It is imperative to seek change in the military for women. Months after Vanessa Guillén’s disappearance, her remains were found and identified. 

Her assailant committed suicide after being questioned for the murder, and the army is trying to wipe there hands clean of yet another pitfall in the military: sexual abuse.

While we look for answers as to the death of another young woman, it is hard to deny the facts of the military and their long history of sexual abuse. 

In May, the fact sheet for sexual violence in the U.S. military was released. 

According to the annual report, sexual assault claims were up by 3%. From 2016 to 2018, the rate jumped by almost 40%. 

Out of all the women who reported their assault case, 59% also reported their attacker to be someone in a higher ranking position. Twenty-four percent were assaulted by someone within their chain of command. 

In the reports, there are public letters from chairmans and ranking members in the U.S. House of Representatives explaining their inability to draw conclusions around the issue. 

“Per Congressional requirement, the Department did not conduct a survey of the active force and, therefore, does not have an estimate of the number of sexual assaults that occurred in the past year within the active duty. Therefore, while the number of official sexual assault reports received by the Department increased by three percent this year, we cannot characterize this increase as a positive or negative trend,” reads four letters released by ranking House members on the Committee on Armed Forces.   

The first sentence of the executive summary summary released in April 2020, says that the Department of Defense “continues to address sexual assault comprehensively.”. 

Vanessa Guillén went missing on April 22, 2020. Since finding her remains last week, multiple women have come forward about their experiences in the military on Instagram.

While the military states that they ‘strive’ to advance a military culture free from sexual harassment, the question is why has it not always strived for that? 

Though these reports are released yearly, it seems there’s no concern that the statistics show sexual harassment and sexual abuse steadily increasing, or rather, more steadily being reported more than before.