Senate Armed Services Committee Holds Hearing on Sexual Misconduct at the Air Force Academy

COLLINS:

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Let me thank you and Senator Allard for your leadership in examining very closely the response of the Air Force to the many reports of sexual assaults at the Air Force Academy.

It has always been one of my proudest honors to nominate young men and women to attend our service academies. I've always thought in doing so, that I was affording these young men and women an extraordinary opportunity to receive an excellent education while serving their country.

I never dreamed that in doing so, I was putting young women at risk for sexual assaults. That troubles me deeply and it angers me. When I hear Senator Allard talk about year after year the cadet climate survey revealing that women had been assaulted, I do not understand how that information was ignored.

Indeed, in one year, some 167 cadets reported sexual assaults and the response seems to be that in the next year, they deleted the question. That is very troubling to me. It angers me that it has taken a press report to finally prompt the Air Force to take action to deal with these allegations.

After these allegations had surfaced, year after year in these surveys, as well as in the reports of the young cadets themselves, even now, there appears to be a reluctance to hold the academy leaders accountable absent congressional pressure to do so. It should not take a press expose and congressional hearings to force the Air Force to deal with this serious problem. I am shocked and appalled that that is apparently what it took to focus the attention of the leaders of the academy and the leaders of the Air Force on this problem.

I do not doubt the sincerity of the secretary and the general when you tell us that you are committed to solving this problem, but I do not understand why it has taken years for these allegations to be taken seriously and for the climate to be changed and for people to be held accountable.

That is why I have reached the conclusion that the Air Force no longer has the credibility to deal with this issue and I have pressed, from the beginning for at least an investigation by the inspector general of the Department of Defense, as well as congressional hearings to delve into this, because based on the evidence that I have seen, I've lost confidence in the Air Force's ability to investigate itself, because it should have done so years ago.

So, again, Mr. Chairman, I thank you for holding this hearing and for your leadership and the leadership of Senator Allard and many others on this committee

COLLINS:

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and I want to thank my colleagues for their courtesy. Mr. Secretary, I, like my colleagues, am having difficulty in understanding your response to this very serious problem.

I don't have the benefit that many of my colleagues on this panel have of a military background, but I do have the benefit of common sense. And I'm trying to understand how you can say in the Air Force press release issued March 26 quotes you as saying that as the problems regarding sexual assault allegations predate the current leadership, we do not hold General Dallager or Gilbert responsible.

And similarly, General Jumper, you've been quoted as saying you don't believe the problem starts with the current generation of leadership, but then you go on, both of you, to say that the responsible people will be held accountable. Well, are you saying, then, that unless this problem originated on the watch of the leadership, that they are not accountable.

ROCHE:

No, Senator. What we are saying in the second part had to do with the inspector general's report if something comes up where one or other of these officers have done something for which they should be head accountable, they would.

In terms of the larger question, when you have a succession of changes over time, you can hold the last group accountable, but they did not create the climate. The climate was created long before they got there and they believe, Senator, and this is, I'm sure, very difficult for others to recognize—they believe that they were working at it. They did a number of things. It's not that they did nothing. They made a number of changes.

COLLINS:

Since when is the standard that you have to have been there when the problem originated in order to be held responsible or accountable. I just don't understand that line of reasoning. Who are you going to hold accountable if you have already exonerated the current leadership absent some new findings by the inspectors general. Who are you going to hold accountable.

ROCHE:

Senator, I would take it as follows. Starting in 1993, measures were taken which they felt would correct things. They did not. In this case, I would hold that administration accountable. And then as each turned over every two or three years, each one of them had a chance to go back and fix this and they did not. But they thought they were doing the right thing. They thought by having the system that was outside the chain of command and that was taking care of the problem.

The cases that came up and there were many more cases prior to the current—either General Dallager or General Gilbert that the proportion of cases occurred well before them, not them. So that it appears even from the survey data, that things are getting better to them. But they still, in the most recent survey, when they saw that the first class female cadets had little or no confidence in the system, although a number of the other cadets, the sophomores, juniors and the freshmen seem to have reasonable (inaudible) associated with it, but the seniors did not. They began to take additional actions, to have additional training, to reinforce a number of other measures, measures to try to ensure that both the problem of assault and the problem of reporting assault was dealt with.

COLLINS:

Let me tell you what is so troubling, because what I am hearing you say is this problem has gone on for about a decade at least. People have good faith efforts to try to make some marginal improvements, but all these assaults continued and as a result, either everybody is responsible or nobody is responsible. I mean, that doesn't sound like a system of accountability to me. When I read news stories, such as the one in the March 16 New York Times, that recounts a story of a former female cadet who was raped and then the result is that she receives seven class d hits (ph) and was sentenced to 265 hours of marching in circles because she was drinking.

This just reminds me of the whole approach of blaming the victim. And General Jumper, with all due respect, today you used the phrase "legitimate victims". Is that opposed to those who you apparently are saying have contributed to their assaults?

I just think we've got so far to go and until we start holding people truly responsible, I don't care whether someone inherited a problem. Presumably, being part of the leadership of the academy makes it your responsibility to correct these problems.

ROCHE:

May I?

COLLINS:

Yes.

ROCHE:

Senator, in the case that you reported, I don't know want to go into any particular news account, but that is a news account of one victim's position. Most of the time there is another side to the story. If in fact, just in general, a cadet came forward and made an allegation and there was not evidence to go forward in any uniform code of military justice process, then the academy, as does the Naval Academy, goes back to the individuals who were involved and awards demerits.

At the same time, ma'am, sometimes there is not sufficient evidence to go to a court martial to be able to prosecute an accused cadet, but there is enough administratively that comes out, such as that the cadet is disenrolled. In most of these cases, when they could, they did disenroll the cadet. They went the extra mile of ensuring if something happened off the base, off the campus, that they could take their court marshal, they did take their court martial.

COLLINS:

Mr. Secretary, my final comments to you today are this. When I hear you say that, I understand there are cases where the evidence may not be strong enough to support a criminal conviction, but what I have seen and the cases that I have looked at is a very clear pattern of blaming the victim and of not correcting the overall culture or climate that causes the victim to be blamed.

This isn't just one or two cases. This isn't just five or six cases. This isn't even a dozen cases. We have a clear pattern of reports of sexual assault where the reaction of the Air Force Academy seems to be to blame the victim and that is unacceptable. And we also have a clear pattern where it seems to me that no one is going to be held accountable for the climate that has made young women cadets fearful of reporting or leads to reprisal if they do. And that is unacceptable.

ROCHE:

It is unacceptable, Senator. What I'm trying to say is that, in a number of these cases, there was another side to the case. I don't believe that there is a pattern of holding the victim and making the victim be the criminal in this case. I know of one case where the academy acted in ways that would be offensive to both you and me, where the victim reports something. She wishes to be separated from her accused and they remove her from her squadron and move her to another unit when, in fact, they should have removed the accused. But, they didn't because on prior instances they've been told by counsel that they couldn't do that. So, they were trying to do the next best thing, which, in fact, had a very bad unintended consequence, which was to highlight the victim as if the victim had done something wrong.

A lot of this is a function of the processes that were in place. We are going beyond the other academies, beyond the other academies and saying in order to make sure we can not have any obstruction to finding out about criminal activity we will grant the blanket amnesty to everyone, not just the cadet, even if it comes out to be a we can't go forward with prosecution. We'll still keep the amnesty in place. We'll grant amnesty to other cadets who happen to be there except for the senior cadet or any cadet who blocks the investigation. We'll go the extra mile.

COLLINS:

I want to thank my colleagues for their courtesy in allowing me to proceed. Thank you.