Surveys Show Spike in Reports of Sexual Harassment on US Aircraft Carriers (Exclusive)

Last year, a spate of suicides among the crew of the aircraft carrier U.S.S. George Washington sparked several U.S. Navy investigations into the culture on board and the conduct of the ship’s senior officers. 

One of the investigations found that while the George Washington was docked at Newport News, Virginia, employees of a company contracted for work on the ship made frequent sexually suggestive comments to female crew members. Navy officers, the report found, had engaged with managers of Huntington Ingalls Industries-Newport News Shipbuilding to “curtail the harassment towards Sailors, to no avail.” 

A spokesperson for Newport News Shipbuilding told The Messenger the company does not tolerate harassment of any kind and has strong policies in place prohibiting sexual harassment. 

But an investigation by The Messenger has found that unusually high numbers of the rank-and-file on board the George Washington and several other carriers - more than half the ships’ crews, in some cases - have reported experiencing sexually harassing behaviors. 

Multiple internal surveys, known as “Defense Organizational Climate Surveys,” obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request detail the extent of the problem on six aircraft carriers. 

On the George Washington, 65% of women and 47% of men surveyed reported instances of sexual harassment in 2022—a ten percent increase from the previous year. The overall rate was 51%. On the U.S.S. Harry S. Truman, the overall figure was 61%, with 76% of women and 57% of men reporting sexually harassing behaviors. 

Dr. Joie Acosta, a senior behavioral and social scientist at the RAND Corporation, who has led extensive research into sexual assault and harassment within the U.S. military, reviewed the climate surveys at The Messenger’s request. 

“When you look at what is in some of these reports that you have where sexual harassment behaviors are at 50 or 60 percent, I mean, that is really high,” Acosta said.

They are also much higher than reported rates of harassment in the rest of the military. The Pentagon’s 2021 Workplace and Gender Relations Survey found that 29% of women and 6% of men experienced sexual harassment in the armed forces. 

The numbers in the carrier surveys were higher than the military-wide average for all six vessels. The most troubling results came from the Gerald R. Ford and the Harry S. Truman; 76% of women on the Ford and 75% of women on the Truman reported harassment in surveys conducted in September 2022. The overall rates on both vessels were above 50%, and both had risen sharply since the year before. 

A problem on many carriers

U.S. military units across the armed forces have conducted these surveys annually since 1990. Participation is voluntary and participants remain anonymous except for identifying factors such as rank, gender and race. More than one million U.S. service members typically complete the survey, according to the Pentagon’s Office of People Analytics. 

For sexually harassing behaviors, the surveys use a four-point scale ranging from “never” to “often” in response to questions about whether service members have received unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, offensive comments or gestures of a sexual nature in their workplace. 

In addition to the George Washington, Gerald R. Ford and Harry S. Truman, The Messenger obtained survey results from a two-year span between 2020 and 2022 for the U.S.S. Dwight D. Eisenhower; U.S.S. John C. Stennis; and the U.S.S. George H.W. Bush.

In one case, the rate of harassment reports fell - 48% of crew members aboard the Eisenhower reported such behaviors, a drop from 60% the year before - and on two carriers, the Stennis and the Bush, the levels were roughly the same as the prior year, at 44 and 52%. But even these levels were far higher than the military average. And taken together, more than one in two crew members on the six carriers reported incidents of sexual harassment.  

The surveys also linked low morale with the high rates of harassment. Five of the six carriers were flagged as having low morale issues when compared to other units across the Navy. 

“Organizations with high morale are linked to improved readiness, higher retention, and a lower likelihood of sexual assault,” the survey said. 

A difficult history

There are 11 aircraft carriers in the U.S. Navy. They are by far the fleet’s largest vessels, akin to floating cities with airports on their decks. Each can carry a crew of more than 6,000 men and women. And they have been flagged for high rates of harassment before. 

According to a Department of Defense study released in 2018, sailors assigned to ships were more likely to experience sexual harassment and assault than servicemembers in other branches of the military. That study was based on data collected from a RAND Corporation survey of more than 170,000 service members conducted in the summer of 2014. The same study found that aircraft carriers were among the highest-risk environments, and that in all branches of the military, unwanted sexual behaviors were often more common at large-scale installations that are home to higher concentrations of junior-ranking personnel. 

The 2018 study found that the U.S.S. Nimitz and U.S.S. John C. Stennis were ranked among the Navy's 15 highest-risk installations for sexual assault. For women in particular, eight of the top 15 high-risk installations were aircraft carriers. 

The surveys obtained by The Messenger suggest that despite widespread calls for improvements, and pledges by the Navy to address the issue, little has changed, and on some of the carriers the situation is even worse. 

The Navy’s response

The Messenger asked the Navy for its general reaction to the climate surveys, as well as specific questions about how it had responded and whether it had explanations for the relatively high rates of harassment reported on aircraft carriers.

The Navy said the climate surveys were “an excellent mechanism for shining a spotlight on areas where we need to improve,” and stressed that “leadership at the highest level of the Navy closely reviews results of surveys and reports of harassment are taken with the utmost seriousness. Harassment of any sort is not tolerated in the Navy and those who perpetrate these actions are held accountable.”

The Navy’s statement also listed several measures it said had been taken in response to the carrier surveys.

Leaders had conducted follow-up “focus groups” on board the Truman and Ford, “to further validate the survey findings.” The Navy did not share the results of those findings. 

It said that an “All Navy message” was distributed in April 2022 to communicate “strict guidelines on the investigation of formal sexual harassment complaints” and mandate that any complaints of sexual harassment be “forwarded to the next higher level commander, who shall appoint an investigating officer from outside the command of the subject and complainant.” That officer, the Navy said, must be “a neutral investigating officer from outside of the command of either the subject or complainant…to ensure transparency and provide an extra precaution to remove any perception of bias or favoritism in the investigative process.”

As to why the numbers were so high aboard the carriers, the Navy said only that “the number of participants from each command may influence the rates reflected in survey results. The number of participants could be a contributing factor for the survey data on USS Gerald R. Ford and USS Harry S. Truman.” 

It’s not clear why higher survey participation would have resulted in higher percentages of those reporting sexual harassment.

No “magic bullet”

In 2021, RAND published a comprehensive report which suggested that the Defense Department’s efforts to prevent sexual assault and harassment in the U.S. military had been ineffective. Specifically, the report said the department’s annual sexual assault prevention and response training had failed to use evidence-based strategies that have produced results in other work environments.

“When we wrote that study, I think a lot of people focused on the deterrence end of things,” Acosta said. She added that the military’s approach was heavily focused on reporting and punishing sexual assault and harassment. 

“They had a sexual assault prevention and response office but in practice, those folks were not doing any primary prevention efforts, it was very much more focused on victims.” 

Specifically, Acosta said more attention and resources should be spent on training and courses that have been proven to discourage or deter such behavior. She singled out bystander intervention, in which service members are taught to identify warning signs or risk factors for sexual assault and intervene when appropriate.

“Prevention takes a long time to work. It’s not like you do it and the next day everything is better,” she said. “You have to have the ability to prevent, so once things are in place, you’re looking at four to five years to see some significant impacts.”

Acosta said she felt the military is headed in the right direction in terms of its response. But she added: “These are complex problems and there’s not a magic bullet that’s going to fix it.”