In 1992, a young Navy lieutenant named Paula Coughlin said she had been sexually assaulted at the 35th Annual Tailhook Symposium in Las Vegas.

Her complaints revealed an ugly side to the annual convention for “Top Gun” aviators: 83 women and 7 men were later found to have been assaulted during the raucous party weekend in September 1991. The resulting scandal forced the resignation of the secretary of the Navy, the censure of several admirals and the enactment of a reform agenda that stressed a “zero tolerance” policy.

Did it make a difference? More than two decades later the news remains extremely discouraging.

Last week the Pentagon released a report estimating that 26,000 people in the military were sexually assaulted in the 2012 fiscal year, up from 19,000 in 2010. Making matters worse, the officer in charge of sexual assault prevention programs for the Air Force was arrested in Arlington, Va., and charged with sexual battery.

This week’s developments make the Retro Report video documentary on the Tailhook scandal particularly timely for providing a historical context to a problem that will not go away. On the Retro Report video, Navy Petty Officer Jenny McClendon tells an interviewer of the abuse she faced years after the supposed Tailhook reforms were adopted: “I presumed that I was going to join a group of people who were my comrades. When I got to the ship, it was a while before – was probably a couple of months before we went from harassment to – to the groping, and the groping eventually culminated in several physical assaults and a cou — — a few rapes.”