After an Army master sergeant witnessed sexual harassment and other misconduct in the ranks in 2014 and reported it to internal Defense Department authorities, the soldier’s supervisors retaliated. They suspended the whistleblower’s security clearance, issued a derogatory performance evaluation and put a written reprimand in the soldier’s file, among other reprisals.

Although the Pentagon inspector general’s office proved last year that the Army master sergeant was wrongly punished and the underlying allegations were true, the officials who retaliated had yet to face consequences. And it is not yet clear whether the damage they did to the soldier’s record has been fixed.

The Pentagon IG’s office recounts that story and many more like it, with names and exact timelines removed, in a little-noticed report delivered to Congress in November.

According to IG officials and data buried deep in the report, ordeals like that suffered by the master sergeant — a truthful disclosure followed by official retribution that usually goes unpunished — are repeated somewhere in the Defense Department more than three times a month on average.

Pentagon IG investigators are resolving more quickly than ever complaints of retaliation and intimidation against whistleblowers, but accountability is hard to find.