Anne Munch thinks her dad is the greatest guy around.
And in the dark hours when the U.S. Air Force Academy was reeling from allegations that female cadets were being sexually harassed and worse, Munch told academy cadets and graduates that they should live by the example her father set throughout his life in the Army Air Corps and the Air Force.
“One of the things that really helped me (with the cadets) were the pictures of my family, my dad, and the stories about him because he is the kindest man I have ever known,” Munch said. “He has more integrity than any person on the face of the Earth.”
Her father, Christopher Henry Munch, is a 1943 graduate of West Point.
Years later, he was a founding faculty member of the Air Force Academy and the first head of the academy’s law department.
When the Air Force sexual- harassment scandal broke, her father was deeply troubled, Anne Munch recalled.
“He is really unhappy that some women are experiencing this,” she said.
Anne Munch was director of Ending Violence Against Women, a project of the Colorado District Attorneys Council, when she received a call in 2003 from Col. Debra Gray, the new vice commandant of cadets. Gray wanted her to come to the academy to help clean up the mess.
Gray believes that Munch’s work has been invaluable to not only the academy but also the entire Air Force and the Department of Defense.
“She essentially was a person I could always call any time of the day or night and just kind of say: ‘Here’s what I’m thinking about. Does this sound reasonable?”‘ Gray said. “She was trying to educate me early on because when I came in here, I knew about as much as the average person knew about sexual assault, which was next to none.”
For seven years as a child, Munch, now 46, lived on the academy grounds while her dad worked there. She didn’t hesitate to accept Gray’s invitation, putting together a team of law enforcement officers, prosecutors and victim advocates to go to the academy and brief generals, the permanent professors, the command staff and wing leaders about what should be done.
In the next year, she worked closely with Gray, the Air Force brass, the Department of Defense and academy cadets to change attitudes and teach everyone the realities – and terrible repercussions – of sexual harassment.
Today, Anne Munch continues to do the same kind of work. The Denver-based Munch has worked with officials and cadets at West Point in New York and the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., and has been overseas five times in the past 16 months, talking at U.S. military bases about sexual harassment.
It is an easy job, Munch said, because of her dad and what he represented as a military officer.
“I was fortunate enough to have an example,” Munch said. “I have a lot invested in making sure what he helped begin as a founding member of the Air Force Academy faculty continues.”
Munch said she wants the cadets to understand what it is like to be a sexual-assault victim.
“Men aren’t raised in this culture with the fear or belief they are vulnerable to sexual assault,” Munch said. “I ask the men what they’ve done in the past week or five days to protect themselves from being sexually assaulted. They say nothing.
“You ask the women the same question, and they will give you a laundry list of 10 or 15 things they do,” she said.
The effect on the male cadets is stunning.
“The guys say, ‘I’ve never thought of it that way,”‘ Munch said.
Staff writer Howard Pankratz can be reached at 303-820-1939 or hpankratz@denverpost.com.
