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Subject: 39-Point Spacer Headline; In Military Sex Harassment Cases, His Word Often
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 92 05:02:45 EST
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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 enforcement power, serving
only to advise local commanders, and even pleas to inspectors
general typically are referred back to their points of origin for
investigation. Military policy experts say that can pose a par-
ticular challenge to junior enlisted women and officers who fear
reprisal from superiors.

Rep. Patricia Schroeder (D-Colo.), a senior member of the Armed
Services Committee whose office has been flooded with complaints
from military sexual harassment victims, has sought to address
such fears by backing legislation that would create an indepen-
dent investigative unit reporting directly to the secretary of
defense.'It's Like the Fox Guarding the Henhouse'<

"In too many cases, the way the process works is completely ad
hoc," said Shirley Sagawa, coauthor of a recent study on military
sexual harassment for the National Women's Law Center, a nonpro-
fit advocacy group.  "If someone wants to bury your complaint,
it's very easy for them to do it.  It's against the military eth-
ic. You're supposed to be a part of the team and go along with
the guys so if someone brings a complaint against someone in
their unit, they're very likely going to be retaliated against."

A senior Army officer and psychotherapist who has counseled many
sexual harassment victims went even further. The current system
is "a joke," said the officer, who asked not to be identified.
"It's an internal system. If a soldier complains, the unit's com-
mander is responsible for investigating his own unit.  That's
crazy. Maybe in half the cases you get a responsible commander .
. .  but in the other half, it's like the fox guarding the hen-
house."

Official indifference was a pervasive theme in the Tailhook scan-
dal, which erupted after reports that several dozen women had
been molested at a naval aviators' convention in Las Vegas last
year.

Navy Lt. Paula Coughlin, who was pawed and molested by fellow pi-
lots at the convention, said her immediate boss brushed her off
when she complained of the assault. The Navy and Pentagon inspec-
tors general subsequently found that the Navy's Tailhook probe
had been poisoned by uncooperative witnesses and a desire on the
part of senior officers to avoid negative press.

While the Navy has taken most of the heat, other services also
have been embarrassed by news media reports spotlighting cases of
insensitivity or reprisals. One of them involved Army Spec.
Alexis M.  Colon, who worked at the Fort Hood, Tex., dental clin-
ic and last April 27 formally accused several male supervisors of
repeated sexual overtures and unwanted touching.

But Colon's complaint, far from resolving matters, triggered ac-
cusations by her co-workers that she had sexually harassed them,
for which she was disciplined with a letter of "counseling" two
days later.  That night, the 24-year-old enlisted woman shot her-
self through the heart, writing in a suicide note, "I am too weak
to face those people. . . " according to a copy provided by the
family's attorney.

An Army investigation, while blaming her suicide partly on un-
specified "personal and marital" problems, confirmed that she had
been sexually harassed and said working conditions at the clinic
"may have exacerbated her stress and depression." Although two
sergeants have been disciplined as a result of Colon's complaint,
no action has been taken against the lieutenant colonel who
reprimanded her, Army officials said last week.

Retribution also was an issue in the case of Air Force Maj. Debra
Morrison-Orton, who was fired from her social worker's job at
Peterson Air Force Base, Colo., in November 1990, six days after
she complained to the base equal opportunity office of sexual
harassment by co-workers.

Lt. Col. Kenneth A. Ansell, who commands the clinic where
Morrison-Orton worked, said in a sworn statement that the major
was "deeply into the feminist movement" and that she had
"poisoned the well" by turning female colleagues against their
male superiors.

A base-level inquiry dismissed Morrison-Orton's charges of sex
discrimination, inappropriate physical contact and lewd comments
by a fellow officer who she said liked to refer to her breasts as
"earmuffs." The finding was confirmed by a base legal officer who
cited, among other things, the complaint's "shrill tone" and
"huge volume of paper."

But an investigation by a senior "social actions" officer at the
Air Force Miltary Personnel Center in Texas last spring supported
Morrison-Orton's charges and recommended correction of her per-
sonnel record, an action that was taken last June and reported in
the Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph.

Ansell, in a telephone interview, dismissed that finding as "one
man's opinion" and denied any harassment or reprisal against
Morrison-Orton, now the assistant director of alchohol rehabili-
tation programs at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla. Ansell has not been
disciplined.

The military has scrambled in recent months to reassure Congress
and the public that it takes these matters seriously, and there
is ample evidence that, at least at senior levels, "We get it,"
as acting Navy Secretary Sean C. O'Keefe put it recently.

The Navy has taken the lead among the services, instituting man-
datory sensitivity training for Navy personnel worldwide and dis-
tributing rape prevention literature that advises women to ask
men for identification before accompanying them on dates. The
Navy soon will begin operating a 24-hour-a-day, sexual harassment
hot line for Navy women seeking advice on where to go for help.

The services also are considering revisions to the Uniform Code
of Military Justice that would tighten definitions of sexual
harassment and modernize military rape laws.  Though spousal rape
is a crime in most states, for example, it still is technically
legal in the armed forces for a man to have sex with his wife "by
force and without her consent."Distinguishing Between Bias,
Harassment<

In general, however, military officials have emphasized education
and training over bureaucratic and procedural reforms that they
say could prove cumbersome in the field. "A key aspect is the
military nature of the society we're dealing with," said Col.
William K. At Lee Jr., chief of the Air Force military justice
division. "There are checks and balances . . . but our mission is
to protect the nation. . . . If (commanders) can't function ef-
fectively, the mission doesn't get done and people get killed."

But the perception is widespread among military women that the
system is not up to the task. The Pentagon's sexual harassment
survey, for example, found that less than 40 percent of the women
surveyed believed sexual harassment charges would be taken seri-
ously; 38 percent expressed fear that reporting sexual harassment
would cause problems for them at work; and one in 10 described
their commanding officers as having a "cynical, uninformed or in-
different attitude toward sexual harassment."

To be sure, resolving sexual harassment cases - whether the com-
plaint is tasteless jokes or, at the far end of the continuum,
charges of rape - is rarely an easy task. The evidence, as in
civilian settings, frequently comes down to her word against his.
Behavior that strikes one person as sexual harassment may strike
another as simply obnoxious.  Moreover, it is often difficult to
distinguish between sexual harassment and more subtle forms of
sex discrimination as expressed in poor performance reports, un-
desirable job assignments and abusive management styles.

"In my case . . . it was just plain nastiness," said retired Air
Force captain Louise Bovee, whose boss at Hahn Air Force Base in
Germany was the subject of similar complaints by at least four
other women before he finally was transferred earlier this year.
"He was setting me up to fail."<02:03 11-16C9999-----

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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