The MoD has published the first sexual harassment survey for the armed forces in more than 3 years. They promised the House of Commons Defence Committee that they would publish them every year from 2023 but these never appeared. So we have been waiting a long time for this latest snapshot into the lives of our service men and women.
Sadly, the survey reflects what all our female clients would say – which is that they are experiencing wholly disproportionate levels of sexual harassment or worse during their service – a situation that does not seem to be improving as the years go by. Almost a third of women said they had experienced ‘physical touching’ in a way that they did not like; and a tenth experienced sexual assault. A staggering 67% of all females said they had experienced sexualised behaviours in their armed forces workplace – a figure that pales in comparison to the levels of sexual harassment civilian women tend to experience (which are already bad enough). And all this is just in the 12 months before the survey was taken.
Of particular concern is the revelation – buried in the data tables underlying the report – that despite experiencing all these behaviours, hardly any women actually reported or formally complained about their situation. What does that tell you about their trust in the complaints process?
We welcome the decision to publish today’s challenging data and we note the commitment from lots of people inside Defence to tackling these behaviours. A lot of work is going on. But suggestions from inside the MoD today that we should be reassured because they have introduced greater levels of independence to their handling of complaints are overstated and fundamentally weak. The bottom line is that, as of today, serious complaints are still being handled by the services themselves. Until that changes, MoD can expect to continue having bad press days like these.