Kings of Campus: How Some Army Instructors Use Their Clout to Prey on College Cadets

To the young students in the Army Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC), the officers who run the programs on college campuses are impressive. Often combat-proven veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, they are intended to represent the model soldier.

They also have disproportionate control over cadets' lives, leading a program that pays for their education and can dictate the soon-to-be soldiers' careers. Winning the instructor's approval is paramount: If a cadet gets booted from the program, that student could be forced to pay back the tuition assistance provided by the Army, a seeming financial impossibility for many.

That's why it can be very confusing and scary for students when those instructors begin to use their combination of esteem and power to make sexual advances. It's also why the Army expressly bans relationships between instructors and cadets.

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"He was testing the limits of what he could do," a former ROTC cadet said, recalling her final year of college when her instructor began to push for a sexual relationship.

The then-22-year-old student was on the cusp of commissioning as an Army officer, proudly following in her father's footsteps. The lieutenant colonel overseeing the campus program, a married man in his forties, had begun to take a troubling interest in her.

What began as seemingly innocuous text messages soon escalated into flirtation, with the officer inserting himself into cadet gatherings that often involved alcohol.

The invitations began shifting to increasingly intimate settings, with the cadet asked to drink alone with her instructor in his office on campus. Quickly, a mentorship that may have played fast and loose with boundaries began to spiral into a complex web of unwanted advances.

In one of those social encounters, she was invited to meet him at a bar -- under the assumption other cadets would also be there. It was only the lieutenant colonel. He ordered her a drink, though she was under 21. Being uncomfortable, she said she had to leave, but he placed his hand on her thigh and asked her to stay. She complied.

Another night, the instructor drank too much at an Army event, and the cadet drove him home. His wife was out of town, and he invited the cadet inside. She declined, and they talked in her car for nearly an hour. That's when he touched her breasts. She tried to make it clear she was not interested in him, but he persisted. They had sex that night in her car and again several times throughout the rest of the semester.

"I was shaking; I just wanted to graduate and get out of there," she said, recalling the night of the encounter.

She was commissioned into the Army, in a combat-arms role, and now serves as a platoon leader. But she said it has been difficult trusting other men in the service -- and especially hard in front-line units that are almost exclusively male.

A Military.com investigation into sexual assault and grooming behavior in Army ROTC programs included interviews with 15 women who were allegedly the target of unwanted sexual advances, including pressure to enter into a relationship that violates military regulations, sexual assault, harassment and rape. The publication also reviewed military court documents and internal emails and interviewed a dozen Army officials. Most of the victims interviewed have since graduated and are currently serving officers. All were granted anonymity to avoid retaliation.

The investigation found that the ROTC has consistently been a place where senior instructors -- positions overwhelmingly held by men -- can use the program as a personal dating pool, targeting women in the program and often taking advantage of their ability to skirt the traditional oversight the service has on its senior officers. In every incident the publication reviewed, the ROTC cadre who abused women are married.

'He Was Texting Me a Lot.'

Senior officers overseeing programs on campus have much more power than many of their counterparts in other segments of the Army, effectively running a college program with relatively little oversight from Army Cadet Command headquarters in Fort Knox, Kentucky.

Most of the women Military.com talked with are still grappling with what happened to them at ROTC -- with those sexual encounters often blurring the lines of consent. Some of the women had what they believed at the time were consensual encounters, describing their senior instructors as handsome, highly decorated and respected. But looking back on their college years, most believe they were in a situation in which saying no could have derailed their career before it even started.

Only three of the 15 reported the improper encounters or relationships to Army officials, with investigators substantiating two of those reports, a troubling sign that predatory instructors are able to leverage their positions with few consequences.

Since 2020, there have been a total of 38 instances of inappropriate conduct involving ROTC instructors and cadets, most of that including sexual misconduct, according to data provided by the service. All 15 victims interviewed by Military.com were also allegedly abused in the same time period. Some instructors accused by those women are still working in ROTC; their conduct was never formally reported.

But for many victims, reporting abuse or misconduct would mean navigating the very chain of command that, in certain cases, may have been complicit in the alleged abuse. In several instances examined by Military.com, women who faced grooming or abuse expressed uncertainty over whether what they experienced technically qualified as a crime.

"He was texting me a lot. He would call me 'beautiful' and [say] that I was his favorite cadet," one woman who is now a first lieutenant in the Army National Guard said, adding that her commander, smelling like whiskey, groped her at a holiday party. "Knowing what I know now, that crosses a million lines. But at the time, I'm like 19. I didn't know if this was just how men in the military were, and I was afraid reporting flirting would be laughed off."

She never reported the instructor and explained her hesitation, saying, "If I reported something and nothing happened, what would happen to me?"

Data suggests that the Army does hold ROTC cadre members accountable to an extent, yet a glaring trust gap remains among cadets. The Army typically takes swift action in firing those instructors, but usually allows them to retire quietly. Inappropriate relationships with trainees is its own offense in military law, but is rarely prosecuted, and formal disciplinary actions are also uncommon, a review of Army court records revealed. Many accused instructors are permitted to retire honorably, leaving their records unblemished.

"To hear that a small number of our instructors had chosen to abuse their positions of trust, that deeply disheartened me," Brig. Gen. Maurice Barnett, who oversees the Army's Cadet Command and just assumed that role in August, told Military.com in an interview. "It deeply troubles me that we would have cases like this."

Cadet Command is currently reviewing its oversight policies for some 4,000 instructors across 900 colleges and universities, where about 27,000 cadets are attending, after Military.com shared its findings with the Army. Barnett said the service is also going to improve its data collection to better identify problematic instructors and report incidents to senior service leaders in the Pentagon, which would add a layer of oversight.

ROTC, the Most Public Part of the Military

ROTC is critical for the military services, providing a pipeline of officers and a presence at nearly every prominent college campus across the United States. It offers the otherwise cloistered military a substantial public footprint. It also provides an opportunity for many students to afford college who otherwise would not be able to, an opportunity that can radically increase their earning potential and provide a financial foundation for their families.

Several victims interviewed mentioned their concern about the risk of being forced to pay back tuition money to the Army, a process called recoupment, if they had rejected advances from an instructor and been forced to leave the program. They also were concerned that publicly acknowledging any kind of relationship with an instructor could harm their nascent careers.

The National Guard, in particular, is a tight-knit organization in which reputations quickly precede newcomers. Cadets often transition into units within the same state where they completed their ROTC training, bringing with them any reputations formed during those years. Even if there was no sexual involvement with an instructor, some women noted they avoided any situation that could spark rumors that could easily shadow them into their first assignments. For many, the risk of gossip was simply too high, impacting their decisions well beyond their training years.

The first lieutenant, who was a top performer at her ROTC program, did earn some special privileges and additional training opportunities, but never wanted the appearance that she slept her way into those opportunities, a common and often unspoken pressure that women in the military navigate in their pursuit of advancement.

Unlike other Army personnel, cadets often have limited or no direct access to standard military reporting channels, having only one foot in the military's door and not technically fully considered soldiers yet. Civilian Title IX offices, typically responsible for investigating misconduct on campus, operate independently from the Army, and no formal system exists to require these offices to report incidents to military authorities. Some women interviewed were unaware that Title IX even had jurisdiction over ROTC instructors -- though it does, as colleges possess the authority to effectively fire an instructor by banning them from campus.

All reporting is also victim-initiated. Cadet Command does rolling audits across each campus to assure ROTC programs are complying with Army standards and that there is no misconduct among instructors. These investigations include interviewing cohorts of cadets. But yearslong gaps in checking in with colleges, along with limited Cadet Command staff, mean a cadet can go through the entire four-year program and never talk to investigators.

Every year, units across the military conduct so-called command climate surveys -- a process akin to a corporate employee satisfaction survey but tailored to the unique demands of military life. These surveys provide service members with an anonymous platform to evaluate their chain of command and flag any concerns, creating a direct line for candid feedback that otherwise might remain buried.

But those surveys are not done for cadets, meaning there is no way for senior echelons of the Army to consistently identify issues on campus, and there is no clear mechanism for cadets to anonymously report the bad behavior of their instructors.

One former ROTC cadet said her instructor made it a point to comment on her appearance in front of other cadets, saying she'd look a lot better outside of her baggy Army uniform. She was inundated with text messages from him, praising how beautiful she was in her Instagram photos -- often in bikinis or dresses. He would refer to her as "baby girl," she added.

"I knew he had a say in what my future life would be like. If he wrote something bad in my record … that could ruin my whole military career," she said in an interview, adding that he asked her numerous times when she was going to turn 21 -- an age at which he felt it was more appropriate to have a relationship.

She was one of the minority of women interviewed by Military.com to raise a formal complaint about her senior instructor. She said she was met with immediate skepticism when one Army investigator, a woman, asked her whether she really wanted to "destroy a man's career."

The cadet was four years into ROTC and about to commission, but the instructor's conduct toward her and how the Army handled it was too much of a hit and she wanted out. Still, she was shackled by the threat of tens of thousands of dollars of scholarship money that would have been recouped if she left. The service eventually gave her what was effectively a medical discharge, thus preventing any recoupment.

She never completed her college education. The instructor received an honorable discharge, which includes a generous lifetime retirement.

"I really do love the military, but I'm not sure if it's a place for women," she explained.

Editor's note: This story has been updated to reflect the accurate number of cadets currently enrolled in ROTC. 

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