Dave Cullen

The Rohrboughs’ lawsuit, joined by five other victims’ families, also alleges that most of the deaths in the massacre
could have been avoided. It says students could have easily fled
the library early on, but a 911 operator had teacher Patti Nielson
instruct them to stay put, and alleges they would have survived if they had not been told help was on the way.

Sheriff’s spokesman Steve Davis said there is no evidence to
substantiate the families’ claims. But the new details have led many
to question the reason for the sheriff’s department’s delay in
releasing its official report on the Columbine investigation.

A powerful voice has joined
the growing chorus of exasperation over
delays
in the long-awaited investigation
report. Principal Frank
DeAngelis shared his frustration in an
interview with Salon News, just
days before the flurry of lawsuits began.

“We keep getting ready, I keep telling
the community, ‘OK, we’re about two
weeks away, we’re two weeks away,’ and
keep preparing them,” DeAngelis said.
“There’s only so many times you can get
so wound up saying, ‘Oh, I’m ready
now, I’m ready,’ and then all of a
sudden, ‘No!’ ‘I’m ready.’ ‘No.’ I think
there’s a level of frustration.”

Jefferson County District Judge Brooke
Jackson granted access to the draft
report to families of two victims
Monday, and extended the ruling to
include
all victims’ families Tuesday. The
families of Rohrbough and Kelly
Fleming had sued
the county for the information last
week, in order to assess wrongful-death
or negligence cases against the
sheriff’s department before the statute
of
limitations runs out Thursday. By the end of the day
Wednesday, 15 families had filed
lawsuits against the department, and
as many as 20 are expected by the end of
the
anniversary deadline.

In his interview before the lawsuit
filings, DeAngelis said his frustration over the
repeated delays was shared
by faculty, students and members of the
community.

“I feel very badly for the families of
the murdered,” DeAngelis said.
“Because they have been waiting over the
past year for that to come out. All
of a sudden, the parents were ready to
look at the police report before
Christmas, and then [the sheriff's
department] was saying in January, and
then it was going to be March, and then
April, now it’s May, it may be the
summer. And you kind of build yourself
up — they know it’s not going to be
pleasant, but you kind of prepare
yourself for it, and then it’s kind of a
letdown.

“It’s the same thing with me. That
police report will always be
associated with the 13 that were
murdered. And that’s what’s awful, but
at the same time, it’s going to allow us
to see exactly what happened. From
that standpoint, I’m looking forward to
the police report.”

DeAngelis has a personal stake in the
report’s release. In the days and weeks
after the killings, Columbine High
itself was forced to share some of the
blame, as some speculated that Klebold and Harris had been
bullied and tormented by school jocks.
Others wondered how DeAngelis could have
been unaware of the so-called Trench
Coat Mafia, which in those early days
was said to have been the clique that
hatched the killers.

The principal was briefed on key
findings of the investigation throughout
the days and months following the
massacre, and has spent the past year
waiting for many of the notorious rumors
to be dispelled. “I said from day one, I
truly believe, that when the truth comes
out, I’ll be exonerated from all
the accusations, and Columbine High
School will be exonerated,” he said.
“People have said, ‘Aren’t you fearful
of this police report?’ And I said,
‘No, I want the truth, I want to know
what the investigation states.’”

So many myths gained public currency last spring that most of the public
misunderstood key aspects of the case, which dominated national news for
months. Yet through it all, the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department
remained officially tight-lipped, taking no significant steps to correct the
rumors and responding only to limited questions. Some reporters were able to
crack the wall of silence, however, to reveal that the killers were not
members of the Trench Coat Mafia, and had not singled out jocks, African-Americans or Christians in their killing spree.

Still, the school may not get the
exoneration it hopes for. Division
Chief John
Kiekbusch, the ranking officer overseeing the case,
said in September that the
report would offer
facts without conclusions and has
consistently repeated this mantra,
leading many to conclude that the report
will avoid many of the tragedy’s
most burning questions, such as the
killers’ motives and whether the
persistent charges of an abusive jock
culture within the school are true.

DeAngelis is clearly hoping for much
more. “I think what we’re going to find
out — without me knowing what’s in that
police report, other than what I’ve
read in the newspaper — I think you’re
going to find out that there were a
lot of myths out there,” he said. “And I
think those myths are going to be
dispelled just by what they found out in
the police report. They’re going to
find out that these two murderers did
not target a person. They just hated
everyone, and they were out to kill as
many people as possible.

“And I think you’re going to find out
that this whole Trench Coat Mafia, this
so-called organized gang, was a loose
term used for a group of kids who had
graduated a year before. The athletic
thing — [critics of the school] want to
talk about two or three incidents that
occurred, and they keep referring to
those, and because of those two or
three, there’s a jock problem. So I
think what the
police report will show is that, boy,
there were a lot of rumors out there,
and people just wanted to believe
[them].”

DeAngelis believes many of the rumors
were accepted because of a natural
instinct to try to find reassuring
answers. “Because then if [people] can
believe that, they’ll say we know why
[Harris and Klebold] murdered at
Columbine High School,” he said. “And,
boy, if we can pinpoint that, then it’s
not going to happen again. If they can
say, well, get rid of all athletics, or
the
jocks need to go, or we need to get rid
of this and that, then therefore
there’s not going to be a murder at our
school.”

The department met secretly with several
stakeholders in the investigation
last summer, to privately squelch many
of the rumors.
Kiekbusch and FBI Supervisory Special
Agent Dwayne Fuselier briefed the
entire Columbine faculty and staff on
the investigation Aug. 12, in a secret
presentation just four days before
students symbolically href="/news/feature/1999/08/16/columbine">“took back the
school.”

Those who attended said the most
poignant
moment came when officials projected a
slide from href="/news/feature/1999/09/23/journal/index.html">Harris’ texts that
read: “Don’t blame the school. Don’t
fucking put cops all over the place.
Just because we went on a killing spree
doesn’t mean everybody else will.
The admin. is doing a fine job as it is.
I don’t know who will be left after
we kill, but dammit, don’t change any
policy just because of us. It would be
stupid. If there’s any way in this
fucked up universe we can come back as
ghosts, we’ll haunt the life of any one
who blames anyone besides me and V
[for vodka, Klebold's nickname].”

At the time, both investigators and
school officials said that
many of the faculty and staff members
were eagerly awaiting the report’s
release,
expecting at least partial vindication
for the school. Eight months later,
they’re still waiting.

Since last summer, investigators have
promised to release all
their major findings at one time, in the
form of a comprehensive final
report, initially slated for fall. But
it hasn’t happened quite that way. Last
September, high-ranking
individuals within the investigation href="/news/feature/1999/09/23/columbine/index.html">leaked key findings to
Salon
News. That was followed by
departmentally authorized disclosures to
Time magazine and
the Rocky Mountain News in December and
the Denver Post in March.

In the wake of those stories, it remained
a mystery whether the report would
contain any major surprises. One area
where many questions remain is the
behavior of local SWAT teams on the day
of the massacre. The SWAT teams came
under blistering attack from some
families and media commentators
for taking several hours to reach the
library. Sanders bled to
death waiting for help to
arrive, despite a message in the
window warning of his predicament.

Several of the
families cited SWAT response in their intent-to-sue
notices last October. With
few details available, the public
discussion of that issue petered out
inconclusively, with all indications
that it will be hotly resumed once the
facts are known. The department has
consistently said its report would
exonerate the SWAT teams.

Sheriff’s spokesman Davis had
said, “Everything in that report has
been
pretty much reported.” However, doubts
persisted, because the department has
repeatedly avoided releasing significant
information until it was leaked or
its hand was forced. It did not even
disclose the existence of Harris
and Klebold’s infamous home videos, for
instance, until a few days before lead
investigator
Kate Battan was forced to read a short
excerpt at the sentencing hearing for
gun seller Mark Manes.

The week leading up to Thursday’s
choreographed anniversary memorials was
billed as a solemn occasion, and one of
the last predictable media events in the
ongoing Columbine saga. But the
lawsuit-filing deadline and the
unexpected judicial
decision to let the families
see the draft report have shifted the focus back onto
the crime and the legal fallout.

Walter Gerash, the lawyer who on
Wednesday filed charges on behalf of the
family of Sean Graves, who was severely
injured, predicted the lawsuits would
drag on for five
to 10 years. He described a “very
painful” future of finger-pointing,
recriminations and nasty depositions.

Thursday’s filing deadline applies only
to suits against the sheriff’s
department, with another year to level
charges against all other parties.
Gerash predicted numerous suits would be
added naming gun manufacturers, the
school district and possibly the
killers’ families.

Both county and federal suits were filed Wednesday. The county suits cap
awards at $150,000 per family, but federal claims are unlimited. Gerash
predicted the various defense teams would eventually spend about $500,000
preparing their cases.

Gerash had championed a plan to avoid
all lawsuits by setting up a $50
million relief government fund, but was
turned down by Colorado Gov. Bill Owens,
state Attorney General Ken Salazar and,
finally, the White House on April 7.

A key element of the families’ immediate
strategy is to force early
discovery in the sheriff’s cases, Gerash
said. That will allow them to flush
out information relevant to potential
filings against the other parties. He
also predicted Jackson would eventually
consolidate several of the
county lawsuits, but the maneuvers would
be much more complex than a
standard class-action case.

The first lawsuit against the sheriff came Tuesday, filed on behalf of the
parents of Isaiah Shoels, also the first and only family to sue the killers’
parents and gun manufacturers. Most of the initial suits charged the
department with negligence before the massacre, but some also take on
several deputies for their performance once the shooting began. The Shoels’
suit says officers exchanged gunfire with Harris and Klebold, but then set
up a perimeter to keep them from escaping, rather than chasing them into the
school and trying to prevent the murders.

“The actions of the sheriff’s department
were the direct and proximate cause
of the death of Isaiah Shoels,” the suit
reads.

Tuesday, Dale Todd, father of wounded
student Evan Todd, described the
perimeter as allowing the killers “full
reign to murder.”

Jackson’s surprise ruling allows the
families access to the draft
report — previously said to run 200-300
pages — as well as hundreds of hours
of unedited 911 tapes, helicopter
videotapes of the attack, police radio
transmissions and a Fire Department
training tape. He temporarily denied
access to 200 volumes of raw
investigative reports and school
surveillance videos, because he wouldn’t
have time to review them before the
filing deadline.

The sheriff’s department fought the
access and, according to Gerash,
threatened the families with
countercharges of frivolous lawsuits if
they
filed.

With access to the information coming so late, many of the suits relied
heavily on depositions from the family of Brooks Brown, a Columbine student
who says he was warned by Harris to leave the school shortly before the
massacre.

Most of the initial suits charge that the department
failed to properly investigate
a series of complaints by Randy and Judy
Brown, including Harris’ death
threats against their son and his now
infamous Web site. The Browns first
reported the site to the department
March 18, 1998, 13 months before
the massacre.

Gerash has coordinated with the other
lawyers, and described many of the
suits as motivated by “the year and a
month that [the sheriff's department]
didn’t do
anything. They had deliberate
indifference,” he said.

The suits could lead to poetic justice
for the Browns, who have become
perhaps the most bitter adversaries of
the department in the past year. Sources
close to the family report that they were,
and remain, close friends with the
Klebolds and have been distraught that
his murders and suicide were not
prevented. But their initial dismay was
nothing compared with their anger over the
attacks
their son Brooks suffered after Sheriff
John Stone publicly accused him of
involvement in the massacre.

For months Stone continued to insist
that
others were involved, despite protests
from detectives performing
the investigation. Eventually, he
reversed himself, and now says he
believes
Harris and Klebold acted alone. The
Browns are organizing a recall election
of Stone and plan to begin
circulating petitions this summer.

One of the biggest mysteries in this
flurry of lawsuits had been whether the
Klebolds would join the litigation. They
filed a notice of intent to sue
last October in advance of the
deadline, but their attorney, Lisa
Simon, announced Wednesday that they
would not proceed against the sheriff.

How incredibly sad for Mary Cheney, the lesbian in question. And not for the reasons that her parents and the pundits have been screaming about.

First, let’s dispense with the comic aspects of the parental indignation:

The blueprint for the operation, called the Agenda for Change, takes on half a century of entrenched military tradition, and toppled two key symbols of the old regime right away. In a surprise move, the Pentagon sacked the senior leadership of the academy — both generals and two top colonels — and then removed the enormous sign that commanded “BRING ME MEN …” from the center of campus, leaving a naked granite wall in its place.

Both steps stunned the inhabitants of this sequestered compound, who were still reeling from months of media coverage about cadet rapes and the botched investigations that followed. But faculty members, cadets and military scholars, impressed as they were by the scope and breadth of the proposed changes, are not convinced that the academy’s culture can be cracked — even by 49 bullet points of reform and new leadership. And rape counselors have no doubt: The agenda overlooks key aspects of victim psychology — above all, the need for confidentiality — necessary to make the academy safe for its students.

“The first or second question from the victim is nearly always ‘Is this confidential? Will you call the [military leadership]?’” says Christine Hansen, founder of the Miles Foundation, a national nonprofit dedicated to victims of domestic abuse in the military. “If they don’t establish confidentiality immediately, the victim is out the door.”

For its part, the Air Force chose a response — swift and hard-hitting — that tackled the basic charges: that crimes had occurred in the ranks and the perpetrators escaped prosecution and discipline. With military precision, the Agenda for Change addresses the issue of finding and neutralizing the enemy, leaving more ephemeral and emotional issues to work themselves out. While well-intended, say critics of the reforms, they are too official and too narrowly focused for the intimate and emotionally complex crime of rape.

And yet the change that victims’ advocates are seeking — for the Air Force to relinquish primary control over cases of sexual assault — is regarded as equally unrealistic in a community where control and loyalty must be total for complete success.

- – - – - – - – - – - -

Since the first public report of sexual attacks at the academy appeared in January in Westword, a scrappy Denver-based weekly, Pentagon investigators have learned of 56 cases of sexual assault, and acknowledged that academy leadership mishandled some of them. Congress has presided over weeks of hearings on the scandal, and early this month, Sens. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., and John McCain, R-Ariz., tore into Air Force Secretary James Roche for defending academy leaders that he reassigned as the crisis exploded in the media. The Senate has since authorized a fourth, independent team, to be appointed by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, to assign blame for the crisis, even as the implementation team begins its mission to bring specific reforms to campus.

Those reforms go to the essence of academy doctrine — loyalty and its expression within the corps — to stress personal responsibility, eliminate opportunities for intimidation and humiliation, and promote open communication, despite longstanding codes of silence. In specific, the changes propose beefing up adult oversight and weakening the student chain of command — stripping sophomores of authority over freshmen, for instance. Taken together, the reforms suggest an ambitious and thoroughgoing overhaul of academy structure that took professors, cadets and military scholars by surprise.

“If this had been a one-page document saying ‘zero tolerance’ that a commander could read one morning in front of formation, then I would have been disappointed,” said professor Melissa Embser-Herbert, a sociologist specializing in women in the military and author of “Camouflage Isn’t Only for Combat: Gender, Sexuality, and Women in the Military.” “The fact that it’s fairly detailed and conveys that someone put a lot of thought into this thing should convey that, ‘We’re not just doing something to please Congress.’”

A sign of the Air Force’s seriousness was its willingness to suggest changes that affect the guiding principle of the academy model — the same principle employed at West Point, the Naval Academy, and the services’ officer candidate training schools. That approach has been to overwhelm the cadet with so much stress, from so many different angles, that he or she cannot possibly overcome them individually. “They artificially create crises to make people work together,” says professor Lance Janda, a military historian specializing in women in the military. He spent five years researching the book “Stronger than Custom: West Point and the Admission of Women.”

Because military doctrine since World War II holds that men and women in battle do not fight to stay alive — they fight to keep their comrades alive — the concepts of “unit cohesion” and “esprit de corps” take on religious significance to combat commanders. In an effort to produce model soldiers, the academies drive these concepts to the extreme. They have been successful at instilling group cohesion; but, as demonstrated by the rape crisis, they eventually suffered from their own success.

“Once the group pulls together, when an individual does the wrong thing” — rapes a junior cadet for instance — “the instinct is to say ‘My loyalty to the group means I have to cover for this individual,’” Janda says. Faced with crisis, the group circles the wagons, and anyone threatening a group member becomes the enemy — including a member of the group.

In this climate, a rape accusation threatens not only a group member, it also tarnishes the integrity of the unit. This plays right into another core concept at the academies: the constant indoctrination that cadets are elite, special, superior to civilians. The prospect of a rapist in their ranks threatens to shatter the group’s reputation. “We are members of the profession of arms, the noblest of professions” wrote incoming Commandant General John Weida to cadets last week in an introductory e-mail titled “Getting Started.”

The phenomenon is similar to the code of silence in police units, but with troubling complications. Age and power provide the most striking differences: Imagine the thin blue line manned by adolescents. Imagine a rogue cop with not just power over a subordinate’s career, but over his ability to eat, sleep or go to the bathroom.

“When a freshman wants to leave his room just to go to the bathroom, he puts himself at risk,” an academy professor said. Lurking around any corner lies a potential upperclassman with the power to stop him, haze him, berate him, drop him for pushups and issue demerits. “It’s a high-anxiety situation,” the professor said.

Compounding that anxiety is the official power that upperclassmen have wielded in academy hierarchy. A cadet’s entire chain of command, through five levels of superior officers, is composed exclusively of fellow students. The first officer to appear with command authority is the commandant of the entire academy, the general serving a role akin to dean of students.

The system is designed to thrust responsibility upon the young cadet until it becomes second nature. But when an angry, vindictive adolescent gets hold of that much power, the combination can be unnecessarily destructive.

“Any sophomore who’s pissed off for any reason can just shit on a doolie just because he can,” said a high-ranking military professor at the academy. And sophomores, fresh and bitter from their own relentless year of hazing, tend to be anxious to dish it back out to the next class most viciously.

“It’s a tremendous amount of power for a 19-year-old to hold over an 18-year-old,” the professor said. Even cadets are daunted by the power they wield. “Last summer I was a colonel in the academy,” said senior Andy Allen. “I had power over 2,000 people. Despite that, I was 21 years old.”

While they don’t dismantle the chain of command at the academy, the proposed reforms take a hefty bite out its most dangerous elements — sufficient, the Pentagon hopes, to rein in wayward cadets playing dictator in their own private fiefdoms. Instead of a single general commanding 4,200 cadets, one major will now command each squadron of about 120. Those officers are in place already, but only in an administrative role. They will now assume command, a drastic change in military governance.

New rules require most of these officers to be one rank and several years older than the current crop — with significant other military perks certain to a attract a higher caliber of officer. Sophomores, currently vested with primary responsibility for training the freshmen in military knowledge, will transfer that duty to seniors. The changes “should prevent most opportunities for abuse of power relationships,” said Pentagon spokesman and academy graduate Capt. Peter Kerr.

A new law-and-order system is designed to “enhance officer supervision of the cadet wing,” said Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Dewey Ford. A round-the-clock dorm security and monitoring system will be implemented. An officer will be placed on duty at all times in the dorms. He or she will manage a roving patrol nights and weekends. Upperclassmen will no longer be permitted to burst into the room of opposite-sex subordinates to force them carry out orders. Cadets will now be required to knock and wait for the occupant to open the door. Doors must now remain fully open whenever visitors are present.

Perhaps the most significant change is a mandatory and blanket amnesty that absolves nearly all cadets from offenses discovered during a sexual-assault investigation. (Drinking is the most common.) The Air Force included a few exceptions to the rule meant to crack the cadet code of silence: Anyone covering up a sexual assault or impeding the investigation loses amnesty for their own infractions, hopefully tilting the scales in a battle of divided loyalties. The senior ranking cadet present is also excluded, and will now be held accountable for all infractions committed by subordinates. This puts one person at tremendous risk for underage or dormitory drinking — intended to reduce situations that later descend into rape.

- – - – - – - – - – - -

While outsiders focused on concrete changes to academy rules, military scholars said subtler themes in the agenda could prove more influential. They advised critics against viewing academy culture through a civilian lens. In a world that revolves around the idea of honor, they say, “disloyalty” and “dishonor” are fighting words, making the language in the agenda a huge institutional leap. The agenda acknowledged “misguided loyalty” and abuse of the honor code, and put cadets on notice against hiding behind the letter of the code. Those passages could have enormous impact, said Embser-Herbert. “That’s how so much of this operates.”

Nonetheless, rape counselors and other victim advocates quietly fumed about the proposal’s inadequacies. By focusing so intently on its own culture, they say, the military lost sight of a second, and perhaps more dominant imperative: the necessity to acknowledge and incorporate the psychology of victims in rules proposed to deal with sexual assault.

The proposed changes go to great lengths to create a climate in which blame might be easier to place on the perpetrator, acknowledge critics of the reforms, but they don’t do enough to make victims feel safe enough to report the crime. It is a dilemma common to civilian courts as well — victims need protection, but it cannot come at the expense of the rights of the accused. Unfortunately, the Air Force, say these critics, tends to sacrifice the victim in order to quickly catch and prosecute the offender.

Evidence of this oversight is clear, say victims’ advocates: By demanding that rapes be reported by anyone with knowledge of the attack, regardless of a victim’s wish for anonymity, the military fails to give assaulted cadets a grace period in which to get counseling and relief from their trauma — a period during which they might decide not to initiate formal proceedings against their attackers.

“It’s still the same mantra of, ‘You’ve got to report,’” says said Cari Davis, executive director of Tessa, the Colorado Springs domestic violence agency that counseled many of the academy assault victims. “And anyone who doesn’t report is a criminal.”

Anyone seeking help from the academy’s counseling center or peer counseling program will effectively have gone public about the crime, ceding full control to the commander. Even medical attention will close out a victim’s options. Victims’ advocates were thrilled that medical facilities on the academy campus will now stock rape kits and be staffed with personnel trained to use them (though they wondered what took so long). But they blanched at the prospect of medical staff as informants.

Even more troubling, say the advocates, is the fact that a close friend or roommate in whom a victim confides is legally bound to report on her behalf. Davis said most rape victims suffer some level of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), making it essential that they talk to someone about the attack. Isolating her at this pivotal moment — or adding the stress and guilt of putting her best friend at risk — can seriously exacerbate the psychological trauma, she says. Said Jennifer Bier, director of Tessa’s clinical services, “Victims have to have a right to talk to somebody and have that held in confidence.”

By giving control of complaints to commanding officers, who routinely function as cop, judge and jury in assault cases, the military builds dangerous subjectivity into what is a serious criminal matter, say the advocates. Air Force officials have failed to grasp that many victims will never trust academy commanders as impartial since, with a investment of more than $300,000 per cadet, the academy, and its commanders, start with a bias, say critics.

Commanders often bond with cadets, commonly viewing them like sons, say victim advocates. Rapists can be solid performers in other areas, and commanders may find it difficult to conceive of a young man they admire attacking a woman. The situation is rife with conflicts of interest, Davis said. She paraphrased her victims’ take on their commanders this way: “I’m going to throw out my best guy, who could be one of my best pilots, because some girl who was drunk says she was sexually assaulted?”

And finally, by failing to make a provision to keep such events out of a cadet’s permanent record, the academy, say rape counselors, discourages victims from reporting sexual assault for fear of ruining their chances for advancement in their careers. “These medical records and mental health records must be kept separate and sealed,” Davis said. The officer corps is a very small community, and “the higher up you go, the tighter the circle.” The “inappropriate sharing” of information has to stop if they expect anyone to come forward, Tessa says.

Medical records are a particular concern, especially since PTSD is such a common effect of sexual attack. Many cadets expect to fly fighter jets one day, and shudder at anything that could hinder doctor’s clearance years down the road. “Your record shows PTSD from a sexual assault and you might be grounded,” Davis says. While she has no direct knowledge of a pilot being grounded that way, Davis says she has repeated firsthand knowledge of academy victims fearing those long-term consequences. The perception runs strongly that reporting a rape represents a risky career move.

The Air Force did make significant moves in its proposal to improve commander responsiveness — once an assault is reported. The reforms decree that new majors, to whom a cadet would report an assault, must receive a year of full-time graduate school in order to acquire a master’s degree in counseling before reporting to the academy. The process is supposed to be repeated with each new round of commanders.

It is a huge step, but the Air Force still fails a crucial test, says Hansen of the Miles Foundation, which has dealt with more than 10,000 cases of military domestic violence since 1996. Victims of assault are still afraid to come forward, she says, even to the most understanding commander, because those commanders are required to report to Air Force leadership.

Bier and her colleagues acknowledged positive measures in the plan and say they have no doubt Air Force leaders are sincere in their desire to root out all sex offenders under their command. But without confidentiality, and a place outside the military to find comfort and help, victims of assault will stay quiet, they say.

“The military has to realize it is in their best interest to collaborate with civilian authorities in this area,” says Hansen. She points to fairly simple solutions. Put up Tessa posters with hotline numbers around campus. The system is already in place; the group already runs four centers in Colorado Springs that serve 800 abuse cases a year. Or bring in another civilian agency. Davis says Tessa is prepared to respond immediately, “But if it’s not us, it should be somebody.”

In a best-case scenario, Tessa would open an additional outreach center on campus, in a discreet location, she said. Worst case, the academy would introduce its own professional, confidential counseling service, though it’s unlikely victims would trust the same system that just let them down.

- – - – - – - – - – - -

Many observers — current faculty, military scholars and victims’ advocates — argue that sexual abuse of women at the academy, and commanders making light of their charges, are both symptoms of a deeper problem that cannot necessarily be changed by new rules: the failure of male cadets to fully accept women. A new Veterans Affairs study published in the March American Journal of Industrial Medicine justifies the concern. “Officer leadership played an important role in the military environment and safety of women,” it concluded. It found that officers who permitted sexual harassment saw four times the level of rapes in their units.

Women may now play an integral role in the military, but some men still only accept them grudgingly, particularly in elite areas like the Air Force Academy. Embser-Herbert describes the attitude as “We know we need you, but we still don’t really want you here.”

The removal of the “BRING ME MEN” sign, long a focus of bitter debate at the academy, promises to ease some of the conflict at the school, or, at the very least, relieve female cadets of a daily reminder of their shaky status there. At the same time, however, the divide between the sexes is in danger of being reinforced by one of the most controversial elements in proposed changes for the academy. The Pentagon, after having a tentative proposal to segregate women in the barracks shot down, outlined a plan to segregate dorms during the initial six-week basic training. During the academic year, women will be housed within their squadron, but “clustered” near the women’s bathrooms.

Academy scholars say the military is playing with fire in contemplating any change that could look like special rules or special handling for women. The more visible the distinction, the more likely to inflame those men already opposed to female presence. Angry males will say, “We’ve got to have women here, but we need all these special rules to protect them,” Embser-Herbert said.

It is one thing to confer victim status — and a measure of confidentiality — on cadets who have been sexually assaulted, say critics of the changes. It is another to suggest that female cadets need protection simply because they are women. “It sends the wrong message to the women there,” professor Hillman said. “It’s as if we’re saying, ‘You need to be protected.’ These are women who are going to be officers in the Air Force. They are going to do the protecting. When you’re perceived as a victim, it makes it difficult to assert power and authority.”

Resistance to the proposal is fierce inside the academy, among women as well as men. “I think integration is very important,” said junior Daneta Jablonsky. “Once we graduate we will be in charge of leading both men and women and we need to learn how to live together first. [The change] can be a hindrance.”

Adds junior Alexis Fear, “To separate them even more could be a big problem unless they’re careful about it.”

Ironically, opposition to segregation of any kind at the academy may have the effect of eliminating some of the hostility between male and female cadets. According to professors and cadets, the intense scrutiny and steady drumbeat of criticism created by the sexual assault charges have caused cadets to pull together — much as they have been taught to do in battle. The suggestion that they be separated pushed them together even more.

Said a long-time academy professor, “Even the men think it’s ridiculous that the women be segregated. They’re all united against that policy.”

Male and female cadets also tend to feel that the media has blown the story out of proportion, and they are angry at their leadership for blaming its own failings on them.

“The tension here has been huge,” says Fear. “Especially the male cadets feel attacked — that they’re aggressive, horrible rapists.”

Added a faculty member, “[Cadets] were outraged when Roche claimed in a speech to the whole cadet corps that it was a ‘cadet problem,’ not a leadership issue. And the vast majority of female cadets feel demeaned by being overprotected by the leadership’s tin-eared, paternalistic responses.”

But anger at what Cadet Ryan Argenta describes as “the swarm that hit us” doesn’t mean they’re wallowing in denial. Cadets found the charges hard to believe at first, but most came around as the shock wore off and evidence mounted. “It’s no longer a matter of this can’t be true,” Argenta said. “Changes are definitely needed.”

A week after their return from spring break, some cadets were feeling guardedly optimistic. Retrenchment on women’s segregation was unpopular, and removal of the campus sign was still the subject of hot debate, but most of the changes were quite popular. No cadet would go on the record with glee about the personnel changes, but faculty described them as “ecstatic” about the removal of Brig. Gen. S. Taco Gilbert III and Col. Laurie Slavec.

But a common theme in nearly every cadet interview was how much the crisis — not the reforms — had drawn men and women together. Each sex felt attacked in different ways, but the outside pressure had united them against a common foe.

“We’ve been through so much together,” senior Andy Allen said. “We’re going to stick together and we’re going to make it on into the Air Force.”

The material released Tuesday filled four large storage boxes. County spokesman John Masson says it amounts to a “substantial” portion of the data available. But it omits a great deal of crucial evidence — including autopsy reports, thousands of photos and medical reports of the victims — that could be useful in lawsuits that have been brought on by families of Columbine victims.

Among the most compelling documents are 16 pages of testimony from Patty Nielson — the teacher famous for making 911 calls from the library as the killers rampaged through the building — that effectively refute the most misleading myth of all: that the entire tragedy was intended as a horrible attack on jocks, blacks and Christians.

The testimony substantiates an argument investigators have been trying to make since September 1999: The massacre at Columbine was random and indiscriminate — it wasn’t based on targeted groups or a hit list. (Though several so-called hit lists did exist, they don’t appear to have played any role in the final killings.) Material leaked from Eric Harris’ diary and the so-called “Suicide Videos” supported that conclusion, but it arrived months after the conception of the attack was firmly planted in the public perception. And for several days after the massacre, the media drove home the message that it was directed against jocks and blacks, with relentless attention to the now infamous line “All jocks stand up.” Until now, investigators have refused to release significant testimony from the attack to effectively dislodge that misperception.

Nielson repeatedly describes killers Harris and Klebold moving methodically through the library, pausing to torment their victims before shooting them, seemingly indiscriminately.

“It was her belief that the suspects were going around and shooting every student who was hiding underneath the tables,” the interview report states.

At one point in the testimony, Nielson recalls one of the killers yelling “Kill all the jocks.” At one another, she hears one say: “What do we have here, a nigger?” — presumably before the murder of Isaiah Shoels.

“Patty Nielson stated it was clear in her mind the suspects were attempting to humiliate the victims prior to shooting them,” the document says.

She says the killers repeated their demand that everyone “get up” several times, and describes them heckling any number of students, for the most trivial reasons. She says one killer asked, “Whatta we got her, a fat boy?” His partner responded that he could “do whatever you want with that one, I don’t care.” Another student was taunted for his glasses: “You think those glasses look cool[?]”

Because Nielson remained hidden beneath the library’s front counter as most of the shootings occurred, she was often unable to ascertain which killer said what.

Tuesday’s release included more than 500 detailed pages about killers Harris and Klebold — offering a far richer portrait than anything else yet released about the pair.

A graphically violent English-class essay by Klebold portrays a protagonist in a black trench coat with a duffel bag brutally executing “college preps.” His creative writing teacher, Judy Kelly, described it as “the most vicious story I have ever read.” Kelly met with a guidance counselor and Klebold’s parents to discuss it. She was recently added to a lawsuit charging that various officials were warned of the coming attack.

The release provides the first direct windows into the responses of the killers’ parents. Several investigators, including lead investigator Kate Battan, decried the widespread blaming of the parents, particularly the Klebolds, in September 1999. “It really does begin with the family,” Battan told Salon News at the time. “But I’m here to tell you, I sat down and I’ve spent a lot of time with the Klebolds, and they’re nice people. It’s not like they’re these monsters that raised a monster. I mean, they truly are clueless about any warning signs that this was going to happen.” However, the parents remained in seclusion, and investigators remained mum on discussions with the families. The new documents detail the interviews conducted during that time with the families. They present a portrait of the Klebolds as immediately cooperative, and the Harrises as far more wary.

The documents also reveal a whole new level of detail as to how the case was investigated, and the way witnesses were questioned. Many of the reports are short and unenlightening, but others, like Nielson’s, chart how information was revealed gradually over the course of a lengthy interview.

“As Patty Nielson continued to reflect on the incident in the library she began to recall additional details,” the report states, “…at one point during the incident she remembered hearing a boy being confrontational with [the killers].” Nielson stated that the confrontation was strictly verbal, but remembered hearing the unidentified male student state words to the effect of “that’s enough, he’s dead.”

While the release may help dispel some of the major Columbine myths, the victims’ families will concentrate on lingering questions about the law enforcement response that they have made the focus of litigation:

Could authorities have prevented the attack in advance? Were the SWAT teams negligent in responding? Was student Daniel Rohrbough killed by a law enforcement officer as the lawsuit filed by his family alleges? Did authorities know whether it was safe to save teacher Dave Sanders, who bled to death in the three hours it took police to get to him.

Those were the key charges brought by more than a dozen families last April, in a flurry of lawsuits against the sheriff’s department. Several other families later signed on to these cases as plaintiffs and named other county officials as defendants — most notably Columbine Principal Frank DeAngelis. The sherriff’s department has adamantly, and sometimes angrily, denied all counts.

But doubts have persisted. Skepticism over the investigators’ vindication of the way in which law enforcement officers handled the attack lingers. And the department’s steadfast refusal to release the majority of the documents, testimony and evidence collected in the investigation — has also raised suspicions.

The department’s major report was delayed at least six months, and finally released only by court order, a full 13 months after the massacre. The Columbine Report ran several hundred pages and was dominated by a detailed timeline of the attack on the afternoon of April 20, 1999. It provided only scattered witness testimony and sketchy information on most of the hotly-contested issues.

Brian Rohrbough believes the department has engaged in a full-scale cover-up, a charge that was also leveled last spring by attorneys for the Sanders family.

“There’s no question about it that they’re covering up,” he says. “They’ve been doing that since day one. This report will be the best opportunity to look through some of the facts as they happened.”

Observers have widely assumed that much of information on the Columbine attack will never come out until the discovery phases of the various lawsuits mandate the release. “We know we’re not going to get discovery for what looks like years now,” Rohrbough says. “They’re hoping everyone will forget. They’re hoping everyone will lose interest. That’s why this report is so very important. I’m absolutely certain things are missing from the report, but I still expect it will shed some light on some things.”

Rohrbough and the family of victim Kelly Fleming set the release in motion last April, when they filed suit demanding the release of nearly every category of information they could identify. The one-year statute of limitations was about to expire on filing suits against the sheriff’s department, and the families were still trying to build their case.

Judge Jackson granted the families almost immediate access to the draft report, and ordered its public release by May 15. Over the following months, Jackson continued to release additional information as he reviewed it, including several hours of 911 tapes, ballistics reports, cafeteria surveillance tapes and other information. Jackson ruled on Sept. 5 that the latest material be released. Several rounds of editing were performed in the interim, to remove certain sensitive data — such as bomb assembly instructions, names of students on the so-called “hit lists” and names of certain witnesses and suspects.

While this release dwarfed all others in sheer volume, several crucial items remain under seal — most notably Eric Harris’ infamous journal. Harris had written about the attack for more than a year, documenting apparent plans and motives in great detail. But Tuesday’s documents only included requested material, and attorneys amended their request to delete information seized from the killers’ homes. Rohrbough explains that the families involved in the suits were cooperating, and others asked for the deletion, partly because of the pain it would cause. He says it may be requested at a later date, but that it may be unnecessary.

Between the witness testimony, written documents and especially the so-called “Suicide Videos,” we know a great deal about the killers’ intentions, Rohrbough says.

What the Rohrboughs would most like to get hold of is the clothing their son died wearing, which they believe will prove unequivocally that Daniel was shot by a law enforcement officer and not Klebold or Harris. “We know what happened to Dan,” Rohrbough says. “We want his clothes back because they will tell the absolute truth about what happened to him.” The family has been trying to obtain the clothes since September 1999.

The sheriff’s department is making copies of the newly released documents available to the press and the public for $602, plus shipping charges. Contact the Jefferson County Public Information office at (303) 271-8512, or 100 Jefferson County Parkway, Suite 5530, Golden, Colo. 80419.

A year ago, the school had unveiled its post-massacre renovation project to reporters, on the eve of its “Take Back the School” reopening event, and the half-baked solution to the library problem was its most disturbing feature. The goal was laudable: to keep the structure of the school intact — so students didn’t feel they’d lost it — while making superficial changes to provoke subtle differences in perception that would be hard for students to put their finger on. There were softer colors, a different pattern on the ceiling, new texture on the floor, different clatter in the hallway.

The glaring problem, though, was that dreaded hallway past the library. They’d erected a wall to cover the internal library windows, and installed a long bank of dark blue lockers to camouflage the empty space. It evoked way too many associations with childhood horror fables: dead bodies walled off by crazy grandpa in the cellar, the telltale heart lurking under the floorboards. I found myself thinking: We know what’s back there, we know what you’re hiding.

A year later, Brian Rohrbough remembers that temporary solution as a metaphor for the massacre’s aftermath. “Everything about what happened here has been hidden,” he says. His son Daniel was one of the first killed, on the steps just outside the building. He spent the next 16 months leading some of the families on a relentless investigation, which culminated this April in a series of lawsuits against the sheriff’s department.

The atrium, by contrast, was the victims’ parents’ own solution. The district initially hoped to simply redesign and reopen the library, but the families had been adamant that no one should ever set foot in there again. They raised $3.1 million to tear it down and build a new one.

One of our nastier local columnists had written this spring that the families should stop whining and sucking up money for their problems. I thought he was a jerk to complain, but I did think the families were misguided. It was hard to see how ripping out a floor and ceiling was going to provide the kind of relief they were looking for.

How could obliterating the library wipe out their bad memories? They’d thrown their hearts into this campaign for a year now, they were heavily invested emotionally and they seemed to be headed for sure disappointment.

But I was wrong.

The cafeteria was wide open and airy with the extra vertical space from the atrium and an eye-catching mural on the ceiling. The plate-glass windows that had been blocked by lockers were clear again, looking down into the cafeteria, across to green outer tinted windows, and all the way to the Rocky Mountains if you scrunched down and peered.

But the change wasn’t about the view, the painting or anything outwardly architectural; it was what was missing. The library had vanished. It didn’t feel hidden, it didn’t feel missing, it looked and felt like it had just never existed.

I wasn’t going to talk to the families, but they actually encouraged our questions. In fact, one of the objectives of the atrium press conference was to thank the media. “What did you say?” I asked the communications manager when she told me. “I thought you just said, ‘Thank the media,’” We hadn’t exactly endeared ourselves to these families, after all, and our overall likability ratio was rock-bottom across the school population.

But they wanted to thank us for publicizing their fund to raise the money, and they had baked us M&M cookies and delicious banana bread to show their appreciation.

Most seemed visibly relieved by the atrium project. It was hard to keep my eyes off Sue Petrone. She was Danny Rohrbough’s mother and I’d seen her countless times before. She was usually upset, which was understandable in light of whatever latest unpleasantness had brought us all together again. On the occasions I saw her smile, she seemed like a deep-down joyful person being crushed under all that grief.

On Saturday she was positively beaming. You couldn’t miss her in the crowd: a cluster of happy families, with one woman among them who looked like she’d just won the lottery. When I ran into her upstairs in the hallway, looking down into the cafeteria, she hadn’t lost a hint of the glow, and I just had to blurt out my reaction: “Sue, I have just never seen you so happy!”

She beamed a little harder, gushed about how good it felt, how oppressive the crime scene felt hidden behind that wall. “When you came in the school, it just felt like a heaviness, like you’re under water and can’t breathe. And then when we came in — once the floor was gone, it was like all that was lifted away.”

It wasn’t all peace and tranquility: too many lawsuits and questions and maybe even coverups in progress. Brian Rohrbough clearly has a way to go in his grief process. The fight to raze the library is over for most of the families, but he’s still in a pitched battle to discover how and why his son died. And he’s still upset at the school’s reaction to the tragedy. He feels the school culture played a part in what happened, and the administration hasn’t made any progress toward changing it.

And then there was principal Frank DeAngelis. He’s a long way from reaching the relative tranquility of the families. He was mostly smiling, but definitely still carrying a huge weight: It’s unmistakable. It got a little worse last month, when several of the families extended their lawsuit to include him and other school officials. District lawyers warned him it would happen, that it was a standard practice to name all possible defendants in the chain of command.

‘They tell me not to take it personally,” he said Saturday. “But there’s my name at the top of the lawsuit.”

Rohrbough and DeAngelis kept their distance for over an hour, but they had to greet each other eventually. It was all very friendly on the surface: They spoke in code, but everyone knew what Brian was referring to when he said the physical changes were completed, and now he was looking forward to “other kinds of changes.”

It was painful to watch, but it was a brief moment at an event that was amazingly uplifting.

Petrone said she felt completely different since she first walked into the building; all the families had come in for a preview together, everyone had been taken aback by the change. “It’s like getting past one stage, and now we can kind of move on to more personal things,” she said.

I couldn’t resist asking her what other stages lie ahead.

“For me — I really don’t know. I guess we’re still trying to find what our family is. Because it’s so changed. We tried to make it what it was before, but you can’t, because there’s this gaping hole. So we’re just kind of working on that right now, to kind of take a break from all the public thing.”

It might sound a little sad when repeated, but Petrone’s smile never dimmed as she said it.