Southland Woman Tells of Her Annapolis Ordeal

Gwen Marie Dreyer figured she had two choices on that cold December afternoon when two male midshipmen handcuffed her to a bathroom urinal in a dormitory at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., while a dozen other male cadets stood by snapping photographs, taunting and applauding.

“When I look back at it, I should have cried when they took me in there,” she said. “I was angry and I was upset. At the time, I told myself that I had two choices--I could cry or just go along with it.

“And so I went along with it. I begged them to stop. But I wasn’t about to cry in front of a bunch of plebes.”

In what Naval Academy officials have explained as a case of “good-natured high jinks” that got out of hand, several midshipmen held female cadets out of the bathroom while others shouted encouragement to cadets who encircled Dreyer, pretending to urinate on her.

“For a second, I knew what it was like to be raped--but I knew they wouldn’t do that to me,” the 19-year-old Encinitas woman said Tuesday, detailing the Dec. 8 incident that has since triggered several investigations into sexual harassment and other alleged misconduct at the prestigious military college.

“But after the whole thing was over, one of the guys told my roommate that this kind of thing was going to keep happening until we, the female midshipmen, got a sense of humor.”

Last month, Dreyer wrote a letter of resignation from the academy, citing the bathroom incident and the treatment of women in general.

Rear Adm. Virgil L. Hill Jr., superintendent of the academy, has ordered two special inquiries into treatment of women at the school, while a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee has urged Defense Secretary Richard Cheney and Navy Secretary Lawrence Garrett to launch a personal probe of incidents that include a recent alleged rape on campus of a woman by a midshipman.

The case has also drawn national attention to the story of a second-year cadet who had once dreamed of following the academy careers of her father and grandfather but who instead chose to resign from the school located just outside Washington in suburban Maryland.

Since news broke out two weeks ago of her resignation, Dreyer says she has been hounded for newspaper, television and magazine interviews. On Tuesday morning, she awoke to a CNN television crew on the front porch of her house in northern San Diego County.

Sipping a glass of ice water at a Carlsbad restaurant, she said she was tired of all the publicity.

“The last thing I wanted was this kind of attention,” she said, “having your picture plastered all over the newspapers and television because you got handcuffed to a urinal, rather than getting publicity because you made a discovery, did something good.”

If anything good comes from the attention, she said, it will be to get the word out about the treatment of women at the Naval Academy, which first allowed admission of female cadets 14 years ago.

“This was not just a case of hazing at all,” she said. “It has to do with being a woman. Women are integrated into the academy, but they’re not accepted. And that feeling is great among the male midshipmen there.”

The teen-ager is angry about the way the Navy handled the inquiry into the December handcuffing incident, in which two midshipmen were punished with demerits and loss of leave time. Six others also received written warnings for lesser roles in the case. The Navy dragged its heels on the investigation, she complained, then gave the midshipmen no more than a slap on the wrist and tried to pass the incident off as no more than an innocent prank.

Moreover, academy officials have taken the photographs of the incident and are trying to use them against her, she said. “They said they took the pictures so that nothing like this would ever happen again,” she said.

“But now they’re trying to use them against me. They told my father that they have the pictures to prove that I was not under any undue duress that day because I wasn’t crying or screaming.

“They also asked my father just how well he knew me, insinuating that I gladly went along with the whole thing.”

Cmdr. Ed Kujat, executive assistant to Adm. Hill, would not comment on the photographs. He added, however, that the case was an “isolated incident” and not indicative of widespread sexual discrimination among the academy’s 4,334 students, of which women make up about 10%.

Dreyer said she had been the victim of “crude looks and comments” by several midshipmen in her company even before the incident.

But she said she hopes her experiences will save others from what she went through.

“I still believe in what the academy’s all about,” she said. “That’s what hurts the most.”