Women Navy Officers Tread Troubled Water : Study: Retired Navy commander from Coronado publishes the first in-depth look at sexual harassment.

The Navy pilot explained to a disciplinary board that he was only trying to bring some humor into the situation when he pulled his stunt with a subordinate woman officer.

“I tried to lighten things up . . .” the lieutenant commander said. “I pulled my fly down and got up and pulled out my penis, turned around and said (to the woman), ‘So, what do you think of that?’ ”

The startled look on the woman’s face spoke volumes about how funny she thought it was.

“I then put my penis back in my pants, sensing that my attempts at a joke to lighten the situation had failed,” the pilot told the Navy board.

The incident is among several described in a newly published study of sexual harassment of women Navy officers. Conducted by retired Navy Cmdr. Kay Krohne, it is the first in-depth study of the nature of the problem in the Navy.

In another incident, a woman commander was confronted in her private quarters by her commanding officer, a male captain whose rank is equivalent to a colonel, and three other male officers, two who were subordinate to her.

The four men had been drinking and were loud and profane, the woman testified to a disciplinary board. One of the subordinate officers told her to “loosen up,” while the others put their hands up her sweater and pulled her down on the bed and photographed her, she said.

According to the woman’s testimony at the captain’s court-martial, he “asked me if I had ever had an orgasm on a bidet.”

Before leaving her quarters, the captain and one of the subordinate officers exposed themselves to her.

Krohne’s detailed study was written as her doctoral thesis on leadership at the University of San Diego. The study, based on research done from 1988 to 1990, is titled “The Effect of Sexual Harassment on Female Naval Officers.”

The above incidents are graphic examples of the most severe forms of harassment, Krohne said. More commonly, she found, harassment stems from off-color jokes, sexual remarks and brushing up against women sailors.

Krohne retired in 1989 after a 21-year Navy career. She lives in Coronado with her husband, also a retired Navy officer.

Krohne’s research began with a questionnaire on being a female military officer, which she circulated at a 1988 seminar at San Diego State University. Based on the results, she interviewed 61 women officers and found that 40, or about 65%, said they had been sexually harassed. She then selected eight cases--all of which had resulted in formal complaints, hearings and punishment--for further study.

Krohne then filed freedom-of-information requests with the Navy to find out what the men had said during their hearings and what kind of punishment they had received.

The eight victims were from 21 to 38 years old when they were harassed. Two of the eight were Latina, the others were white. Two were married at the time of the incidents, which occurred at Navy bases in San Diego, Virginia, Hawaii and other locations.

“The harassment suffered by the eight women studied in this report is the tip of a very large iceberg posing a dangerous threat to the U.S. armed forces,” Krohne said.

Her findings parallel a 1990 Defense Department report that showed that 64% of the women in the U.S. military had been sexually harassed. Worried department officials said sexual harassment is a vexing problem that could tear apart some military units if not quashed quickly.

Navy officials said they had not seen Krohne’s report, but said they were not surprised by its findings.

“One of our recent surveys showed that 75% of the women and 50% of the men said sexual harassment was a problem,” said Capt. Martha Whitehead, special assistant for women’s policy to the chief of naval personnel in Washington. “So we know it’s out there. It is a very high-level concern in the Navy.”

Whitehead said sexual harassment is a bigger problem in the enlisted ranks than among officers. However, the Navy does not keep statistics on the subject and has no figures on how many incidents are reported each year, Whitehead said.

“We’ve heard a lot about her (Krohne’s) report, and many of us are anxious to get our hands on it,” Whitehead said.

In 1990, the Navy had 8,000 female officers, about 11% of its officer corps.

Drawing from official Navy records and interviews with the victims, Krohne put together a report that shows crude remarks and behavior flowing without hesitation from both male officers and enlisted men.

She quoted a woman sailor who complained of the left-handed compliments given to women by a senior enlisted man who supervised her work unit.

“Whenever a woman would come to work looking good, he would say, ‘You look like you just got f-----.’ That was his way of saying, ‘Gee, you look nice today,’ ” the sailor said.

This attitude toward women is commonplace in the Navy, “a predominantly male environment where women are often viewed more as sex objects than as professional military members,” Krohne said in an interview.

Furthermore, “male naval officers do not view sexual harassment and discrimination as seriously as they do racism,” she said. Krohne argued that the impetus for sexual harassment in the Navy stems in large part from a “majority of male officers (who) do not see a compelling need for women in the Navy.”

Ironically, the denial among Navy officers and enlisted men that harassment is a serious problem is illustrated right in Krohne’s home. Her husband, who flew fighter planes for the Navy for more than 20 years, “still thinks there’s not a big problem with sexual harassment,” she said.

In addition, her father, a career Navy officer, “won’t believe a lot of it,” she said.

Despite an official Navy policy of “zero tolerance” for sexual harassment, military traditions and mind-sets often discourage women from reporting incidents of sexual harassment, Krohne and Navy spokesmen say.

“It’s a zero-tolerance policy, but it’s easier said than done. We know that,” Whitehead said. “ . . . Unfortunately, it’s one of those problems we share with society. We’re working to clarify the definition of sexual harassment so it’s easier for everybody to understand, recognize and combat it.”

More than half the women who told Krohne they had been harassed--56%--said they stopped short of reporting the incident for various reasons, including fear of reprisal and lack of confidence in the system.

“Power is seen as one of the primary causes of sexual harassment,” Krohne said. “ . . . In a military environment, you don’t have to exert very much power for people to feel they have to obey you. You wear your rank on your sleeve.

“You’re expected to follow the rules and never, ever say anything or do anything against your superiors,” she said. “Reporting a superior for this type of behavior makes it tough on a woman, particularly if that superior is well-liked by people in his unit.”

The majority of the women profiled in Krohne’s study were junior officers, ranking from ensign to lieutenant. The one exception was the commander who was groped by the four drunken officers.

All the men accused of harassment in the eight cases were married, Krohne found. Two of the men were court-martialed and forced to resign. The other seven received administrative discipline, although the details were not made available to Krohne.

Reprisals of one kind or another are common against women who report sexual harassment, she said.

In one case, a woman lieutenant junior grade was attacked by her executive officer, a lieutenant commander, in a darkened office. The man attempted to unbutton her blouse but stopped when she protested.

According to Krohne, the woman reported the incident to the commanding officer, who failed to take any action against the harasser. Months later, when the perpetrator was in line for a promotion and poised to take command of a unit that included a large number of enlisted women, the woman officer went outside the chain of command to report him.

Her complaint led to an admiral’s mast, a formal administrative hearing held by an admiral. The offending officer was not promoted and lost his command.

The woman officer was married to a Navy officer. Although her career was not harmed by the incident, her husband was less lucky.

“She still has terrible regret about reporting the incident,” Krohne said. “She feels her husband’s career was ruined. He (husband) was promoted but (was not considered) for a command. . . . She surmises that his career was going great, but here was his wife, making trouble in this tight community of naval officers.”

Krohne found that sexual harassment in the Navy and other branches of the armed forces stunts the “contributions of women to the military mission.” She quoted from another study that said harassment lowers the productivity of women in the military, who “must fritter away time and vigor in dealing with the question, spoken or unspoken, ‘Why won’t you go to bed with me?’ ”

Some victims went to extraordinary lengths to stop or discourage the harassment.

Krohne quoted one woman who decided to gain weight to look less attractive. Another victim said she stopped wearing makeup and began wearing uniforms that were two sizes too big to discourage the officer who was pressuring her for sex.

Krohne and Whitehead agreed that finding a solution to the problem of sexual harassment is a difficult, if not impossible, endeavor. Krohne said the problem can be nipped quickly in the bud at the command level.

“Zero tolerance is great, but it doesn’t mean anything if the unit’s leader doesn’t enforce it,” Krohne said. “The leadership is so important in making changes. If the leader is sincere in both word and deed . . . his or her subordinates are going to follow the commanding officer’s behavior. Of course, that goes both ways, too. If the commanding officer sets a bad example, the subordinates are going to respond accordingly.”

And bad examples were easy for Krohne to find. In one case that resulted in discipline, a woman officer recalled being called in to the office of her commanding officer, who asked, “What did you think of my (penis) hanging out of my shorts yesterday?” When she did not respond, the officer said, “OK, well let me show you again.”