Last week, the Air Force relieved the commander of the 331st Training Squadron, Lt. Col. Michael Paquette, citing "an un­acceptable level of misconduct" by members of his unit. The Air Force also appointed a two-star general to investigate whether the Lackland boot camp and other training centers suffered from "systemic issues" related to sexual misconduct. Despite numerous high-profile education campaigns and directives from the Pentagon, military officials acknowledge that a culture persists in which victims are re­luctant to report abuse. To address the problem, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta in April announced several policies designed to encourage victims to come forward and to require that all sexual-assault complaints be investigated by senior officers. The Air Force has recently come under pressure from lawmakers to provide a fuller accounting of what happened at Lackland. Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), a leading critic of the military's record on sexual assault, has called on the House Armed Services Committee to hold hearings as it did in the Aberdeen scandal. "This scandal is exploding at Lackland, and it is frighteningly similar to what happened at Aberdeen," Speier said in a telephone interview. Speier said the military needs to overhaul its judicial system so that sexual-assault cases are investigated and prosecuted outside the normal chain of command to remove the incentive for commanders to cover up incidents that could make them look bad. At Lackland, the Air Force has filed charges against six instructors, with alleged wrongdoing ranging from rape to improper sexual relations with a trainee. Investigations into six other instructors are pending. Air Force officials said that most of the misconduct occurred during basic training but that in some cases, instructors engaged in improper sexual relations with recruits after they had moved on to other training programs. All told, the Air Force has identified 31 victims, each of whom remains in the service. Rice, the Air Force general in charge of training, said the problems at Lackland surfaced in June 2011 when a female recruit reported being sexually harassed. Four months later, he said, three instructors in the 331st Training Squadron reported that misconduct among their fellow trainers was more widespread. Advocacy groups said one of the biggest obstacles to preventing sexual abuse in the military is a culture of silence. "For every instructor that assaults a recruit, there are usually dozens of others who have known about the problem," said Anu Bhagwati, a former Marine officer and executive director of the Service Women's Action Network. About 22 percent of the Air Force's recruits are women, but only about 11 percent of its training instructors are female. Bhagwati called boot camp "a target-rich environment" for sexual abuse because instructors wield total authority over raw recruits. "It's the kind of environment where you're being yelled at 24-7, where you're terrified of everybody around you," she said. How are you supposed to ask for help if you're the victim of sexual assault?