COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO. ? An Air Force investigative team that spent 10 days looking into rapes at the Air Force Academy did not talk with the city’s primary rape and domestic abuse clinic, where 22 of the alleged victims sought help.

Cari Davis, executive director of the TESSA rape-crisis clinic, said cadets had been coming to the clinic for the past 15 years because they feared retribution at the academy.

Some of the alleged victims have said they were punished for reporting the assaults, and in some cases were expelled.

“Our clinical staff, and former clinical staff, can state with reasonable certainty that they worked with 22 cadets who were assaulted,” said Jennifer Bier, head of clinical services. Other cadets called but did not come into the clinic, she said.

Academy spokeswoman Sgt. Marlise Wood confirmed that the investigative team left Friday. She did not rule out that they may talk later with the clinic. “The fact that the team has left doesn’t mean that the investigation is over.”

Dorothy Mackey, a former Air Force captain who founded an advocacy group that tracks sexual assaults in the military, said Saturday that the failure to consult with the clinic further proved the need for an outside investigation involving civilian prosecutors.

“This is all for show. They don’t want to know what happened because some of these rapes were committed by men who are now generals and colonels,” Mackey said.

The Air Force sent a team to the academy to investigate the reports of the assaults after female cadets complained to U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., and other senators.

Air Force Secretary James Roche told The Associated Press in an interview Friday that an outside investigation was a possibility.

“If we have a case that warrants opening and that would be legal to do, we would do it,” Roche said.

Davis, whose Trust, Education, Safety, Support Action clinic near downtown Colorado Springs employs 37 full-time and 13 part-time staff to help victims of domestic abuse as well as sexual assault, said the academy could not be compared to other universities.

“You have young men in hormone overdrive put in a situation where power and control dominate, and on top of that they have access to weapons,” she said.

Bier said one of the assaults was allegedly committed by an Air Force colonel who was six months from retirement. The colonel was allowed to retire with reduced pay and benefits, she said.

Mackey said she had spoken with many of the victims and their parents, and said she had recently learned that one victim was a male cadet.

Officials at the academy have refused to comment on specific cases citing privacy rules.

Air Force officials have said the academy allegations are as serious as the 1991 Tailhook scandal, when dozens of women complained they were assaulted or groped by drunken pilots at a Navy booster group’s convention.