Why do cases of sexual harassment and sexual assault continue to take place in the Army despite all the training and the education?

It's a matter of culture. The Army has a culture of its own, and it creates and maintains that culture through the conduct of its leaders, not any classes. Those classes instruct leaders and Soldiers on policies and rules, but it's the leaders who develop the culture. However, Soldiers don't walk into the Army with Army culture and a few months of Basic training will not indoctrinate Soldiers on how to behave off duty. That takes time, mentorship, and maturity for young Soldiers to be molded and shaped into adults who live or at least abide by the Army values.

Then there's alcohol.... Alcohol throws fuel into the fire for everything and tosses all good sense out the window. The first thing that becomes impaired with alcohol is our sense of judgment, and our ability to tell that our judgement is impaired. The majority of misconduct cases have alcohol involved in them. Alcohol is involved in something like 80-90% of misconduct, and especially in sexual assault cases.

Sexual harassment is a different beast, not one that you can blame on alcohol. I'm not a SARC and I've never looked over the statistics for sexual harassment. But, from what I've seen SH comes down to a lack of respect. Of course, there are still predators and no amount of training will ever eliminate them, but the cases I've seen, 90% came down to disrespect. Often the person didn't think what they were doing was sexual harassment. For instance, in an earlier thread, one NCO was asking about another NCO who was flagged for a SH investigation. He thought the investigation was BS because the NCO made some remark about a female to another Soldier. He felt it wasn't SH because it wasn't said directly to her. It was a lack of knowledge and respect. Or you'll see Soldiers treating a coworker differently and making sexual remarks because they are a female. Again, it's a lack of respect. They wouldn't talk to their sister this way and they wouldn't let someone speak to their mother this way because they respect those people. You can't take someone off the streets and make them develop respect for females that they didn't have three months ago just by going through basic training. It takes time for the Army culture to penetrate into new Soldiers

My personal thought on this, are that is just how these individuals were raised. Unfortunately, not everyone in America is raised in a good home environment. This includes Soldiers that enlist in the military. Being that this is now their first time away from home, they revert back to how they were raised. I think for the most part the military is good for teaching and training some of these individuals what right looks like, but there are still many that still do not care and will do whatever they want to do. I think this will be a fantastic discussion to have in your BLC class, i would love to hear some the comments given. Good luck to you and please let us know how all of this turns out for you.

Their are still some old ways of thinking in the military. Those ways are dying a slow death. SA will never be fully eradicated but can be drastically reduced once the old ways of thinking die out.