Dismissal Urged for West Point Cadet Who Said She Was Raped

After five days of hearings, an investigating officer recommended Tuesday that a 19-year-old U.S. Military Academy cadet who took the unusual step of charging publicly that she was stalked and raped by a classmate be dismissed from the school.

The officer found that Su Jin Collier had engaged in consensual sex against academy rules and had made a false official statement by denying that fact.

The male cadet, who was not identified by West Point officials, also was found to have broken academy rules forbidding sex between cadets, but not lying about the relationship. The hearing officer recommended that he be placed on probation and receive other disciplinary measures that will be determined by the West Point superintendent.

Collier’s lawyer Alen Beerman said his client would leave West Point.

“Although there are an array of appellate avenues available, it is just window dressing and military double talk,” Beerman charged. “Cadet Su Jin Collier was raped on November 13, 1996, and she was raped again today by this institution,” he said.

West Point spokesman Capt. John Cornelio said many factors can determine the decision by an investigating officer to recommend the expulsion of a cadet. He said that the issue of honesty apparently made the difference for Collier.

At a news conference at a New York hotel on April 14, before the hearings began at West Point, Collier charged she was lured to the cadet’s barracks room last November and was sexually assaulted.

“Under no circumstances was this consensual sex as the Army is asserting,” the cadet from El Paso, Texas, told reporters.

Under West Point procedures, the investigator’s recommendations must be approved by the academy’s superintendent and by the Department of the Army.

Cornelio said that Collier would be allowed to remain at the academy until that process is completed, at least until the end of the school year. But Beerman said the findings of investigating officers are almost never rejected and that Collier would leave the military campus.