From Draft NOtices, January-March 2023
- Lauren Reyna Morales
In July of 2022 the New York Times published an explosive exposé on sexual abuse in the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corp (JROTC). JROTC is a federal program sponsored by the United States Armed Forces that operates in at least 3,500 high schools with more than 500,000 students enrolled across the country. The U.S. Army JROTC website describes the program as “one of the largest character development and citizenship programs for youth in the world.” The NY Times investigation revealed that since 2017, there had been at least 33 JROTC instructors criminally charged with sexual misconduct against their students, and several other accusations. The report detailed that within the last five years, the Army decertified 24 instructors because of credible sexual abuse allegations. Other military branches also had to decertify several of their JROTC instructors for sexual misconduct: 15 instructors in the Marine Corps JROTC, 10 in the Navy, and seven in the Air Force. Two additional JROTC instructors accused of sexual abuse died by suicide before their cases could be settled. All of the programs’ instructors are retired military officers.
More recently, it was revealed that the number of substantiated allegations of sexual abuse from students against their JROTC instructors since 2017 is almost double what the NY Times initially reported. On November 16, 2022, Defense Department officials confirmed that the Pentagon had received credible reports of at least 58 cases in which JROTC instructors sexually abused or harassed students during the last five years. Several other instructors also have pending allegations. Military officials made these disclosures before a congressional subcommittee whose members had expressed concern at how the armed forces had apparently “failed to properly oversee the program.” At a November hearing, Defense Department officials stated that changes to the program were “already being implemented: more oversight of instructors, more opportunities for students and parents to file complaints, and more aggressive recruiting of women instructors.”
House committee members were not satisfied with this response from Pentagon leaders. According to the Military Times, Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass), chairman of the House Oversight Committee’s panel on National Security, condemned JROTC and the disturbing pattern of instructors “using their positions of authority to exploit and abuse students.” Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-Texas) addressed the Defense Department directly saying, “Although you say you are outraged over this, I’m just not feeling it. This [NY Times] article came out months ago and all you’ve changed is some testing and maybe increased vetting. We’re talking about young women being sexually assaulted and abused . . . I want more specific actions.” Rep. Jackie Speier (D-California), chairwoman of the House Armed Services Committee’s personal panel, even floated the idea of suspending JROTC entirely “until you can get it right.” She expressed that “it is chilling to think that after we have been addressing this issue for years within the military, where we know that cases exceed 30,000 a year, to come and see this going on in our classrooms in high schools.”
Despite the revelations of widespread abuse, the Army is currently trying to expand the program, working to add 50 JROTC units per year. JROTC is a key pipeline for young adults enrolling in the Armed Forces. At a time when all branches of the military are struggling to meet recruiting goals, the loss of JROTC could very much deepen those challenges. In December of 2022, the NY Times published a new report that reveals many students, especially Black and Latinx youths, are involuntarily enrolled by their schools in JROTC. While this doesn’t violate current federal law, it is demonstrably dangerous for vulnerable young people across the country.
Sources:
https://www.usarmyjrotc.com/army-junior-rotc-program-overview/
https://www.militarytimes.com, Nov. 16, 2022
https://www.nytimes.com, Nov. 16, 2022
This article is from Draft NOtices, the newsletter of the Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft (http://www.comdsd.org/).
