Military-service academies seem to sit between worlds. Technically they’re military installations. But they have many characteristics of a college campus: classes, sports, residential students. And as advocates and lawmakers call for both the military and higher education to change the way they respond to sexual assault, the academies are grappling with the problem in both contexts.
Cadets and midshipmen are subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, just like any active-duty service member. While colleges administer their own judicial proceedings—whether or not a victim goes to the police—reports of sexual assault at the academies typically proceed through military-justice channels (see below). The federal antidiscrimination law known as Title IX, under which many students have filed complaints against their colleges, does not apply to the academies.
And sexual misconduct has been a flash point there: At the U.S. Air Force Academy in 2003, female cadets said they had been discouraged from reporting rapes; last year officials at the U.S. Military Academy disciplined members of the men’s rugby team after an investigation found that an “inappropriate” email chain reflected “a culture of disrespect towards women.”
The culture of solidarity at the academies can make it hard for victims of sexual assault to come forward, or even to seek help, some have said. That’s how it was for Anne E. Kendzior, who arrived at the U.S. Naval Academy in 2008 as a soccer recruit and aspiring fighter pilot.
That fall, on her first overnight leave, Ms. Kendzior says, she went to an off-campus party and drank too much. A male classmate asked if she wanted to go to a room where others were sleeping. She did, and awoke to his having sex with her. Several weeks later, she says, she was assaulted again, by two fellow midshipmen.
In the months and years that followed, Ms. Kendzior says she sank into a severe depression. Although she told a Naval Academy counselor that she had been assaulted, she did not formally report the incidents. In the military your reputation and record follow you throughout your career, she thought, and the stakes of coming forward were too high. She’d be known as the woman who got others in trouble. “My perpetrators were athletes,” she says. “I just didn’t want that label.”
In the spring of her junior year, Ms. Kendzior says, her depression led to a brief hospital stay. Encouraged by her father, she filed formal reports about the assaults. A panel at the academy later reviewed Ms. Kendzior’s medical records and aptitude as a midshipman and determined that she had to leave the Navy.
In 2012 she sued the secretary of defense, secretary of the Navy, and an officer who was superintendent of the Naval Academy at the time of the incidents. She claimed that they permitted a culture “in which victims of rape and sexual assault are openly labeled ‘sluts’ and are accused of having ‘asked for it’ when they seek justice.”
Civilian courts, however, tend not to intervene in the military’s affairs. The case was dismissed.
Focus groups at the academies have echoed Ms. Kendzior’s reasons for being reluctant to report. Some cadets at West Point said last spring that they wouldn’t want to show weakness or let others in their small community know what had happened. Filing a report involves too much red tape and carries a stigma, some said.
“People would rather just deal with that pain than have everyone know about it,” said one male cadet. “You don’t want to be judged, … especially here for women. There’s such a big thing about reputation, … not only how guys think about you but how other girls think about you.”
In “sending it up officially,” said one woman, “you get labeled as the one who ended somebody’s career.” A cadet’s reputation, said another woman, “is going to stay with us when we leave here.”
The academies are working to improve their existing policies and programs and roll out new ones. The Pentagon has recommended the inclusion of learning objectives on sexual harassment and assault in the core curriculum; involving more faculty and staff members; and expanding bystander-intervention training. Hundreds of pages of reports each year chronicle the academies’ progress.
West Point recently assigned two lawyers to counsel victims. At the Air Force Academy, freshman cadets attend “Sex Signals,” described as an “awareness-raising lecture,” and a course called “Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Men and Masculinity” has been added to the curriculum.
In some cases, academies are consulting colleges. This year students from the Air Force Academy and nearby Colorado College began visits back and forth to swap ideas for effective programs to prevent sexual assault.
Cmdr. Lyn Hammer, who manages sexual-assault prevention and response at the Naval Academy, describes her task as “reinvigorating” its related programs. The goal is to inform midshipmen of all the resources available to them—civilian “sexual-assault responders,” confidential legal counsel—and to incorporate prevention into the “moral development” of midshipmen.
“I hesitate to say we’ve met with success, because you don’t know what you don’t know,” says Commander Hammer. “We cannot ever sit on our laurels on this. We really need to pay attention.”
Some advocates view civil lawsuits as a key alternative for victims of sexual assault and a powerful engine for change. But for cadets and midshipmen—as for all military personnel—that route is an uphill battle.
Susan L. Burke, who represented Ms. Kendzior in her lawsuit, has challenged courts’ deference to the military’s affairs. For several years, she has fought to get civilian courts to recognize legal claims involving sexual assault that are filed by military personnel, including cadets and midshipmen.
“We have tried to argue that the service academies are unique and should not be treated in the same fashion as the military,” says Ms. Burke. “They are akin to college campuses. These people are not already in the military—they’re college kids.”
That argument draws support from activists who have put civilian colleges on alert by filing federal complaints and lawsuits. Laura Dunn, a law student at the University of Maryland at Baltimore and a leader in the campus-based movement, is researching the laws governing the service academies. She sees an opportunity to collaborate with advocates for change in the military.
“We’re demanding the same things, but just in different arenas,” says Ms. Dunn. Moving forward together, she says, would establish “a shared political force.”
What form that collaboration might take is unclear. But Ms. Dunn and others have been meeting with their counterparts in the military realm, and Ms. Kendzior participated in a listening session to provide input to federal officials on the White House’s new Task Force to Protect Students From Sexual Assault. She earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Trinity University, in San Antonio, last year and now works in market research.
Years ago Ms. Kendzior hoped to serve her country in the Navy. Taking part in this movement, she thinks, could become a different kind of service. Sexual assault “is happening everywhere, in every major institution,” she says. “Why not address it all at once?”
Reporting Sexual Assault at the Academies
Cadets and midshipmen at the nation’s military-service academies are subject to the legal authority of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
In cases of sexual assault, they can choose to file a restricted report, which remains confidential and allows them to get care and support services. Or they can file an unrestricted report, which is referred to military investigators, who examine all alleged violations of military law.
When the investigation is complete, a commanding officer, with input from prosecutors and other legal advisers, decides how to proceed, on the basis of factors including strength of evidence and the victim’s input. Options include doing nothing, imposing administrative discipline or nonjudicial punishment, and initiating the first step in a court-martial by bringing charges (or sending the case to a higher authority to do so).
Across the armed services, reports of sexual assault are increasing. Preliminary numbers for the 2013 fiscal year reflect a 60-percent increase over the previous year. But at two of the three academies, reports of sexual assault during military service declined slightly, down to 53 from 58 in 2012.
