DENVER -- Sen. Wayne Allard said Friday he is ready to ask for a full hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee in the case of alleged sexual assaults at the Air Force Academy. This happened after a 7NEWS investigation brought to light cases of female cadets who said that after they reported rape and sexual assault by fellow cadets they were punished for coming forward.

Allard said Friday that 12 current and former female cadets have contacted his office to report that they were sexually assaulted at the academy and then ostracized by colleagues and reprimanded by the administration for reporting what happened.

A team of Air Force investigators from Washington have converged on the Colorado Springs campus to look into the matter. They will look through the academy's criminal and administrative files and interview alleged victims and others involved in the alleged rape cases.

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Some of what they will be reviewing, such as medical reports on assaults, have not previously been available to 7NEWS because of privacy concerns.

"They should be able to get information about what is really happening on the academy," Allard told 7NEWS Investigator John Ferrugia. "But then you have to be weary of their (the academy's) figures because they talk about ones that they're investigating, which is not all the cases. There's this whole block of women out there who are apparently reluctant to report because of the system, and I don't blame them."

Allard said that he wants Air Force investigators to get to the bottom of the matter, for the sake of the victims and the honor of the academy.

"When the investigators approached me last week, I said, 'Look, we need to get the facts out and we need to do a thorough job in the investigation. And, in addition to that, we need to figure out where the system isn't working,'" Allard said. "Obviously, here's a situation where you are boxing the victim in and the system isn't working. I think we're going to have some changes in the system based on this report."

Allard said that he will wait until that investigation is complete before asking Sen. John Warner, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, for a hearing.

The matter may turn out to be one of the largest military sex scandals since the 1991 Tailhook incident, when Navy and Marine pilots molested Navy women during a convention at a Las Vegas hotel.

"I'm under the impression that when they finish with the Air Force Academy, they'll look into the other academies too ... I'm not aware of a problem in the other academies, but if nothing else we do need to see what's happening in the other academies ... so we can do some comparison," Allard said.