Four months after his May graduation was blocked when he was found running a porn site off his school computer, an Air Force Academy cadet was formally charged with using the school computer for porn and to solicit sex parties online.
Air Force prosecutors charged Sterling Barnes with four specific offenses based on the porn site the academy discovered in the spring, including using a government computer to advertise and sell porn for profit, storing and showing porn on a government computer, having sex and sodomy with women while other men were present, and wrongfully arranging more than one man other than himself to have sex with a woman, according to the Rocky Mountain News.
An Academy spokesman whom the News didn't identify told the paper Barnes hasn't yet been set for an Article 32 hearing, named for the section of the Uniform Code of Military Justice which allows the equivalent of a hearing to determine whether there's enough evidence to bind Barnes for court martial.
Barnes's Website solicited group sex, especially with multiple men and one woman, the News added, and boasted of a goal of arranging 100 group sex gatherings. "Yes, we know this is an ambitious goal," said a statement on the site, "but we know that you don't get anywhere if you don't set your sights high. If you are on your way to Colorado (especially Denver) then let us know. We love to set up parties."
The Air Force also accused Barnes of videotaping some of the activity at those parties.
The Barnes case arose in the direct wake of the worst sex scandal in the history of the Air Force Academy, when dozens of incumbent and former female cadets stepped up in February charging they were sexually assaulted while school leaders urged them to stay quiet about the incidents and even punished some of the victims for smaller infractions.
That scandal provoked the Air Force to purge the Academy's top four administrators a month later and put in sweeping reforms in sex crime reporting, drinking rules, and other facets of academy campus life, the News said.
