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Subject: 39-Point Spacer Headline; In Military Sex Harassment Cases, His Word Often
Date: Sun, 15 Nov 92 08:24:29 EST
Message-ID: <26.1992Nov15.082429@AmeriCast.com>

39-Point Spacer Headline; In Military Sex Harassment Cases, His
Word Often Outranks Hers<By John Lancaster=Washington Post Staff
Writer=

For Army paratrooper Christine Hart, the nightmare began in her
barracks at Fort Bragg, N.C., where she says she was roused from
a deep sleep and raped by a senior enlisted man early on the
morning of Sept. 21, 1991.

For Navy lieutenant and helicopter pilot Lynn Tasker, it began
with her deployment to the Mediterranean in August 1989, where a
petty officer on board her supply ship showered her with unwanted
attention and written pleas for sex.

And for then-Air Force Capt. Catherine Drader, it began at a re-
mote military listening post on the Mediterranean island of
Crete, where in 1990 her male superior ordered her to submit to a
psychiatric exam in part, he later testified, because she had
filed a sexual harassment complaint against him.

The circumstances differ, but each case contains a common thread.
All three women described themselves as victims twice over: first
of individual male colleagues, second of a military justice sys-
tem that they and many other women in uniform believe is heavily
weighted against them.

Their stories shed light on the many cultural, institutional and
legal barriers faced by women as they struggle toward equity and
acceptance in the macho, insular world of the U.S. military ser-
vices.<

In Hart's case, Army officials implied she had consented to sex,
charged the accused soldier with the relatively minor crime of
adultery and fined and demoted her for underage drinking. In
Tasker's case, the accused sailor was court-martialed but acquit-
ted by a mostly male jury following testimony from the man's
shipmates that she had enticed him by wearing makeup and provoca-
tive gym shorts.

And Drader, the Air Force captain, lost her career. Although mil-
itary psychologists later judged her perfectly sane, her refusal
to report to the psychiatric exam led to court-martial and expul-
sion from the service last June.

In the aftermath of the Navy's Tailhook scandal, military leaders
have assured Congress and the public that they are aggressively
moving to stamp out sexual harassment and more serious forms of
sexual abuse just as surely as they eradicated widespread drug
abuse and race discrimination in the 1970s. There is much to sug-
gest they are serious, from the Navy's removal of three admirals
accused of mishandling the Tailhook probe to a new, three-hour
course for Air Force criminal investigators on rape-victim "em-
pathy."

But the military still has far to go, according to a Washington
Post examination of more than a dozen cases of sexual harassment,
rape and assault involving women in uniform.  Several of the wom-
en agreed to the use of their names, saying they were emboldened
to speak out by the publicity surrounding the Tailhook scandal
and the topic of sexual harassment in general.

"It never ends. It really does not end," said Tasker, who now
flies fixed-wing aircraft at Norfolk Naval Air Station and is
getting out of the Navy next spring. "I'm so tired of fighting
these battles, you can't know."

Although their stories as told in interviews and official mili-
tary records hardly constitute a scientific sample, they did sug-
gest several consistent themes. These include a "blame-the-
victim" approach to rape and sexual assault cases, commanders who
were indifferent or hostile to sexual harassment charges and even
some who retaliated against victims through job transfers, criti-
cal performance reports and psychiatric exams.  The armed forces
have no monopoly on sexual harassment, but they do get more than
their share of complaints. For example, of 12,500 active-duty
military women surveyed by the Pentagon in 1988 - the most recent
year for which comprehensive data are available - 5 percent re-
ported that they had been victims of actual or attempted rape or
sexual assault over the previous year alone.

Moreover, about two out of three women surveyed, or 64 percent,
reported experiencing during the same period some form of sexual
harassment, whether taunts, catcalls, "cornering" or direct pres-
sure for sexual favors.  That compares to a rate of between 30
and 40 percent in similar surveys of the civilian workplace.<

Military women appear to be at a disadvantage for several rea-
sons. These include their status as a distinct minority - women
in uniform constitute barely 11 percent of the nation's 1.6 mil-
lion military personnel - and an authoritarian command structure
that invests officers and senior enlisted personnel with near-
absolute control over subordinates' lives.  While civilian vic-
tims can complain to the independent Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission and - if their cases are found to have merit - file
suit under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, military women have
no such options. Instead, they are encouraged by policy and trad-
ition to resolve sexual harassment complaints within their "chain
of command," meaning direct superiors who in many cases may be
part of the problem.

Military officials note that victims can seek help through such
nominally independent channels as chaplains, military inspectors
general or - in the case of the Army and Air Force - base-level
equal opportunity offices.

But equal opportunity offices lack enfo

Copyright 1992, The Washington Post.  This story is from the
Washington Post's Capitol Edition On-Line and is not to be ar-
chived or redistributed.

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poration (usa@AmeriCast.COM)