Posted on 02/13/2003 11:07:33 AM PST by scab4faa
A 7NEWS Investigation is shaking the very foundation of Colorado's prestigious Air Force Academy. Allegations of rape and betrayal have now made their way to the Pentagon.
7NEWS Investigator John Ferrugia has been working on the story for three months and says that a high-level Air Force investigation is under way after 7NEWS uncovered information about sexual assaults at the academy.
7NEWS Investigates found that when female cadets have reported a rape, they are punished, ostracized by their peers and the administration, and in some cases, drummed out of the academy.
These cadets charge they are victims of the very honor code they are sworn to uphold.
"I grew up in this back yard looking at the sky all the time. Every time I saw a plane it just really gave me chills. I knew flying was something I always wanted to do," former AFA cadet Liz said.
The dream was to be and Air Force officer and to fly jets. The Air Force Academy is the dream of thousands of the nation's brightest and most patriotic young people who embrace the regimented military lifestyle and pledge themselves to a code of honor.
But behind the facade of spit polish and sharp creases is a culture many woman have found to be accepting of rape and sexual assault.
"It's a culture where a male cadet can be expelled for lying, but can receive only a minor reprimand for date rape," said Ruth.
"It seemed like the guys were getting off the hook. If they did get punished, it was like a slap on the hand," said Jessica.
It's a culture where women who report a crime are themselves targeted by their peers and the administration for expulsion.
"They wanted to put blame on somebody and it was hard to put it on three guys as opposed to putting it on one freshman girl," said Justine.
It's a culture where it is made clear to women cadets that if they report a rape by another cadet, their days at the academy are numbered.
"If you want your career to just dissolve in front of you, then go and report," Liz said.
When Liz left her family farm for the Air Force Academy, she knew as a freshman she was in for the toughest regimen of her life.
"You don't have a voice at all. Anybody that tries to have a voice is reprimanded and ridiculed so some extent by upperclassmen," Liz said.
In fact, upperclass trainers control cadets' lives, even to the point of giving you reprimands or "hits" for any real or imagined violations.
"This person can ruin your life as well as the lives of the 30 or so in your class, in your squadron," Liz said.
John Ferrugia/7NEWS: They control you? Liz: Yes.
Liz said she was targeted as a freshman by friendly e-mails from an upper classman offering to hold some everyday items for her that freshmen aren't allowed to have, but everyone does. But then, knowing he had something he could use against her, the e-mails turned ugly.
John Ferrugia/7NEWS: So he blackmailed you? Liz: Yes. John Ferrugia: And eventually he said you are going to do this? Liz: Right. John Ferrugia: You are going to have sexual relations with me or else? Liz: He said you know what you have to do and then, at that point, I would say no.
Then the e-mails that had been explicit became angry.
"I felt like if I didn't rectify the situation, if there was something I had done, if it was insubordination or something like that, it would have come back down on all my classmates," Liz said. "He was telling me that if I wanted to rectify the problem that I had to talk to him in person and he would meet me at the bottom of the stairs."
And there, outside her dorm, on academy grounds, she was raped.
"He forced me physically at that point," Liz said.
After the rape, Liz hit bottom.
"You are completely degraded. You feel like you are dirty. You feel like nobody is going to believe you, you are not worth anything," she said.
Because she knew he could damage her career, Liz decided not to report it.
Liz: I really, sincerely, wanted to completely forget about it and try to keep moving on with my career. John Ferrugia: But he wouldn't let you? Liz: No, it didn't end.
"From the time period of August to March in my freshman year, I was raped and assaulted five times. It was the hardest time," Liz said. "I just remember being so scared ... I knew that anything I said was going to be blown up. He was threatening to spread rumors about me that were untrue as to get others punished in my class."
All the while, Liz's closest friends were telling her not to report the rapes by her superior.
"People over and over continued to tell me that the victim becomes victimized," Liz said.
That is the message that permeates the culture at the academy -- the message that no current woman cadet can speak about without hiding her identity.
"Rape is acceptable and don't say anything about it. Because if you do, they are going to find some way to keep you quiet, to get you out or to punish you. To get you in trouble," said Ann.
Ann is a rape survivor presently at the Air Force Academy.
"No one wants to report. They know and they've seen other cadets get into trouble for reporting their sexual assault. They have seen it happen and they have seen it threatened," Ann said.
These recent cases come almost 10 years after the academy admitted it had a serious problem with sexual assaults.
In 1994 and again in 1995, a General Accounting Office investigation found pervasive problems including "unwelcome deliberate physical contact of a sexual nature."
In response, the academy set up Cadets Advocating Sexual Integrity and Education or the CASIE program so women would have a hot line to call -- a hot line staffed by trained cadets.
Ann is one cadet who worked closely with the CASIE program. Ann: In the time I've been familiar with the CASIE program, I have known of roughly 20 reports in one semester. John Ferrugia: In one semester? 20 women who reported attacks? Ann: That's correct. Over the phone they've called in and reported. The administration knows. They get briefed on the quantities of calls. And they know the ones who have officially reported.
John Ferrugia: Do you know the number of female cadets on an annual basis who call the hot line who say they've been sexually assaulted while at this institution? Maj. Kelly Phillips-Henry: No. John Ferrugia: Why not? Maj. Kelly Phillips-Henry: I guess I'm as ... to why you asked why not. That's not the focus of our counseling program.
Maj. Kelly Phillips-Henry is chief of sexual assault services at the academy.
John Ferrugia: Wouldn't you want to know how many of those occur at the AFA? Is that not important? Maj. Kelly Phillips-Henry: Every sexual assault to any of our cadets are important. One is too many. So for us what we look at is when they report, how do we help them maintain themselves, continue with their academics, continue with the stresses so that they do not disenroll. That's the focus of a victim-focused program.
Two weeks after that interview, the Air Force supplied information admitting that 24 women called the hot line in 2002 reporting sexual assault.
In fact, there have been 91 reports to the hot line since 1996; 20 cases have been formally investigated in that time and no cadet has ever been court-martialed for assaulting another cadet.
John Ferrugia: Was the CASIE program helpful to you? Liz: No, not at all. I felt that if I called them ... It's a bunch of cadets. I didn't want other cadets to know about my case.
Despite the risks, Liz decided to report her assaults to the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. That began months of questioning by investigators -- over and over every detail.
"My story was completely straight and narrow , you know, the entire time. And you know they were trying to trip me up. They were trying to find fault in my story and it never, never surfaced," Liz said.
And while her story never changed, her life at the academy did.
"It became clear to me that I was going to be the black sheep -- one at the academy that wasn't liked," Liz said.
Finally she was called in by her superiors and told the investigation had ended.
Liz: And they told me I was to expecting a number of Form 10s. They said Class D hits are coming down ... John Ferrugia: Which are reprimands? Liz: Right, right. Punishments. One for sex in the dorms, for being raped. One for alcohol because he, my perpetrator, was buying alcohol for my classmates and coming back to me and telling me I owed him for it. Not monetarily, but in favors. The Third Class D hit was for fraternization because he was an upperclassman and I was a freshman. John Ferrugia: You are telling me that you reported a rape and that you are getting a reprimand for having sexual activity in the dorm? Liz: Right, right. I was flabbergasted. I was really just floored. I remember I started to cry, because I looking at these officers and they all know that everything I have done is the right thing to do. I've been standing up for what I believe in. My case was so strong ... John Ferrugia: What is the message to other women? Liz: To not at all talk. Who wants to talk when they are going to be punished? I mean each Class D hit is grounds for disenrollment.
7NEWS Investigates took our findings along with statements of former women cadets to Sen. Wayne Allard. He is a member of the Armed Services Committee and the board of visitors at the Air Force Academy.
"These are believable women and I'm just ... I am appalled," Allard said.
Almost immediately he sent an official letter to the secretary of the Air Force requesting "a full and complete investigation into this matter."
He said he was concerned "that school officials may have attempted to prevent an investigation."
This week, 7NEWS Investigates met with Allard in his Washington office.
"When you came to me with the facts that you shared with me, I carried them to the chairman of the Armed Services Committee. He agreed that we have a serious problem and I know that they have increased the intensity of that investigation," Allard said. "I think they understand he means business and so we will see what happens in the investigation."
"I have gone up and down my chain of command and I've lost faith in my chain of command and that's why I am turning to you, to hopefully get people to realize that this is a problem and it needs to be fixed. We need help," said Ann, a current AFA cadet.
After a year of fighting the system, Liz finally gave up her dream and left the academy.
"What's driving me is the thought of the person that is my spitting image before I went to the academy. The fairly naive girl that doesn't have the first thing to believe about the military, doesn't know anything about what she is getting into. That image is driving me ... because that girl is walking into a pit of wolves, a sea of sharks, and has no idea," Liz said. "It's got to change. It's got to change."
This investigation has made it to the Pentagon. 7NEWS Investigates has now met with Sen. John Warner, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee.
After seeing our findings, Warner sent a letter to the Pentagon asking an undersecretary of defense to monitor the investigation.
Warner said he is concerned about instances "in which the academy did not respond appropriately to reports of sexual offenses and to the victims of such criminal acts."
He also wants the Pentagon to expand the review to "identify any parallel situations at the other academies that might be instructive."
There were reports some time back that auto theft and other street type crimes were on the upswing at the academies. Liberalism seems to be taking a toll everywhere.
Real friends would have backed her up -- or would have dealt with the situations themselves. Rape at the bottom of the stairs? Hmmm. "Gee, we were walking down the stairs and he fell down. We tried to stop him but..."
Though sexual violation of another's person can never be tolerated, the bonding of men in the cultures of war has been so rended by exclusively Western society in only the last 30 or so of the past thousands of years of prior history.
Add to that the hubris of myriad other social "experimentation" over the same three dcades, and the wonder that we yet exist to project the good into the world, may hardly seem so puzzling.
What a surprise... < /sarcasm>
Exactly, but then again, she doesn't deserve rape for it. Not that you were suggesting that.
This is really strange, actually, because at Annapolis, upperclassmen didn't offer to hide contraband for us, we had to hide it ourselves---Walkmans in the ceiling, civvies somewhere else, etc. Perhaps the atmosphere is different at Air Force because they spoon their plebes after one semester, vice a full year.
At Annapolis we had a whole host of problems---a cheating scandal, mids trafficking in/taking LSD, a female mid who was chained to a urinal during Army-Navy Week, etc. I never heard of anyone getting raped by another mid while I was there.
To address many of these problems, from what I understand, Annapolis just underwent a program to re-academyize the place, making it less civilian in flavor and more military. That's a good thing. It sounds like Air Force is going to have to do some painful thinking of its own soon.
First off, they're doolies at AF. What do you mean by "spoon"? Is that another one of those quaint Canoe U. sayings? :-)
I was going to write "damn straight," but now that I think of it, West Point (spit) might use it too. It's when an upperclass tells a pledge he no longer has to act like a pledge around him. Typically it happens around the first of May or so, when the firsties are itching to split.
BTW, cadets are not "court martialed." They are "disenrolled." If they are a junior or senior (2 degree or 1 degree) when they are disenrolled, they owe service to the Air Force and get assigned somewhere as airmen.
As a general rule, AF members are well advised not to expect a whole lotta support from their superiors. The Air Force is a bureaucracy which regards those who have problems with the same jaundiced eye it casts on those who make problems.
I tend to agree with you but can't see that ever happening. Reason? Cadets are future officers of the services and the services will never allow them to be placed under the thumb of NCOs.
Huh?
Uhhhh.........
If an attempt were made to remove the academies' co-ed status, there would be an outcry like you've never heard. Ain't gonna happen.
As for the AFA attracting a more liberal crowd, it's probably not the liberal kids who are causing the problem. I believe that street wise punks have been placed into the cadet ranks and we are now seeing the results of that.
Not necessarily. The best training tool in the whole wide world is a USMC gunny.
The real solution, if one insists on co-ed military academies, is for the cadets themselves to adopt a strict 'no harrassment/no fraternization' code, and to enforce it through the honor system or through the informal processes that cadets have always had. The problem is that some cadets will try to get around it, both men and women.
At VMI, I'm told that within each class, the 'Brother Rat' bonds have generally been strong enough to limit (but not completely eliminate) sexual tensions and jealousies among classmates. Where there have been some problems, it has involved upperclass malesn and Rat (freshmen) women. To my mind, it is impossible for their to be a noncoercive relationship between a Rat/Plebe/Doolie/Knob and an upperclass cadet. It's just like a professor having a relationship with a co-ed in his class, or a boss boffing his secretary -- it's a power-coercive relationship.
What does this mean? 4 degrees (freshmen) are "beaten" on a regular basis until they are "recognized" in mid-March. The 40 days before that (they're in it now) is almost a return to BCT (basic cadet training--called "beast").
BTW, 4-degrees at the USAFA are called "Doolies." West Point uses "plebes." Also, there is NO easy life at the USAFA--for any class, but especially for the 4 degrees.
Please . . . mids I knew who did semester-long service academy swaps with Air Force always said how easy the Zoomies had life there, even the pledges. Their rooms had carpet, for God's sake!
Mid March? I was under the impression that life got easy for pledges after Christmas break, like West Point.
The problem with these assaults is that there needs to be some supervision over people from different genders overnight, IE: separate dormitories. This is for everyone's protection, as someone could ACCUSE an innocent person of rape as well. I think this should be a requirement for the plebe-level class who are easily intimidated and don't have a clue what their rights are.
I personally would have gotten that upperclassman back, somehow, which would probably involve shaving all of his bodily hair when he was passed out, or something humiliating but not deadly.
Someone suggested serious fear of reporting something like this, and I think that fear is very normal and very justified. Anyone who has not lived in a military academy or military college environment cannot begin to understand the extent to which the informal hierarchy among students, whether formalized as a class system or otherwise, affects one's life. If you make people really mad at you -- for stooling to the administration or bringin some sort of discredit on the Corps -- the pressure can be overwhelming, ranging from being silenced (no one will speak to the offender, except in the line of official duty) to being given lots of demerits (so that one will go excess and be thrown out for too many demerits) on petty bases, all the way to physical attacks. And the adminstration really can only contain this, not eliminate it.
Moral of the story...keep your ass clean, and no one has anything to "Bribe" you with. Meeting him in the stair well should have been with a third person. Preferably a superior officer.
The rape is bad news, but it can be avoided. Trouble is, some are having such a good time, they don't want to avoid it untill it's too late.
91 rapes since '96...anyone know the number of female graduates since '96??
SR
No, they just chop everywhere in Bancroft Hall except for the Rotunda and Smoke Hall. It doesn't matter if they're in a tux or their sweats.
p.s. service academy rivalries are fun
SR
Forced sex for whatever reason is rape. Or do you apply the same standard to workplace sexual harrassment of a low-level female by her manager? BTW, you stated she should be expelled if she broke the rules. I didn't say HOW she broke the rules (I gave an example)--I stated that they don't get "expelled" for the kind of infractions (rules) that are typically broken (it's also a rule that cadets are supposed to be in bed at a certain time, but work wouldn't get done if they didn't break that rule). A cadet only gets kicked out (besides lack of performance) for code violations (lying, stealing, cheating OR tolerating others that lie, cheat, or steal). Now, if a 4 degree has a phone and LIES about having a phone, then that WOULD be an honor violation and reason for expulsion.
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