Sexual assault in the U.S. military remains a significant issue. (Image via Creative Commons User "U.S. Army Materiel Command")

The reports point to more than 3,500 complaints of sexual assault between October 2012 to June 2013 -- almost a 50 percent increase since the year before. 

Those numbers do not include sexual harrassment, which is handled separately in the Pentagon.

According to the New York Times, sexual assault was defined as "rape, sodomy, and other unwanted sexual contact, including touching of private body parts." 

But officials say these reports may not indicate an increased number of actual sexual assaults. Rather, they could be indicating a relatively positive trend.

"More reports means a bridge to more cases being investigated by law enforcement and more offenders being held accountable," General Gary Patton, the director of the Department of Defense Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office, told the Times.

But when there are only 3500 formal complaints despite there being an estimated total of 26,000 sexually assaulted military personnel in 2013, the gap becomes too large to ignore.

A 2010 TIME article poses the question: 

Which is worse: a sexual assault by three fellow midshipmen near the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., or spending 20 hours over five days in a military courtroom fending off questions about one's sexual history and the circumstances of the alleged attack?

"It is essentially the woman who is on trial, and the trial can be worse than the rape," says retired Colonel Elspeth Ritchie in the article, who served as the Army's top psychiatrist and has testified in similar cases. "I have often thought that I would never report it if it happened to me." 

Read more about sexual assaults in the military here. To check out the full Department of Defense report on military sexual assaults in the fiscal year of 2012, click here.

To contact Executive Producer Raishad Hardnett, email him at hardnett@usc.edu.