Nearly 1,000 soldiers reported being sexually assaulted last year: Statcan

OTTAWA -- A landmark Statistics Canada survey of sexual misconduct in the military has found nearly 1,000 members of the Canadian Armed Forces reported being sexually assaulted over the past year.

That represents about 1.7 per cent of military personnel -- dramatically higher than the comparable rate of 0.9 per cent for the general population.

The survey also found full-time female personnel were four times more likely to be assaulted than their male counterparts.

That ratio was even higher -- nearly one in 10 -- for female personnel in the part-time reserve force.

"Women who were victims of sexual assault in the past 12 months were most likely to identify their supervisor or someone of a higher rank as the perpetrator of the assault (49 per cent)," the study says.

"In contrast, male victims most commonly identified a peer or peers as the person(s) responsible (56 per cent) for the assault."

The study also found that more than 25 per cent of women surveyed "reported having been victims of sexual assault at least once since joining the Canadian Armed Forces, significantly higher than the proportion of men."

The survey, the first of its kind in Canada, comes after a retired Supreme Court justice warned last year of a highly sexualized culture in the military that was hostile to women.

"Despite the occurence of inappropriate sexualized and discriminatory behaviour within the Canadian Armed Forces, most members had positive perceptions of the way sexual misconduct is or would be addressed in their unit," the survey says.

"About 8 in 10 members strongly agreed that complaints about inappropriate sexual behavior are (or would be) taken seriously and that this behaviour is not tolerated in their current unit."

That said, "36 per cent of men and 51 per cent of women reported believing that inappropriate sexual behaviour is a problem within the Canadian Armed Forces as a whole."

Gen. Jonathan Vance, Canada's chief of the defence staff, ordered the survey in an effort to quantify the extent of the problem of sexual assault and misconduct in the military. Vance was scheduled to address the survey in a news conference this morning.