Rape 'tolerated' at US military academies

Two former women cadets sue US military officials, say they were punished after reporting sexual assaults.

European Phoenix --  Two women who said they were raped while attending United States military academies sued military officials on Friday, accusing them of failing to address widespread problems of sexual assault at the elite schools.

In the lawsuit filed in a Manhattan federal court, the two women said the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland and the Army's United States Military Academy in West Point, New York, tolerate sexual assault and discourage victims of attacks from reporting them.

"Both institutions systematically and repeatedly ignore rampant sexual harassment," the lawsuit filed by Ms Leah Marquet, 20, and Ms Anne Kendzior, 22, stated. "Both institutions have a history of failing to prosecute and punish those students found to have sexually assaulted and raped their fellow students."

In the lawsuit, Ms Marquet, a former West Point cadet, said she was pressured by upperclassmen to get drunk and raped by a fellow student while she was intoxicated.

After she reported an assault, other students taunted her, the lawsuit said, and the school punished her for reporting the incident by forcing her to take out her attacker's trash. She quit West Point after becoming suicidal, the lawsuit said.

Ms Kendzior, who entered the Naval Academy in 2008, said she was raped twice by two different fellow students, both times while she was drunk. Ms Kendzior accused the Naval Academy of forcing her to drop out after she reported the rapes to an academy counsellor.

The suit accused former Defence Secretary Robert Gates and four other military officials of failing to implement steps to fight sexual assaults at the schools, and seeks an unspecified amount of monetary damages.

Last month, eight other women filed a lawsuit in federal court in Washington saying they were raped, assaulted or sexually harassed while in the military, and were retaliated against when they complained.

The latest lawsuit was filed less than a week after Defence Secretary Leon Panetta announced new steps to curb thousands of sexual assaults a year within the military.