The United States military has a sexual assault problem.

It's had one for a very long time.

Maybe you've heard of tailhook?

There's a New York Times documentary about it.

Old stereotypes about sex-cray sailors have come back to Haunt the Navy.

The charges of sexual harassment by women who say they were manhandled at a gathering of navy flyers.

It was called the worst case of sexual harassment in the Navy's history.

More than 100 top-gun pilots accused of conduct-unbecoming officers and gentlemen.

30 years ago this year, the American public became aware of how bad things were for women in the armed forces.

This has been a difficult issue for the Navy because it told us some of our people were not upholding the standards of behavior.

We expect of them.

Tailhook also brought to light the fact that we had an institutional problem in how we treated women.

In that regard, it was a watershed event that has brought about a cultural change.

Everyone agreed something needed to be done.

Such conduct and behavior are not acceptable for officers in our Navy.

I want to ensure that the American people in our officer corps understand the egregious conduct described in this report.

Is not now, never has been, and never will be acceptable to the Navy leadership.

Now, 30 years later, things are just still really bad.

In 2019, the number of reports on sexual assault in the military was up 3%.

Almost to 8,000 reported cases, something like 5% of those resulted in convictions.

It's gotten so bad that veterans are discouraging young women from enlisting.

But Congress is just about as close as it's ever been to doing something that could address it.

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