A Boynton Beach woman has turned what she calls her Coast Guard nightmare into a national campaign to stop sexual abuse in the military, even helping to push new legislation through the U.S. House of Representatives.

Elisha Morrow, 26, quit the U.S. Coast Guard in disgust not long after boot camp, claiming sexual harassment by Chief Petty Officer Carlos Resendez, who is now in a military prison for abusing his position — but not for sexual assault.

In 2010, she reported Resendez, kicking off the yearlong investigation.

Resendez admitted he had sex with a different, 21-year-old recruit after ordering her to clean his office alone at night. Yet the Coast Guard dismissed an aggravated sexual assault charge because it lacked "the formal evidence," a spokesman said.

"After the court-martial, I was so upset at seeing he'll walk after a year," said Morrow, who testified in the investigation that led to Resendez's court-martial and conviction on charges including maltreating subordinates and adultery.

Frustrated with the military's lack of aggressive prosecution, Morrow contacted U.S. Rep. Lois Frankel, D-West Palm Beach, to tell her story. The threshold for what the military calls rape is too low, she said, if a commander can entice a recruit, have sex with her and evade assault charges.

Morrow wrote hundreds of letters and submitted pieces to activist blogs. Frankel filed an amendment to this year's defense spending plan that seeks to strengthen military rules on sexual assault and rape.

On June 13, Frankel stood on the House floor to talk about "my constituent, Elisha Morrow," and railed against current military sexual assault policy.

"This is not full justice," Frankel said.

Of the 3,192 sexual assaults reported in 2011, the military considered 1,518 of them "actionable," according to the Service Women's Action Network. Meanwhile, one in three people court martialed for sex-related offenses remain in the military, the group reports.

Frankel's amendment passed the House. If it passes the Senate, a judiciary panel must consider changing the way military sex abuse violations are written, clearing the way for harsher punishments for offenders.

Morrow testified her ordeal began in 2009, soon after she arrived in Cape May, N.J., where fresh recruits go for boot camp, an exhausting, eight-week orientation to military life. "Indoctrination," they also call it.

Resendez was Morrow's commander. He also led the sexual harassment training.

"If anyone ever messes with you, come to me," he told them. "Nobody messes with my recruits."

He selected Morrow for a "special job." After other recruits had gone to bed, she was to clean his office. Alone in the room together, she said in testimony that his first question was: "So what's your boyfriend think about you being here?"

Morrow and other women would eventually testify that Resendez used his rank to force women into his office at night after other recruits had gone to bed. It was a pattern of behavior. He made them scrub on their hands and knees, made comments about their bodies and positioned himself near them while they worked. He referred to himself eerily in the third-person, they said.

"Maybe it's just me," Morrow said she thought at first. "Maybe this guy's got a Napoleon complex."

But she soon discovered others were victims of the harassment, as his court-martial eventually proved.

"At boot camp your reputation as a recruit is all you have," one victim testified. And for that reason, they were each reluctant to tell others. Boot camp leaves recruits isolated by design, Morrow said. The structures of power discourage approaching higher authorities, and even then, they believed it would be the commander's word against theirs.

In her testimony, the victim who twice had sex with Resendez was unsure whether this was consensual.

A commander in Tampa later determined it was not in a memo explaining the charges against him: "It is my opinion [Resendez] created a trap to snare [the recruit] and that over time he wore down her resolve and any opportunity she may have had initially to evade him."

For Morrow, the harassment got worse until she graduated and transferred to Michigan, and then California. There she learned Resendez was moving to her base. Disillusioned and chilled by the prospect of seeing him, she says she quit through an "early out" program, walking away six months before she would have qualified for certain benefits, including the G.I Bill.

She moved to Boynton Beach with her husband and now dispatches the Palm Beach Gardens police.

After she reported Resendez, the investigation revealed a succession of recruits he targeted for "house mouse" duty, as it was known among recruits.

On Sept. 26, a court-martial found Resendez guilty of maltreatment of subordinates, failure to obey a lawful order and adultery. He is locked in military prison in Norfolk, Va., serving a yearlong sentence before he will receive a bad conduct discharge.

The U.S. Coast Guard is distancing itself from him: "Good riddance," said spokesman Lt. Paul Rhynard.

He also acknowledged the shortcomings in the violation code, saying "What he did was so much more offensive than the technical names of what he was charged with doing."

As a result of the incident, the Coast Guard implemented spot checks of commanders and removed unnecessary commander contact with recruits, including the "house mouse" detail.

"Change is coming, and it's a long time coming," Rhynard said.

Morrow says she hopes this is true. Last week, the Defense Department unveiled plans for integrating women into frontline combat. But Morrow cautioned the military is an institution that values rigidity and tradition.

"This is a big pill for them to swallow because it's been this way for so long," she said. "It's in their nature to be resistant to change."