For the first time since Virginia Military Institute began admitting women in 1997, a male cadet faces a criminal charge of sexually assaulting one of his female classmates.

Stephen J. Lloyd, 21, of Mason Neck was charged with rape after a 20-year-old woman reported that he attacked her early Saturday morning in the military school's cadet barracks, VMI spokesman Stewart MacInnis said Wednesday.

The woman met with counselors and has returned to classes, MacInnis said.

Lloyd, a senior at VMI in Lexington, is being held in the Rockbridge Regional Jail, and the VMI police department continues to investigate, MacInnis said.

VMI has about 1,400 students, of whom about 110 are women.

When a U.S. Supreme Court decision ended more than a century and a half of males-only admissions at VMI, efforts to prevent sexual harassment and violence were part of the school's transition.

In the first few years that women attended VMI, the school's top cadet was dismissed for allegedly demanding sex from three freshmen women. Another male cadet was expelled after being found having consensual sex with a female exchange student, who was sent back to her school.

That a dozen years have passed with no criminal charges stemming from sexual assault is a testament to VMI's attention to protecting its students, not a sign that the school ignores problems, said Judy Casteele, executive director of Project Horizon, a Lexington-based crisis intervention agency.

Project Horizon provides training to VMI cadet leaders and to school administrators. VMI lists the agency's hotline, along with designated faculty members and cadet peer groups, as a means of reporting problems with sexual harassment or violence.

"I find that there's a lot of similarities between college campuses," said Casteele, citing her experiences at nearby Washington and Lee University and in Radford, where she led the Women's Resource Center of the New River Valley before going to Lexington.

"VMI is certainly an institution that prides itself on honor and respect, and that helps a lot in this regard, but they're not immune to the problems of the real world."

The U.S. Department of Education's most recent campus crime statistics, which include incidents that may not have resulted in criminal charges, showed that VMI reported one alleged forcible sexual offense in each of 2005, 2006 and 2007, a rate not much different from similar size schools in the state.

Hollins University, with 780 undergraduate women and 260 coed graduate students, reported three offenses in 2005, two in 2006 and one in 2007. Roanoke College, with 2,000 students, reported four offenses in 2005, one in 2006 and two in 2007.

Emory & Henry College, with 1,000 students, reported two offenses in 2006 and none the other years. W&L, with 1,770 undergraduates and 412 graduate law students, had one incident in 2006 and none the other years.

MacInnis said that about one sexual assault has been reported each year since women began attending VMI but those reports never led to criminal charges.

Although MacInnis did not have information on the earlier complaints, he said investigations may not have found evidence to justify proceeding to court or victims may have been unwilling to press charges.