Before the Senate Armed Service Committee last Wednesday, Senator Martha McSally shared a very traumatic and heartbreaking story. She said that when she was in the Air Force she had been raped by a superior officer. It was probably a very difficult experience to relive. And a very hard thing for the military community to hear coming from the senator.

McSally did not report her abuser and has still not revealed him by name. Some speculate that perhaps her alleged rapist is retired and elderly or deceased. She was embarrassed and didn’t have enough self-esteem to come forward at the time. This is a problem the Department of Defense has realized and tried to address for many years. “Sexual assault against female service members is an issue the military has been trying to fix across all branches for years, and I’ve seen the way the Department of Defense has worked to better the environment for women,” says McSally.

“When I deployed to Baghdad in 2008, I was startled to hear some people tell me to be on the lookout for instances of sexual assault, specifically during the window of time in which a service member stays in Kuwait before flying to Iraq.” As of January of this year, women account for about 220,270 of 1,316,090 million active-duty personnel, according to the Department of Defense. As barriers to women serving in the military continue to fall, addressing sexual assault must continue to be a major focus for all service branches.