"Aim High": An Air Force Academy Story

[realFedUp]

This is a must read about sexual crimes
at the Air Force Academy...from www.dailykos.com
and mcjoan's diary there:

"Aim High": An Air Force Academy Story
by mcjoan
Fri Dec 10th, 2004 at 13:49:18 PST

Page A-29 of Wednesday's Washington Post informs us that the final Pentagon report on the sex abuse scandal at the Air Force Academy has been completed, and that "Air Force leaders over the past decade had failed to acknowledge the severity of sexual harassment at the service's academy in Colorado." Well, that's certainly news.

You might remember how this story broke. In January 2, 2003 various government officials and elected representatives received an e-mail from someone using the pseudonym Renee Trindle. Renee wrote that there was a serious and widespread problem with sexual assault at the Air Force Academy, a problem which had been ignored by the Academy's leadership. Being a smart cookie, Renee sent the e-mail not only to the Secretary of the Air Force, the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, Senator Wayne Allard, Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell, and a number of Members of Congress, but also to a number of media outlets. The e-mail ignited a firestorm of publicity. And it brought to full flower in me a hard little kernel of bitterness I'd been carrying around for twenty years.

I had a phenomenal friend in high school, whom I'll call CJ. I've never known anyone quite like CJ since. First, she was a genius. Like a lot of geniuses, she was eccentric and she was fearless. There wasn't anything she couldn't do academically. She was a terrific soccer player, but because we didn't have a competitive women's soccer team at our school and she wanted to compete, she tried out for the varsity football team, as a kicker. She made the team, but decided after all not to play. I think she mostly wanted to see if she was up to the challenge of making the team, and forcing the athletic department, school administration, and her fellow students to examine the need for more support of women's sports in our school.

A few weeks into the term, CJ was raped by another cadet. I don't know the details, I don't want to know the details. In fact CJ has never told me the story. Our mothers were friends, and her mother confided in and came for support to my mother. In her shock (and concern for me--"Look what can happen in college--you be careful!") mom spilled the beans to me. The story unfolded over a couple of months, as CJ did what any strong young woman with a well-developed sense of justice would do. She attempted to press charges against the cadet. She worked her way up the chain of command, at each step her story falling on deaf ears. Eventually she was branded a trouble-maker, and began to feel retribution from the command, and from her fellow cadets. She became so hounded and humiliated by the experience not just of the physical rape, but of the rape of her dignity, her honesty, her very character that she left the Academy before the end of the term. She ended up quitting school entirely for a few years, traveling, working odd jobs in odd places, and I guess healing.

continued (read the whole thing)