The pressure is on to make changes at the Air Force Academy after a 7NEWS investigation into rapes and the way victims there have been treated.

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The problem of female cadets speaking up about rapes and then being reprimanded and drummed out of the academy was uncovered by a 7NEWS investigation and was the focus of Friday night's "20/20" broadcast on ABC.

And the number of victims coming forward is growing. It's now at 22.

7NEWS Investigator John Ferrugia broke this story nearly two weeks ago and has yet another disturbing story.

Ferrugia said that is a proud moment when the son or daughter of an Air Force officer is accepted to the academy but for one couple, that pride turned to disgust when their daughter, a cadet, was raped on campus.

But more hurtful was the way they and their daughter were treated by the very Air Force system of which they were a part.

"I feel sorry for the girls that are still there because I know this has happened to a lot of them and they are too scared to speak out because they know nothing is going to happen," said Sharon.

Sharon was a freshman at the Air Force Academy, taking in a movie on base with some friends when an upperclassman she knew offered all of them a ride back to their dorms.

"I sat in the front because I was the last to be dropped off and he drove them to their place and it was just me and him in the car," Sharon said.

But instead of dropping her off, he drove to a deserted outer road.

"And he became forceful but not angry or mean. He was still talking to me and he said, 'Don't struggle, don't struggle. It's OK.' I mean, what are you supposed to do? And of course, I still did (struggle) and I tried to scream but I was out in the middle of this road where nobody could hear you," Sharon said.

"We went back. I got out of the car and ran up stairs and went up to my room and locked the door. I did everything wrong, unfortunately. The first thing I did was take a shower. I didn't tell anybody."

The next day, as she sat at her desk, he walked into her room in uniform.

"I couldn't breath. I stood there and my heart started pounding and I didn't know what to do, I just kinda froze ... He said, 'Sorry if I did anything inappropriate,' and then he left," Sharon said.

"(I was) very afraid ... It was just so incredibly shocking that he could just come in and tell that to me like nothing had happened and it wasn't a big deal ... Later, that really bothered me because I knew that he knew he was going to get away with it," Sharon said.

"We got a phone call and she was pretty hysterical and she said, 'I want to jump off a cliff.' And when I asked what happened, she said, 'I am not going to tell you,'" Sharon's mother, Mickey, said.

"She said she wanted to leave, she didn't say why," Sharon's father, Gary, said.

Gary is an Air Force master sergeant who deployed to the Persian Gulf during the war.

Mickey is a lieutenant colonel, a nurse and administrator.

"There couldn't be anything that would be that dramatic a change without something horrific happening to her," Mickey said.

They now live at the Air Force Academy.

Within days, Sharon was leaving the academy, traumatized and in a panic and afraid to report the rape.

"You just knew she was miserable," Mickey said.

Sharon's parents didn't find out what happened until four months later when Sharon sunk into a deep depression. They convinced her to report the rape to the Academy Office of Special Investigation.

Ferrugia: So how long did the investigation last?
Mickey: I was never kept privy on any of it. All I got were phone calls from OSI. One was, 'We think your daughter is making this up to try to get back into the academy.' It was basically calling myself and her a liar. I couldn't believe people were saying things like that to me -- an Air Force officer. I mean, you know I was a lieutenant colonel and they were talking to me like I was some kind of criminal. It was awful.

But even that wasn't as disturbing as what Mickey and Sharon were told during a meeting with another nurse who examines all women who report sexual assaults at the academy.

Mickey: So far that year, they had 48 people that had at least reported being sexually assaulted ... Being through the hotline or personally, that she had knowledge of.
Ferrugia: 48 women?
Mickey: Yeah, and my question at that point was, 'Excuse me, that is 10 percent of the female population of the academy.'

"I think she only told me that so I felt like I wasn't alone but at that point I was sort of hoping that I was alone, that it hadn't happened to anybody else. And obviously, it happens all the time," Sharon said.

Then Sharon told the nurse the name of the upperclassman who raped her.

Sharon: He was actually a person that worked with the sexual assault hotline.
Ferrugia: The person who you accused of rape?
Sharon: ... works for the sexual assault hotline at the academy.
Ferrugia: As a counselor?
Sharon: Yep. Isn't that lovely? And so she found out who it was and just sort of backed off and didn't want to help anymore because she knew the person personally.

And just last week, when Air Force officials found out one of their own was going to talk, Mickey got a phone call from a superior attempting to get her to back out.

"He said, 'I think I can help you and maybe work with you on this case.' And I said, 'Too little too late.' I said, 'It's interesting now that you are going to help me when no one would even listen to us three years ago,'" Mickey said.

Sharon: He got off. Nothing happened to him and no closure. Nothing happened and that they just beat me up all over again.
Ferrugia: Where is this person now?
Sharon: An officer in the Air Force, America's best and brightest.

Last week, just before 7NEWS Investigates interviewed Mickey, a superior officer called her and asked her not to speak with us. He offered to look into her daughter's case if she acquiesced.

And no wonder the academy is so concerned.

While the rape crisis nurse told Mickey that she knew of 48 women who had been sexually assaulted in the 1999 school year, official Air Force records show that only eight women called the hotline.

And according to the Air Force, only two women came forward with official reports.

So how come the official number of cases are so much lower? 7NEWS is working to answer those questions.

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