[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 135 (Monday, September 29, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Pages S12127-S12129]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




         SEXUAL MISCONDUCT ALLEGATIONS AT THE AIR FORCE ACADEMY

  Mr. DAYTON. Madam President, last week, in a hearing of the Senate 
Armed Services Committee, I listened to some of the most disturbing 
testimony I have heard in my entire almost 3 years now in the Senate. 
Testifying were members of a congressional panel investigating the 
sexual harassment charges raised at the U.S. Air Force Academy. The 
hearing, which is the third one this year on this matter, is a great 
credit to its chairman, Senator Warner. There is no one in this body 
for whom I have greater respect than the senior Senator from Virginia, 
now in his 25th year of outstanding service to the State of Virginia 
and to our Nation. He and his colleague of 25 years, Senator Levin of 
Michigan, don't always agree, but they always work cordially and 
constructively together to lead that committee and establish a 
bipartisan or nonpartisan relations way.
  As former Secretary of the Navy, the chairman, who strongly supports 
the services, clearly does not relish in this kind of critical review 
of one of the Academies. He does not evade it either. To the contrary, 
he faced up to it responsibly and resolutely, which led to the hearing 
last week and to another one scheduled for tomorrow. Last week's 
testimony was provided on behalf of the congressional panel established 
by the Congress to investigate sexual misconduct allegations at the Air 
Force Academy. It was eloquently

[[Page S12128]]

presented by its chairwoman, the Honorable Tillie Fowler, a former U.S. 
Congresswoman from the State of Florida. Seven other members of the 
panel appeared with Chairwoman Fowler and answered a number of the 
committee's questions.
  I cannot do justice to the outstanding work of this panel. In just a 
matter of 2 months, they accomplished more than most Government 
investigations do in 2 years, or even longer. They probed more deeply, 
they assessed the conditions at the Academy over the past 10 years more 
comprehensively, and they reported more concisely, yet insightfully and 
incisively, than grander commissions with more time and costing much 
more money. They have all performed a very important service to their 
country and this Congress, which established and charged them with this 
mission. They did so with great distinction, and I thank them.

  While the report was excellent, its findings were by far the 
opposite. My colleagues will recall that our colleague, Senator Allard, 
in whose State the Academy is located, brought complaints from a couple 
of his constituents to the Academy and then to the Secretary of the Air 
Force when he was not satisfied with the Academy's responses. Senator 
Allard also deserves great credit for bringing those deplorable 
offenses to the Air Force Academy's leadership to deal with them and 
bring them to the attention of the full Senate and bring the larger 
spotlight of public attention on to these abuses.
  As the first abuses were reported, other women, present and former 
cadets at the Academy, disclosed rapes and other sexual assaults 
against them, and Senator Allard has heard from a total now, at this 
time, of 39 women. That number could be even higher by this time.
  After denying there was a serious problem, first, by Academy 
officials, then by the Air Force service and civilian leaders, and the 
growing number of victims making accusations of being sexually 
assaulted at the Air Force Academy and continued pressures of Senator 
Warner and Senator Levin and Senator Allard, there was finally forced 
the necessary attention and investigations and initial actions by those 
who have been accused.
  The publicly reported experiences of women cadets were truly 
horrible. In fact, twice horrible--horrible in the rape or the physical 
attack against them by another cadet at the Academy, and horrible in 
the callous indifference or even putative responses of Academy 
officials--toward them, the victims, not toward their alleged 
attackers.
  Here is a brief summary of one first year female cadet's nightmare at 
the Air Force Academy. This is a published report in the Washington 
Post:

       Once not very long ago, [her] eyes shown bright when she 
     spoke of piloting airplanes. Few her age seem to be too 
     promising in a future in aviation. But now when the 
     conversation turns to flying, the former Air Force academy 
     cadet dips and stares at the floor. Ever since, she says, a 
     fellow cadet raped her a year ago in her freshman year at the 
     academy, her dreams of flying F-16s and her love of the Air 
     Force have crumbled. At age 18, she was a first-year cadet at 
     the academy. But even in that elite group she was one of a 
     very few in her class who had a private pilot's license. In 
     November, 2001, she was chosen as the year's first freshwoman 
     to fly an Air Force plane, roaring above the academy's 
     football stadium before a game. Her downward spiral began a 
     year ago when a cadet whom she knew slightly from the academy 
     raped her in her dormitory room, she said. What she did not 
     know then is that the same senior, once a star of the academy 
     boxing team, had been accused of sexually assaulting a 
     civilian in California 3 months earlier, as well as another 
     freshman cadet at the academy more than a year before that.

  Thus began her dizzying fall from grace. Struggling academically and 
athletically, emotionally devastated, and she said, harassed and 
hounded by the academy leadership for minor disciplinary infractions, 
she finally quit last Christmas. The Academy did not discipline the 
male cadet for his alleged on-campus assault because Academy officials 
said evidence was lacking. However, it did expel and court martial and 
convict him on the charge of forcible sodomy in California. He is now 
serving an 18-month sentence in a Navy brig.
  While the female cadet remains angry about the sexual assault, she is 
angriest at her treatment by the Academy's majors, colonels, and 
generals who she said turned the tables on her after she reported the 
assault. She said some officers criticized her for acting 
affectionately with her boyfriend, who is a different person from the 
individual who committed the rape. They said she was ``no lady'' and 
suggested her behavior was generally promiscuous. It is not a problem 
of a few bad cadets, the woman now says, the problem is a few bad 
generals.
  For a long time, after first denying there was a significant problem 
with cadet sexual assaults at the Air Force Academy, the Academy and 
Air Force leadership questioned how extensive the problem really was. 
On a couple of occasions during the past decade when students were 
surveyed on the subject, an alarmingly high percentage of female cadets 
reported they had been raped or otherwise sexually assaulted during 
their 1 to 4 years at the Air Force Academy.
  The response of the Academy administration was to claim the surveys 
were not statistically valid, and in two instances, simply not to ask 
that question in the next year's survey, just defies belief. Talk about 
sticking their heads in the sand. They really didn't want to know how 
bad the problem was at the Academy. Now we have a good idea.
  One of the accomplishments of the Fowler panel was to obtain from the 
Department of Defense and inspector general preliminary data from its 
May 2003 survey of female cadets at the Air Force Academy. Of 579 women 
in the classes of 2003 to 2006, 88 percent of all women cadets at the 
Academy at that time responded to this survey: 43 cadets, 7.4 percent, 
said they had been victims of at least one rape or attempted rape 
during their 1 to 4 years at the Air Force Academy. That is 1 out of 
every 13 women. In the senior class, those women who had been there for 
4 years, 11.7 percent, or 1 out of 8 female cadets were raped or 
victims of attempted rape during their 4 years at the Academy; 109 
female cadets, 19 percent of all respondents, said they suffered one or 
more sexual assaults during their years there. That is almost 1 out of 
every 5 female cadets being sexually assaulted at the Air Force 
Academy.
  The Air Force response to this survey? They consider the definition 
of ``sexual assault'' used in the survey too broad and thus the 
percentage too high. That definition is a sexual assault is:

       Cadet victim, witness, assistance, and notification 
     procedures--the touching of another without their consent in 
     a sexual manner, including attempts in order to arouse, 
     appeal to, or gratify the lust or sexual desires of the 
     accused, the victim, or both. Sexual assault includes, but is 
     not limited to, rape, sodomy, fondling, unwanted touching of 
     a sexual nature and indecent sexual acts the victim does not 
     consent to or is explicitly or implicitly forced into. It 
     is immaterial whether the touching is directly upon the 
     body of another or is committed through a person's 
     clothing.

  That sounds like a clear definition of sexual assault to me, and the 
keywords are ``without their consent.''
  A couple of the other survey findings were that over two-thirds of 
women cadets, 68.7 percent, reported they had experienced sexual 
harassment, defined as unwanted and uninvited sexual attention in the 
form of ``sexual teasing, jokes, remarks or questions'' while at the 
Academy--over two-thirds of women cadets.
  Of the sexual assault victims, only 19 percent, less than 1 in 5, 
were reported to the authorities, and of those who did report these 
incidents, almost half, 46 percent experienced what they called 
reprisals. That is how extensive these atrocities were if the Academy 
or Air Force leadership had wanted to know, but they didn't.
  An internal Academy working group decided whatever problem did exist 
there was attributable to, according to the report, among other things, 
the definition of ``sexual assault'' in the Academy instruction book 
was confusing, the training had little focus on the moral leadership or 
character components of deterrence, and, amazingly enough, the self-
defense training given to fourth class women cadets often occurred too 
late in the semester to be effective.
  Let me repeat that. The self-defense training given to fourth class--
in other

[[Page S12129]]

words, first-year women--often occurred too late in the semester to be 
effective. In other words, the Academy didn't get around to giving them 
self-defense training before they were raped or sexually assaulted 
there.
  The Fowler panel, which is a document I commend to all of my 
colleagues as being both incisive and insightful in its own right, and 
the example of what an outside panel can accomplish in a brief period 
of time, stated other than the reassignment of recent Academy 
leadership and retiring the immediate past superintendent in lower 
grade, the Air Force has not held any member of the Academy leadership 
accountable for a decade of ineffective action or, in many cases, 
inaction concerning sexual assaults and the culture that tolerated 
them.
  While the record is not complete, the evidence before the panel shows 
the highest levels of leadership had information about serious problems 
at the Academy, yet failed to take effective action. It may be 
impossible to ever fully know what the Air Force leadership knew or 
suspected about sexual assault problems in the past 10 years, 
nonetheless the panel uncovered substantial information showing Air 
Force headquarters had serious and repeated indicators of a problem. If 
the Air Force headquarters did not act on this information or did so 
tepidly, it should be held accountable for avoiding its responsibility 
and accepting sexual misconduct as an unavoidable condition at the Air 
Force Academy.
  By contrast, when the general counsel of the Air Force, who had led a 
review of a working group and a report issued by the same, stated that, 
in the words of the Fowler panel, despite the considerable evidence of 
long-term knowledge by the Air Force and the persistence of sexual 
misconduct problems at the Academy, the working group, headed by the 
Air Force general counsel, concluded that ``there was no systemic 
acceptance of sexual assault at the Academy or institutional avoidance 
of responsibility.'' In other words, nobody was responsible for all of 
these atrocities occurring over the previous 10 years, probably longer 
but not reported or documented before that time. Nobody in positions of 
command at the Air Force Academy or the Air Force itself is responsible 
for any of this, and the Fowler report clearly documents instances time 
after time over that decade where the top command knew, was informed, 
and failed to act, failed to follow through, replace, failed to 
communicate, failed to even hold meetings as frequently as required, 
failed time after time in a myriad of ways to assume the responsibility 
that they had for the young lives that had been entrusted to them by 
their families and who were recommended for those appointments by 
Members of this body and the House of Representatives, who placed their 
faith and trust in that institution, and not just let down, they were 
abused, their lives were emotionally devastated, their careers at the 
Air Force Academy were, in many instances, destroyed, and the 
perpetrators of these violent crimes, these rapes and sexual assaults, 
have gone untouched, unsanctioned, and now are pervasive throughout the 
Air Force itself.

  It is so bad, in fact, that in one survey taken by the panel, over 20 
percent, over one-fifth of those cadets the Air Force surveyed didn't 
believe women belonged at the Air Force Academy. The Air Force Academy 
has been accepting women since 1973--in other words, since before those 
cadets were born.
  How did they conclude, based on the history, since the time they came 
into consciousness, that women who are an integral part of the Air 
Force Academy ``did not belong'' there? How could they not belong any 
more or less than male cadets?
  The panel concluded, as one of them said, the culture at the Air 
Force Academy is infected. This is not a matter of misguided young 
adults. In fact, I know from my experience, as I am sure my colleagues 
have had approximately the same experience, the young men and women who 
we nominate for appointment to the Air Force Academy, or any of the 
service academies, are extraordinary young men and women. At least in 
my State of Minnesota they have to compete with other extremely well-
qualified young men and women, and they are selected only after a 
careful review process. They have to have distinguished careers in high 
school with their curricula. I have not seen and I would not nominate 
anybody who has had problems with sexual misconduct or problems in 
understanding their responsibilities at such an academy to be 
inclusive, to be honorable, and that they report any violations cited 
by a commission of these kinds of actions.
  According to the panel, what has happened--and I would concur from my 
own brief experience--is that the culture is infecting those cadets 
with the wrong ideas, with the wrong views, and with the notion that 
they can commit those acts with no consequence, that those who are the 
victims are the ones who are going to be punished, and the honor code 
notwithstanding, they should just look the other way or ignore what 
they see happening.
  What a terrible climate to create at this institution which is paid 
for with taxpayer dollars and which is producing men and women who we 
are going to rely on to pilot Air Force planes and defend this Nation 
for years to come.
  As I said, the very distinguished chairman of the Senate Armed 
Services Committee, Senator Warner, deserves such enormous credit for 
spiriting this inquiry on the part of our committee. He has scheduled 
another hearing tomorrow where the Secretary of the Air Force and the 
general counsel of the Air Force are scheduled to testify. I look 
forward to that hearing so we can get answers to some of these 
unresolved questions, answers that better be found by the time this 
matter has been concluded, because, otherwise, I have serious questions 
whether the Air Force Academy is in a fit position to continue to 
receive the young men and women of this country and whether, despite 
the new leadership, it is so systemically ``infected,'' to use the 
panel's word, with these cultural biases that it is simply not fit to 
continue to provide training, especially the training of moral conduct 
and leadership, that these young men and women deserve and which our 
Nation requires.
  To be continued, I will report to my colleagues on my impressions 
after that hearing, after receiving that report.
  I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________