Generally Speaking (25 page)
By the time the courts-martial were concluded in the spring of 1997, a shocking pattern of sexual abuse of trainees had emerged involving additional defendants. It became clear that a relatively small number of drill instructors had used their authority over young junior enlisted women undergoing Advanced Individual Training at Aberdeen either to rape them or to coerce them into sexual relationships. This coercion was often accompanied by physical abuse and threats, leaving the trainees terrified. The drill instructors went so far as to have contests with each other as to who could dominate the largest number of trainees.
Staff Sergeant Delmar Simpson, the most serious offender, was found guilty of eighteen counts of rape and twelve counts of indecent assault, as well as lesser charges. Army prosecutors proved that Simpson coerced and dominated the young women trainees for whom he was responsible. In one case, where Simpson discovered a trainee was having an illegal but consensual relationship with another drill instructor, Simpson ordered the woman to his office, raped her, and told her if she reported the attack, authorities wouldn't believe her because of her relationship with the other NCO. Simpson received a twenty-five-year prison sentence after the military jury found him guilty of rape and other sexual misconduct charges.
In all, ten Ordnance Center and School personnel had charges preferred against them. The only officer charged, Captain Derrick Robertson, pleaded guilty to adultery and other charges, including conduct unbecoming an officer. He was sentenced to serve one-year confinement, followed by dismissal from the service with a loss of total pay and benefits.
It is fair to say that as the Aberdeen sexual abuse scandal unfolded, it became one of the Army's most devastating leadership failures since the Vietnam War.
Then, in February 1997, another shocking allegation exploded in the media. Sergeant Major of the Army Gene McKinney was suspended from his duties pending resolution of allegations[$$$ MS page no 170] of sexual misconduct a recently retired soldier made against him. Only a moral leader beyond reproach is considered for the position of the top enlisted soldier in the service. The Army investigation of the original charges, which paralleled the Aberdeen investigations and courts-martial, eventually led to McKinney's own court-martial. He was charged with adultery, indecent assault, making threats, and maltreatment of soldiers, allegations involving four women during the 1990s.
During a pre-court-martial hearing in the summer of 1997, McKinney's former public affairs NCO, retired Sergeant Major Brenda Hoster, testified McKinney had forcibly kissed her and made unwanted sexual overtures. Other witnesses, all enlisted women in the armed services, testified McKinney had solicited them for sex or tried to coerce them into sexual relationships. One witness cooperated with investigators who taped a telephone conversation between her and McKinney in which he urged her to change her earlier statements to the Army.
The investigation and court-martial proceedings dragged on for over a year, keeping McKinney's name in the news media and inevitably harming the Army's reputation as an institution that provided a fair and equitable environment for women soldiers. In March 1998, the court-martial convicted McKinney of only one of the nineteen specifications of misconduct with which he was charged, finding him guilty of obstruction of justice related to his efforts to have the witness withdraw her testimony. McKinney was sentenced to a reduction of one grade and was reprimanded. The Army allowed him to retire without further punishment.
I watched these troubling developments unfold with a sense of combined anger and deep concern. Young women who joined the Army had a right to feel safe, to serve as soldiers with dignity, not to be preyed upon by drill instructors who saw them as mere sexual objects they could brutalize. And the Army had the right to expect much better leadership than Sergeant Major McKinney had shown. I knew, however, that the sordid Aberdeen and McKinney episodes did not represent a true picture of the Army as a whole.
I had only two contacts with the Smiths during this period. There was a Christmas reception that they and I both attended, but I stayed away from Larry Smith, speaking briefly to Ann but not to him. At the end of the reception, I was looking for a place to put my glass down and he appeared from somewhere, lifted my glass and said, “I'll take that for you.” I remained silent.
Several months later, I was caught in a receiving line behind the Smiths at a large farewell dinner. I found this situation very awkward. And I could see that both Ann and Larry felt awkward as well. Ann recognized from my silence that a rift had developed between us, and I would guess that she did not know why.
Meanwhile, I had been busy with responsibilities far more important than my individual grievance with Larry Smith. On November 22, 1996, two weeks after General Reimer voiced the Army's determination to thoroughly investigate the situation at Aberdeen, Secretary of the Army Togo West announced formation of the Secretary of the Army's Senior Review Panel on Sexual Harassment, of which I had been appointed a member.
The Review Panel had an unprecedented charter: Conduct a thorough, Army-wide investigation into the perceived and actual levels of sexual abuse, harassment, and discrimination at all levels. Secretary West also gave the Review Panel the mandate to recommend concrete changes in any existing Army policies in order to improve the human relations environment. Finally, he asked the members to determine how Army leaders throughout the chain of command viewed and exercised their responsibilities to prevent sexual harassment, specifically addressing actions that failed to acknowledge the dignity and respect to which every soldier was entitled.
The Secretary recalled two retired general officers to active duty to head the Review Panel. Major General Richard S. Siegfried, an Infantry officer with a distinguished combat record who had last served as acting Inspector General, U.S. Army, was the chair. The vice chair was Brigadier General Evelyn P. Foote, who had been an Army Deputy Inspector General and commanding general of Fort Belvoir, Virginia. Among the other panel members was Major General Larry Ellis, the Assistant Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel (later the commander of the 1st Armored Division and, when promoted to lieutenant general, Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations and Plans). Command Sergeant Major Cynthia A. Pritchett, a former drill sergeant and instructor at the Army Sergeants Major Academy, was the senior enlisted woman member.
The Review Panel, which in many ways paralleled the ongoing effort of the Army Research Institute, was backed up by a large professional staff that employed the most rigorous polling techniques to elicit the soldiers' opinions on how sexual harassment or misconduct impacted their lives and their units' missions. We used four methods of collecting data: surveys, focus groups, personal interviews, and observation. In all, we contacted over 30,000 soldiers during our investigation. And the specific data analyses involved a cohort of 14,498 men and women soldiers, selected as the most representative sampling. Then the data was subjected to scientifically verified analysis processes to determine its validity.
Working in teams between January and May 1997, Review Panel investigators fanned out to Army units stationed worldwide, interviewing troops at forty posts in the United States and eighteen overseas. I helped interview soldiers and their leaders at a number of these posts, including Fort Lewis, Washington, Fort Polk, Louisiana, and Fort Clayton, Republic of Panama. The Review Panel visited units forward-deployed in the Balkans, in German garrisons, at training sites on sprawling bases in the American West, and in classrooms at a variety of Army schools. In view of the highly publicized priority the Secretary and the Chief of Staff had placed on our mission, we were given complete access to inquire into the human relations environment surrounding soldiers in every conceivable location, performing every type of mission.
We discovered a number of troubling shortcomings and recommended a number of changes. But we also found a very-well-trained and combat-ready Army, the best that any of us had seen in over 200 years' collective experience in uniform. This Army was far better than the poorly led soldiers suggested by the scandalous revelations of Aberdeen.
But the Review Panel found that the Army lacked institutional commitment to the Equal Opportunity (EO) program designed to prevent sexual harassment and discrimination. Further, soldiers distrusted the EO complaint system and were often hesitant to use it.
We also discovered that sexual harassment existed throughout the Army, crossing gender, rank, and racial lines. But sex discrimination was more common than sexual harassment. It is important to note that sexual harassment is a form of sex discrimination.
The overwhelming majority of drill sergeants and instructors performed competently and well. But there was not enough emphasis on the Army core value of respect in the Initial Entry Training where the drill sergeant worked and through which all new soldiers spent varying degrees of time as trainees before joining their assigned units.
Not surprisingly, the Review Panel found that Army leaders were the critical factor in creating, maintaining, and enforcing an environment of respect and dignity. But too many leaders had failed to gain the trust of their soldiers.
A study conducted a year before the panel's investigation produced interesting and disturbing findings about the extent and impact of sexual harassment and sex discrimination. When asked the question, “Were you sexually harassed in the last twelve months?” 22 percent of women soldiers and 7 percent of men answered affirmatively. This means that in an Army of 470,000 active component soldiers in which 15 percent (70,000) are women and 85 percent (400,000) are men, three times as many men as women are being sexually harassed each year.
When broken down by rank and gender, it became obvious that junior enlisted women were the most likely targets for sexual harassment; 29 percent—almost one third of those surveyed—reported sexual harassment, while 17 percent of women NCOs and 6 percent of women officers said they had been sexually harassed. A much smaller percentage of men soldiers of all ranks said they'd been the targets of sexual harassment, but their complaints were significant in that this showed the problem was not limited to women.
The investigation of sexual harassment revealed that inappropriate behaviors were commonplace throughout the Army. They ran the gamut from crude and offensive behavior (unwanted sexual jokes, stories, whistling, and staring), sexist behavior (insulting, offensive, and condescending attitudes based on gender), unwanted sexual attention (including touching or fondling and pressing for dates even when rebuffed), sexual coercion (which included classic quid pro quo cases of job benefits or losses conditioned on sexual cooperation), and finally to sexual assault that included attempted and actual rape.
Crude or offensive behavior was the most common problem, experienced by 78 percent of the women and 76 percent of the men surveyed. Almost as many of each gender said they experienced sexist behavior. The gap widened in the unwanted sexual attention category: 47 percent of the women, 30 percent of the men. Nearly twice as many women than men (15 percent vs. 8 percent) had experienced sexual coercion. The gap closes on reported sexual assault: 7 percent of women vs. 6 percent of men.
Overall, the Review Panel found that 84 percent of these Army women and 80 percent of these Army men reported experiencing some type of inappropriate sexual behavior. But many, apparently, did not perceive these behaviors as sexual harassment because the number of soldiers who believed that sexual harassment was a problem in their unit was relatively small (10 percent of men and 17 percent of women). This was consistent with the personal perception of 22 percent of the women and 7 percent of the men who reported they had been sexually harassed in the previous twelve months.
In a focus group, a soldier commented that there was “lots of low-level sexual harassment,” but it was “just part of the environment.” Others described the least offensive behaviors as “noise,” “static,” or “clutter.” Many soldiers were uncomfortable with the situation, but found their exposure to these behaviors inevitable. What the Review Panel found striking was that Army men and women would tolerate such behavior and not state they had been sexually harassed, an indication that, for whatever reason, behavior that fell within the official definition of sexual harassment was accepted as the norm throughout the Army. One soldier noted that inappropriate behavior and sexual harassment was so pervasive, “I'd keep reporting it every day. But I handle it better than most.” Another said the official definition of sexual harassment was “too broad now,” adding that a newcomer to the unit might perceive sexual harassment, “when it is really only bantering back and forth.”
We learned that soldiers were likely to perceive they were being sexually harassed only when inappropriate behavior reached the level of sexual coercion or sexual assault. When this happened, 52 percent stated that they had been sexually harassed. “As long as no one is touching me,” a soldier said, capturing a common sentiment, “I don't care.”
During focus groups, many of those who had reported they had been sexually harassed described experiences that actually fell within the official Department of Defense definition of sex discrimination. Very often this discrimination involved soldiers being given certain duties solely because of their gender. All these cases involved units in which men and women were serving on an equal footing, with women qualified to perform their Military Occupational Specialty (MOS). The discrimination was often linked to assumptions about sex role stereotypes concerning abilities, competence, status, and roles of the particular gender (either man or woman), which resulted in the disparate treatment or a negative impact on those soldiers. For example, an officer or NCO might have made the arbitrary decision to assign women to “light” administrative-type duty, while men got the dirtier, heavy-lifting jobs. In a full field exercise, this might involve men digging trenches and foxholes, while women set up tents or light equipment.