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Tweet[ The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: 3/7/03 ]

Air Force: Rape probe won't be witch hunt

By P. SOLOMON BANDA
Associated Press


Washington -- In the military's most explicit acknowledgment of the scale of the problem of reported sexual attacks at the U.S. Air Force Academy, Air Force Secretary James Roche said Thursday that 54 cases of rape or sexual assault had been identified and that many more cases were likely to be reported in the days to come.

"The part that is the saddest thing . . . whatever we see, whatever the number is, 25, 50, there are probably a hundred more that we do not see," Roche told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

With the reports threatening to balloon into one of the largest military sex scandals since Tailhook rocked the Navy 12 years ago, senior Air Force officials said they were weighing wholesale changes at the academy.

"We're learning enough to realize that change must occur -- change in the climate, change in how we manage" the academy, Roche said.

Roche did not say when the assaults occurred or what reports made up the 54 cases he cited. But he said cases were being identified that would top the list for follow-up by the Defense Department's inspector general, focusing on cases "where the person who placed the accusation felt the system let them down."

An Air Force Academy spokesman questioned the number Roche cited.

"Where does that number come from? We just don't know," said the spokesman, Lt. Col. Perry Nouis. "We sure hope that isn't the case. One is too many, and the bigger the number, the worse it is."

Allegations of sexual assaults and rapes at the Air Force Academy aren't new. A 1994 report by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, found that 78 percent of the 90 female cadets reported either sexual assaults or unwanted sexual advances.

In some of the recent cases at the Colorado Springs academy, where 4,000 cadets -- about 18 percent of them women -- study to become Air Force officers, women said that when they came forward they were asked if they had been drinking or fraternizing with upperclassmen, leading many to feel the academy was justifying the assaults. The women who have come forward include current cadets and academy graduates.

As Roche spoke on Capitol Hill, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. John Jumper was en route to the academy, where he was scheduled to meet today on the issue with cadets, administrators, commanders and faculty. An Air Force official said Jumper planned to remind cadets that they have a duty to report anything they might know about any alleged assaults.

Air Force investigators based at the Pentagon spent 10 days last month at the academy looking into the allegations and urging others to come forward, Nouis said. He said the fact-finding team plans to issue a report by the end of March.

Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., told Roche at the hearing the situation at the academy is worse than the 1991 Tailhook scandal, when dozens of women complained they were groped or assaulted by drunken pilots at a Navy booster group's convention.

"The entire support and legal system at the academy appears to have failed," Allard said. "We really do need to instill confidence in the system so victims know when they report rape they know the rape itself will not jeopardize their career."

Sen. John Warner, the Virgina Republican who chairs the Armed Services committee, said the heads of each of the military services has a responsibility to investigate their service academies -- the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., and the Naval Academy at Annapolis, Md. -- to ensure the same misconduct is not occurring elsewhere.

Terri Spahr Nelson, who served in the Army and wrote a book on rape and sexual harassment in the military, praised Roche for confronting the problem.

"The fact that they're acknowledging the problem with the climate and the culture is a start in the right direction," Spahr Nelson said. "It's opening the doors for women to start to come forward."

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