Memo to Rumsfeld-150 women sexually assaulted!

Nearly 150 women reported being sexually abused between 1993 and 2003, most complained that they were ignored,ostracized or punished for speaking out. Now the Air Force is admitting in this memo that they did not do enough!

(AP) Air Force Academy commanders over the past 10 years failed to recognize and deal with the seriousness of sexual assaults against female cadets, according to the Pentagon's inspector general.

www.cbsnews.com...

In a memo to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that was released Tuesday, Inspector General Joseph E. Schmitz wrote, "We conclude that the overall root cause of the sexual assault problems at the Air Force Academy was the 'failure of successive chains of command over the past 10 years to acknowledge the severity of the problem.'"

I guess it is a case of better late then never,at least now they are acknowleding the abuse, but these women were assaulted twice. The first time was sexual, the second time by being punished or worse, ignored. The double standard still exists and until the military puts an end to the degregation of women, the problem won't be solved

I don't doubt this report at all. The decade of the 90s was an especially bad time for women in the US. I'm sure the Air Force just took a page from the Whitehouse on how to handle those who reported sexual assault or lude behavior.

Threaten them to keep it quiet and then discredit them as liars or second class citizens if they did not. It seems like this set up a pattern which has extended years beyond. Its good to see it has finally been investigated and brought to light.

Just because a woman refuses a romantic advance doesn't mean she is somehow unworthy of the same rights men have or somehow worth less a human. She has every right to report it without fear of being dubbed trailer trash or being mowed down in a fake Starbucks robbery or being court marshalled for insubordination.

I knew once a few years had past, we;d begin to see thr reprocussions of what truly happened in the 90s.

If sure the number of women sexually assaulted is much higher than that.

A Department of Defence report on the subject has some really surprising numbers:

Department of Defense, Care for Victims of Sexual Assault Report 2004

Across DoD, there were 901 and 1012 alleged cases of sexual assault with uniformed service member victims reported to criminal investigations in 2002 and 2003, respectively. These figures include 24 (2002) and 94 (2003) reported cases in the CENTCOM AOR. Sexual assault, as referred to here, includes the alleged offenses of rape, forcible sodomy, assault with intent to commit rape or sodomy, indecent assault or an attempt to commit any of
these offenses. There were 2,012 identified service member victims in the 1,913 alleged cases of sexual assault.

In a study of Navy recruits who were initially surveyed during basic training and then followed for two years, 7.5% of females reported experiencing behaviors that constituted rape within 6 months of entering the Navy. Active duty members were reported to have perpetrated over 80% of these rapes. Among males , 2.6% admitted to behaviors that constituted rape within 6 months after entering the Navy, with 27% of those rapes perpetrated against active duty victims (L.L. Merrill, unpublished data).