News - World: The US military experienced its highest recorded number of sexual assault among women in 2021, indicating a "tragic" rise, a survey shows.

About 35,900 service members were assaulted in the year, marking the highest recorded level of sexual assault to date, compared to the previous high of 34,200 in 2006, according to the annual survey on sexual assault in the military released on Thursday by the Pentagon,

About 8.4 percent of female troops and 1.5 percent of male troops said they were assaulted while on duty during the past calendar year, the report said.

One senior pentagon official described the level of sexual assaults against its female personnel as tragic, disappointing and devastating.

Elizabeth Foster, executive director of the Pentagon's Office of Force Resiliency, told reporters the survey showed that "over 35,000 service members' lives and careers were irrevocably changed by these crimes."

"These numbers are tragic, and extremely disappointing. On an individual level, it is devastating to conceptualize," she noted.

More than a hundred thousand men have been sexually assaulted in the US military in the recent decades. The number of women in the military assaulted is more staggering.

Meanwhile, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has devised a plan to hire a professional group as a specialized task force to prevent the sexual assaults.

The move is one of the recommendations suggested by an independent commission that Austin created to review the sexual assault problem.

The US Congress has also ordered an overhaul of the military justice system handling such cases.

However, there have been no drastic changes and some lawmakers and activists insist the procedure is too slow and too limited to resolve the crisis.

Critics say given the extent to which sexual assault victims tend to have a lack of faith in the military justice system, the officials need to devise new strategies to not only safeguard personnel against sexual assault, but also, restore among the victims their lost faith in the military justice system.

Source: Press TV