The George Washington Battle Group picked up 969 family members and friends at Bermuda on July 21 to to give them the opportunity to experience a few days of life at sea, and all the fanfare of a ship returning from deployment. This represents a 9 percent drop from a 1988 DOD survey, when 64 percent of women said they'd experienced harassment. It was a 3 percent drop for men. Dorn announced preliminary survey findings at a recent Pentagon news briefing and said other results, including service-specific data, would be announced later. He said the department's senior leadership remains determined to eradicate all such behavior.
Sexual harassment affects people's performance, good order and discipline.
Sexual harassment is a workplace problem in the military, according to the survey. Military coworkers of equal rank were the perpetrators for 44 percent of the women and 52 percent of the men. People of higher rank or grade were the perpetrators for 43 percent of the women and 21 percent of the men. Dorn said he is encouraged by the overall decline and by people's response to inappropriate sexual behavior. About 40 percent of the women and 17 percent of the men reported uninvited sexual behavior to their chain of command, a marked increase from a 1988 reporting rate of 8 percent for women and 10 percent for men.