Debra and Jesse Hernandez say they’ve been living a nightmare for more than a year, but nothing compares to what their daughter Cassandra has been going through hundreds of miles away.

In the early hours of May 13, 2006, Cassandra said she was raped by three men at a party at Pope Air Force Base in Fayetteville, N.C.

Cassandra is an airman with the United States Air Force. So are the three accused men, and for that reason she and her parents believe the military is trying to cover it up.

“All of a sudden they are against her. Totally against her,” Debra Hernandez said.

Cassandra, who admits she was drinking that night even though she was underage, went to high school in the Houston area, where she was a proud member of the ROTC.

The night of the alleged assault, she was taken to the hospital and eventually given counsel and therapy, but the stress of it was all too much.

She says after a defense attorney with the Air Force harshly interrogated her without representation present, she backed off and decided not to testify.

“It got very bad, I was getting calls late at night. She was in tears, and she was going back and forth on everything,” Hernandez said.

But then the unthinkable happened.

Six months after the alleged assault, the Air Force charged Cassandra and the three men with indecent acts.

And it gave the men accused of the sexual assault immunity to testify against Cassandra, which they accepted.

“When you have a change of command, when you have your first leaders, and over time they switch out. So the people that know her are not there now. So they see a different person than other people might have seen, and when you have that change you might have a different attitude,” Jesse Hernandez said.

In an effort to fight the charge, Cassandra has two Air Force attorneys. Both of them don’t work at the base where she is located and have had difficulty obtaining all the information and evidence they need to help defend her.

To save herself, she’s written letters to Congress and Gov. Rick Perry.

“If I had any idea that I would be treated the way that I have been, I would have never reported this assault. The process has almost been as painful as the rape,” she wrote.

“Will other women come forward after a rape when they hear that this is how they may be treated?”

The Public Affairs division of the Air Force told 11 News it fully investigated the sexual assault allegations, but did not find enough evidence to support Cassandra’s claims.

Cassandra’s next Air Force court appearance is scheduled for sometime in September.