Extent of Sexual Misconduct in Canada Military Revealed: Report

Almost 1,000 soldiers in Canada's military have complained of sexual harassment in the last year alone, a national survey has found.

The responses of 43,000 force members were scrutinized by researchers who found that one in four women in the force claim to have been sexually assaulted during their career.

The report, titled "Sexual misconduct in the Canadian Armed forces, 2016," was undertaken by data analysis organization Statistics Canada. Findings have revealed "extremely disappointing" and "regrettably sobering" figures of sexual misconduct, according to the Army's head, General Jonathan Vance.

The survey was commissioned by the forces following a scathing 2015 report by Marie Deschamps, a retired justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, who found a "hostile" approach to women in the Canadian military.

Half of female victims said the perpetrator was a supervisor or someone of a higher rank.

The most common form of sexual assault was unwanted touching, which 1.5 percent of Regular Force members of both sexes said they had experienced. Other forms of sexual assault, sexual attacks and sexual activity to which the victim was unable to consent, were less common.

But regardless of the type of sexual assault, women in the Regular Force were more likely than men to have been victims in the past 12 months. Women were four times more likely than men to experience unwanted sexual touching, five times more likely to be sexually attacked, and six times more likely to be subjected to sexual activity to which they were unable to give consent.

Only 23 percent of those who claim to have been assaulted said they reported what happened and just 7 percent filed an official report with the military police.

"Harmful sexual behavior is a real problem in our institution," Vance told CBC. "We know it and we're trying to tackle it head-on."