A Pentagon report released on Friday indicates that a higher percentage of U.S. service members who experienced unwanted sexual contact are reporting those incidents to authorities. While reporting rates increased, the Department of Defense found that the overall frequency of sexual assault incidents across the military decreased over the past year.
The findings are based on a combination of official reports made to military authorities and data from a biennial confidential survey conducted by the Department of Defense. The Pentagon uses the confidential survey to supplement official data because sexual assault is recognized as a significantly underreported crime. The report follows nearly ten years of rising assault figures, though trends from the last two years have shown declines in both occurrences and reports.
According to the document, an estimated 33% of active-duty personnel who experienced unwanted sexual contact in fiscal year 2025 filed a report. This represents an increase from fiscal year 2023, when an estimated 25% of affected service members reported their experiences. Defense officials stated that they view the rise in the reporting rate as a positive indicator of growing confidence in the military's support systems and reporting mechanisms.
The total number of sexual assault reports received by the Department of Defense fell to 7,998 in 2025, a decrease of 197 from the 8,195 reports recorded in 2024. The confidential survey also showed a drop in the prevalence of unwanted sexual contact; for active-duty women, the rate fell from 6.8% in 2023 to 4.3% in 2025. For active-duty men, the rate decreased from 1.3% to 1.0% during the same period.
The scale of the decline in prevalence is notable for women in the military, with the survey indicating a 2.5 percentage point drop in unwanted sexual contact over a two-year span. This reduction, combined with a decrease in sexual harassment rates—which fell from 24.7% to 17.5% for women and from 5.8% to 4.4% for men—suggests a change in the daily environment for thousands of personnel. These figures cover the initial months of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s tenure, a period in which he has initiated reviews and personnel changes that have drawn internal and external scrutiny regarding the future roles of women in the armed forces.
The knock-on effects of these trends involve the continued evaluation of military leadership and the efficacy of prevention programs funded by billions of defense dollars. A sustained increase in the willingness to report, paired with a decrease in total incidents, sets a precedent for how the Department of Defense measures the success of its cultural reforms. What happens next includes the ongoing implementation of policies under Secretary Hegseth, whose recent actions, including the dismissal of some female leaders, will be monitored alongside future biennial surveys to determine if these improving trends persist or reverse in coming years.