to questions about whether the services had acted on that message.
“In the meantime, we’re using this time to ensure that we really have right-sized this workforce,” Tharp said. “And we’re creating contingency plans just to ensure that we don’t kind of lose ground while we’re making these adjustments.”
Senior defense officials said the Defense Department is delaying plans to hire at least 1,000 more civilians to prevent sexual assault, suicides, and behavior problems in the military, the Associated Press reported April 28. The same day, Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), both members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, wrote to Hegseth concerned about reductions to SAPR services.
“Even minor reductions risk compromising decades of progress toward ending sexual abuse and harassment in the Department,” they wrote.
Five days earlier, Hegseth directed the services to review their Military Equal Opportunity and civilian Equal Employment Opportunity programs, the offices charged with investigating discrimination and harassment complaints.
The secretary called for dismissing any complaints “that are unsubstantiated by actionable, credible evidence,” and considering administrative or disciplinary actions against troops who knowingly submit false complaints.
False complaints of sexual assault are rare: the May 1 report showed that the rate of sexual assault cases determined to be unfounded or false has not exceeded three percent since 2014. The rate of such cases in 2024 was one percent.
Advocates worried Hegseth’s memo would have a chilling effect on military sexual assault reporting. But Galbreath said he did not expect the memo would affect the number of reports going forward.
“At the end of the day, the standard of proof remains the same with regard to any sexual harassment complaint,” he said. “All complaints are reviewed, the evidence is analyzed, and a legal officer often opines on whether or not action can be taken.”