Colorado family sue Air Force for $40M after daughter Cailin Foster's suicide, claiming academy igno

The Colorado family of an Air Force graduate who died by suicide after she was allegedly raped has filed a $40million wrongful death lawsuit, claiming the academy failed to act.

Cailin Foster, 22, was a newly commissioned second lieutenant in 2021 when she ended her life after leaving her parents a heartbreaking note where she asked them to 'do all they can to make sure she was the last one.'

Before her death, Cailin had allegedly reported that she had been raped during her freshman year at the Air Force academy in Colorado Springs to a cadet in her chain of command, but nothing was done. Two of her roommates had also reported being raped, according to Cailin's family,

Cailin had also reported suicidal thoughts more than a year before she took her own life, her family claims.

Her parents Gary and Colleen Foster say they did not know Cailin had been raped before she died, and have said that in the years since her death they have found failures by the academy in protecting their students.

Cailin Foster was a newly commissioned second lieutenant in 2021 when she ended her life after leaving her parents a heartbreaking note

Before her death, Cailin had reported that she had been raped during her freshman year at the Air Force academy in Colorado Springs

Her parents Gary and Colleen Foster filed a $40million legal challenge against the Air Force

'[The academy] broke her,' Gary Foster told Stars and Stripes. 'We just want to prevent the next Cailin from being victimized.'

Gary, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, was in charge of writing the policies in the cadet wing over 20 years ago and said that as part of his job he tried to prevent situations like Cailin's.

He told Stars and Striped that he first tried working with campus leaders to address the issue following his daughter's death. 

But when that path did not work, the parents decided to file two $20million claims against the Air Force last month alleging it failed to protect Cailin from sexual assault and to provide mental health treatment.

'It's just so frustrating, when 20 years ago you tried to fix all this stuff and you see the exact same mistakes that they made. They backslid,' Gary told KRDO. 

The Department of Defense issued a report in August that said 22 percent of female cadets and four percent of males reported being victims of sexual assault in 2022 - an all-time high. 

Earlier this year,  U.S. officials ruled that military academies must improve their leadership, stop toxic practices such as hazing and shift behavior training into the classrooms following a Pentagon study aimed at addressing an alarming spike in sexual assaults and misconduct.

The report said that too often discussions about stress relief, misconduct, social media and other life issues take place after hours or on the weekends. The report recommends that those topics be addressed in classes and graded, to promote their importance. 

The study came after the DoD report this year showed that student-reported assaults at the academies jumped 18 percent overall compared with the previous year, fueled in part by the Navy, which had nearly double the number in 2022, compared with 2021. 

The anonymous survey accompanying the report found increases in all types of unwanted sexual contact — from touching to rape — at all the schools. And it cited alcohol as a key factor.

'[The academy] broke her,' Gary Foster said of his late daughter 

Gary, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, was in charge of writing the policies in the cadet wing over 20 years ago

The report points to the Air Force Academy’s longstanding system that treats freshmen differently and badly, promoting hazing and an unhealthy climate. Tharp said those students may leave the academy with a poor sense of what good leadership looks like. 

In many cases, the report says that student leaders aren’t trained or equipped to handle those issues or provide proper support to the students.

Another problem, officials said, is the ever expanding influence of social media, where bullying and harassment can go on unchecked. The report pointed to Jodel, an anonymous social media app that focuses on a specific location and is in wide use by academy students.

The report said students can get inaccurate information about assault prevention, reporting, resources and military justice from the app, making them less likely to seek help.

It said training at the academies has not kept pace with change, including the ever-evolving social media platforms and how students differ today from in the past.

In response to the spike in assaults, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered on-site evaluations at the U.S. Naval Academy in Maryland, the Air Force Academy in Colorado and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in New York, to explore the issues and identify solutions. 

The report made several immediate and longer-term recommendations to improve assault and harassment prevention and eliminate toxic climates that fuel the problems. 

In a memo, Austin acknowledged that the academies 'have far more work to do to halt sexual assault and harassment.' 

He said the increase in assaults and harassment 'is disturbing and unacceptable. It endangers our teammates and degrades our readiness.'

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