On the 5th, 13 cadets who had studied at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy sued the school and its superiors, accusing the school of long-term condoning sexual violence and sexual assault. They each claimed $10 million, a total of $130 million.

The plaintiffs include 12 women and one man, who said they were sexually assaulted while at school. The cases occurred as far back as the mid-1980s and as recently as a few years ago. Christina Dunn, a lawyer who filed a class action lawsuit on their behalf, said that the defendants not only failed to prevent sexual violence, but acquiesced to the trend of sexual assault and covered up the crimes for the perpetrators.

A female plaintiff said in the complaint that she was raped twice by a senior student while she was at school. She did not report it immediately because the senior student was "popular" and no one would believe her statement, and she heard that similar reports made by senior students before were ignored. She reported it to a school official about a year later, but the official did not report it. Many years later, she reported it to the Coast Guard officials, but the disciplinary investigation against the perpetrator also did not follow up.

Another female plaintiff who had a similar experience said that due to worry and fear, she did not report it to her superiors immediately. After she mustered up the courage to report it, she was never interviewed and did not know whether there was an investigation. School officials did not support her to continue reporting, and the report materials she wrote were inexplicably lost.

Ryan McLeod, another attorney representing the plaintiffs, said he expected more victims to come forward after the lawsuit was published. He said sexual violence at the military academy has become an "epidemic" and that victims have never gotten justice because of a "campus culture of silencing, fear and retaliation."

A spokesman for the U.S. Coast Guard Academy declined to comment on the lawsuit, saying only that it would resolve the matter under federal law.

CNN first exposed the Coast Guard Academy's "dark history" of covering up sexual assault scandals. A subcommittee of the U.S. Senate later intervened in the investigation and released a report last month. The report said that the military academy in New London, Connecticut, has long had a bad habit of humiliating sexual assault victims, failed to investigate the perpetrators, and failed to provide the victims with the help they deserve.