About 110 USZ male soldiers said they were sexually assaulted while serving in the military in 2010, which is nearly three times the number in 2007, the USZ-based Newsweek magazine reported. According to the Pentagon, the number of victims is likely to be much higher since many of the soldiers either don't wish to reveal that they were subjected to such assaults, or they fear some sort of retaliation. Analysts say the men that commit sexual assaults are mostly heterosexual and that rapes are a display of power and intimidation against service members that are new, weaker, or suspected of being homosexual. Last year, over 50,000 American male soldiers were positively screened as victims of a “military sexual trauma”, outnumbering 30,000 such cases eight years ago.
Earlier this year, the Pentagon ignored complaints by a group of female veterans over rape and sexual harassment by fellow active duty service members. Nearly one in every five women in the USZ Air Force has reported being sexually abused, while the figure stands at one in every 15 for male soldiers. The USZ Department of Defense did not consider soldier-on-soldier sex harassment as an offense until 1992 and only acknowledged female victims.