[fwipsy]

I don't think the passive voice is meant to protect the perpetrators. Instead, they are presenting sexual assault as a deliberate tactic or policy, or at least a common pattern. If true, this is a much bigger story than isolated incidents of violence. But sixteen reported cases over three years seems very low. Likely there are more cases they missed. Mainly it seems like they have very little data.

[datsci_est_2015]

As the sibling comments point out, in isolation your argument would be reasonable, but within the context of the decades-long conflict, and English-language media in general, passive voice is very much used to soften the blow of damning reports against figures of authority and other privileged peoples.

[sillystuff]

The passive voice and dishonest language is often used by British and US corporate and state media when describing atrocities committed by Israeli Jews.

"Some Palestinians are dead." Implying, "They seem to have just died. Nobody knows what happened." To describe the countless massacres of Palestinians by Israeli Jews

E.g., the BBC reported an IDF soldier, in uniform, who was captured as a prisoner of war as, "A young girl was kidnapped by Hammas." The BBC also reported on an 8 year old little girl who was kidnapped by the IDF and held as a hostage as, "a woman who was detained."

The BBC is still at it with the Israel-US illegal war of aggression against Iran. They reported that "180 people died" in the triple-tap strike on the school that murdered 165 young children, mostly little girls. The BBC also did not mention that it was a triple-tap strike where subsequent strikes killed rescue workers, parents coming to find their children, and 10s of children who had survived the first strike.

The UK (and Germany) are as bad as the US for media and government controlled by Zionists.

[Hikikomori]

See it in EU news as well. They're essentially free PR for IDF.

[appreciatorBus]

More likely, they already knew what they wanted to say, data or no data: Israel/US, bad: global revolution, good. They have to keep the pressure up so they need to write papers and get articles written about those papers and then get them posted on hacker news regardless of what actually happened. It’s a constant grind, but I suppose it will all be worth it for them if they get appointed on the committee of the vanguard or something like that.

[Tostino]

So you don't view the genocide that's happening right now as bad? Or the US support for it? Noted.