WICHITA FALLS, Texas – A wave of sexual assaults has gone largely unnoticed here, sweeping through the ranks of Sheppard Air Force Base women who are too scared to go public, victim advocates say.
The scope of the problem is hinted at in the growing stacks of reports taken at a nearby civilian rape-crisis center. In a year’s span, more than two dozen women stationed at the north Texas air base have sought help for sexual assaults allegedly committed by 40 fellow soldiers, according to First Step Inc. Five cases involved gang rapes.
Sheppard’s problems come to light at a time when Congress and the Pentagon are investigating how the armed forces address complaints of sexual assault, particularly combat cases in Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan. Dozens of lawmakers are calling for congressional hearings, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has ordered an investigation into the military’s handling of sexual-assault cases, particularly in cases of combat troops.
The Sheppard cases steer the focus back to problems closer to home and to another single installation. The situation at Sheppard could rival or be even worse than that of the Air Force Academy – where problems with the military’s handling of sexual-assault complaints were exposed last year – based on reports from case files at First Step.
“I am startled by the figures,” said Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va. “I think it’s shameful.”
“It looks like we’ve got more work to do,” said Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., who has led a recent effort with Capito to push for congressional hearings. “This is a serious, serious issue.”
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Laura Grimsinger, a former director of First Step, said Sheppard has a culture that “wants to minimize sexual assault and not address it. They turn their backs on them (victims), and it’s devastating. The training schools are the big problem. These women are way outside their home element and have little support.”
Air Force officials declined to comment about First Step’s reports. Sheppard released a statement saying that it cracks down on sexual assault, having punished 42 Sheppard personnel since 1993 for such crimes. But base officials did not provide a breakdown of punishments, such as whether the accused were prosecuted or given administrative discipline, a common military practice The Denver Post found in a series of investigative reports.
“Aggressive programs we use to educate our personnel on how to avoid, prevent and report sexual assault have been very effective,” the Sheppard statement said. The statement acknowledged that some women have faced discipline for breaking rules after reporting crimes. But it stressed that victims are “never punished for making a truthful report about criminal acts of others.”
The Post reported in November that problems surfacing at the Air Force Academy in Colorado are prevalent throughout the armed services, with commanders granting leniency to thousands of sex offenders, punishing victims and not providing protective services.
Sheppard-related cases were disclosed in a national survey conducted by The Post last summer. That survey looked at military sexual assault and domestic-violence cases handled by shelters near installations.
First Step’s cases exceeded all other civilian crisis centers that responded. That includes TESSA near the Air Force Academy, which reported 24 for the same year-long period. But TESSA’s caseload included reports from other bases, as well as the academy.
The majority of victims, First Step counselors say, serve only weeks at the Air Force’s largest technical training center before moving on to other duty stations. But they have been too fearful of retaliation to pursue criminal reports, the counselors say, keeping problems beneath the public radar.
“These are situations where the women are trusting their fellow soldiers, going out and unfortunately being taken advantage of by men or groups of men,” said Xochitl Pruitt, program manager for First Step.
The assaults linked to Sheppard made up 30 percent of all sex-assault reports handled by the center from June 2002 to June 2003. Pruitt declined to reveal specific details of assaults to protect victims’ privacy, but she discussed general trends.
“Most victims are in training units and are being threatened by their attackers that they will lose their careers if they report,” said Pruitt, who has worked at the shelter for two years.
Over the years, female victims have reported being discouraged from reporting crimes in a variety of ways, including being punished for breaking other rules involving curfews or alcohol, for instance.
During the last year, at least two victims based at Sheppard have sought inspector-general investigations into how commanders handled their cases, according to advocates who have assisted the victims. One of the inspector-general inquiries reportedly focuses on a gang rape.
Despite these cases, sexual assaults involving base service members have rarely grabbed headlines in north Texas, although some have come to the attention of local police.
In the late 1990s, there was a spate of raucous parties involving Sheppard personnel in motel rooms on the base’s outskirts, police say. During one span of several months, police learned of numerous sexual-assault reports from trainees and other women as officers responded to disturbance calls at the motels, said Sgt. Cindy Walker of the Wichita Falls Police Department. The cases were turned over to Sheppard authorities to investigate, according to Wichita Falls police, who could not provide an actual number of assault reports linked to Sheppard soldiers.
“The parties were in these fleabag motels right outside the main gate, and they were doing damage to a lot of rooms,” Walker said. “About once a month, a female would say she was sexually assaulted.”
Walker and other detectives said they would later learn from Sheppard investigators that many of the women changed their stories to avoid being punished for drinking and other rule violations.
“They (victims) are scared of reporting because they face a lot of pressures,” said one detective who has helped Air Force investigators work cases involving Sheppard trainees.
Sheppard is a north Texas hub for tens of thousands of military service members, most of whom receive technical instruction in aeronautics, medical studies and other fields. The base is known for grooming NATO “top gun” pilots from countries around the world. Almost every afternoon, the north Texas skies above Sheppard are carved up by squadrons of fighter jets, some with women in the cockpits. Roughly 1,800 women are stationed at the base.
But news that large numbers of Sheppard women are being assaulted bewilders longtime Wichita Falls residents, including experts on military affairs, who say Sheppard commands widespread respect and good press as a base that helps energize the local economy.
“I’m surprised this hasn’t come out earlier,” said Harry Hewitt a professor of military history at Wichita Falls’ Midwestern State University. “Sheppard has been a training base here for a long time. They (commanders) need to show to the public how they are dealing with these problems.”
Brig. Gen. Arthur J. Rooney Jr. who manages the bulk of Sheppard’s training operations. did not respond to a Post request for an interview.
As with many military installations, Sheppard typically takes legal jurisdiction over its soldiers, and many punishments allowed under military law are protected by privacy rules. “We usually defer to Sheppard,” said Maureen O’Brien, an assistant criminal district attorney who said the First Step numbers surprised her. “We’re told by the armed forces they can do more with them under the law. Now, I’m curious to know of outcomes in some of these cases.”
Another reason Sheppard assaults may have steered free of public scrutiny: Women there often feel isolated, serving only short tours at the remote base. As a result, they have little emotional support for their trauma and do not know whom to trust among their temporary commanders, say local counselors. So, many suffer in silence.
But during the last two years, like never before, the women in blue have been buzzing the center’s hotline or trying to arrange meetings at secret locations to talk about their assaults.
“The women have begun stepping forward to get counseling because we’ve increased awareness about who we are,” First Step’s Pruitt said. A statewide awareness campaign about sexual assault has helped, but First Step also advertises its hotline around the base.
The women often turn to the center because they know they will receive confidential counseling, protections not extended by the military, Pruitt said. On four occasions, Sheppard commanders have called First Step, requesting files of victims who have sought help there, Pruitt said. Sheppard officials declined to comment on those requests. Ten other rape-crisis centers responding to The Post survey reported that military officials had sought files of female soldiers. Generally, the centers do not respond to such requests unless they have the victim’s permission or a court order.
Former First Step director Grimsinger said that when the Air Force Academy scandal broke last year, she immediately thought of similarities with Sheppard. “It’s been a very closed society out here, too.”
Sheppard officials refused to release internal surveys on sexual harassment and assault that they say are performed twice a year. “It’s a commander’s tool and not releasable to the public,” according to their statement.
Amber DiGiovanni, an Air Force veteran who said she was raped in 1975 by a pilot in training at the base, said a culture of harassment toward women thrived at Sheppard during her training stint. She decided not to report the rape, she said, because she had seen other sexual-assault reports ignored by commanders while serving in the Air Force and experienced sexual harassment by other soldiers and her instructor within days of arriving at the base.
She said she had no faith in the system.
“It’s the quintessential good ol’ boy club: It’s a whole lot easier to overlook it. I’m sure the culture continued long after I was there.”
Pruitt and others say they are happy that they have finally reached an agreement to help Sheppard with victim services, such as advocacy and counseling.
“The basic thing is we want these women to heal,” Pruitt said. “I don’t know if this is a question of whether the situation has gotten better or worse. I just know that women are now finally saying, ‘I’m going to speak up to someone.”‘
Miles Moffeit can be reached at 303-820-1415 or mmoffeit@denverpost.com. Amy Herdy can be reached at 303-820-1752 or <a href=mailto:aherdy@denverpost.comaherdy@denverpost.com
