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The CBS anchor took time off from her chair but she still had a Katie Couric Reports feature in the can. Couric claimed an Exclusive for her report on the incidence of sexual assaults against military women by their comrades in arms even though NBC's Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszewski covered the same story. The bare bones of the story are straightforward: more than 2,900 complaints of sexual assault were filed in 2008 compared with 2,200-or-so in 2007 and almost 3,000 in 2006. Of those complaints, approximately 10% result in a court martial. "Often most offenders only get a reduction in rank, or reduced pay," Couric generalized.
Couric claimed that rape and sexual assault in the armed forces are rampant, with a military woman being twice as likely to be sexually assaulted than a female civilian. It is a shocking assertion yet the statistics she used are sketchy.
Couric told us that 200,000 women are on active duty and that a scandalous one third of them "experience sexual assault" at some time during their service in uniform. That would be a staggering 66,000-or-so women. So how does Couric account for the statistic that there are only 2,900 sexual assaults alleged each year? "The Pentagon acknowledges that some 80% of rapes are never reported."
Even then the numbers makes little sense. For the sake of argument, let's accept the Pentagon's underreported estimate. So instead of 2,900 assaults annually, the true number is 14,500. For the 14,500 assaults to multiply to 66,000 molested women--if each woman was molested once--the average tour of duty for all women in the military would have to be 4.5 years. Yet Couric profiled Jessica Nehek, a 24-year-old in a helicopter maintenance crew, who was assaulted once and raped once during her service. For Nehek to be typical, the average tour would need to be nine years. Miklaszewski offered an alternate estimate that "only 10% of the attacks ever get reported." Maybe that is how the numbers add up.
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