Navy to Undergo Training to End Sex Harassment

Acting Navy Secretary J. Daniel Howard, condemning “Stone Age attitudes” and “disgraceful behavior” toward women in the Navy, has ordered a servicewide “stand-down” to give every member of the service a day’s training on sexual harassment rules.

In a speech to 300 Navy and Marine Corps officers, Howard said he was determined to erase the “hard-drinking, skirt-chasing, anything-goes philosophy” that led to the Tailhook sexual-abuse scandal.

Howard said that the Navy was permanently severing its ties to the Tailhook Assn. and called on the group’s leadership to disband it. The association of Navy aviators sponsored the now-notorious convention in Las Vegas last fall in which 26 women--half of them officers--were allegedly sexually assaulted by colleagues.

The acting secretary also announced that he was creating a Standing Committee on Women in the Navy and the Marine Corps to review service policies on sexual harassment and hear complaints from victims.

Howard’s action comes as the Navy is reeling from a series of incidents that suggest an entrenched insensitivity toward women in its ranks.

Late Friday, the Navy announced that the commanders of two more F-14 squadrons at Miramar Naval Air Station had been temporarily relieved of their duties pending an investigation into a program of skits at a fighter-pilot party held June 18 at the base officer’s club.

One of the skits included a sign that made a crude sexual reference to Rep. Patricia Schroeder (D-Colo.), who has criticized the Navy’s handling of the Tailhook episode.

Earlier this week, a senior West Coast aviator and the commander of an F-14 squadron at Miramar were temporarily relieved of command pending an investigation into the sign incident.

The Navy announced Friday that Capt. George L. Moe, commander of Fighter Squadron 124, had been temporarily relieved of his duties. His squadron organized the skits, which are a regular feature in the annual fighter-pilot party, an often-raunchy event called “Tomcat Follies.”

The Navy also said that Cmdr. Robert H. Clement, who commanded Fighter Squadron 111, had been reassigned. His squadron put on a separate skit that “was considered to be offensive,” a Navy source said. No other details were immediately available.

Howard last week succeeded former Navy Secretary H. Lawrence Garrett III, who resigned June 27 over his role in the Tailhook debacle and the subsequent cover-up by many of the officers allegedly involved.

Moving quickly to try to contain the spreading damage to the Navy’s image from the sex scandal, Howard said that despite firm guidelines on sexual harassment, the Navy had for too long tolerated unacceptable attitudes and actions toward women.

The acting secretary assembled the senior leadership of the Navy and Marine Corps in the Army auditorium of the Pentagon on Wednesday to deliver the tongue-lashing. The first several rows were filled with generals and admirals; captains, colonels and commanders filled the rest of the seats. One of the officers in the audience described the speech as “a real barn-burner.”

“Those things happened right under our noses,” Howard said of the Tailhook incident, in which the female naval officers and civilians were groped and grabbed as they were pushed along a gantlet of male officers in a hallway of the hotel.

The abuses, Howard said, “were committed by a few, but ladies and gentlemen, they were excused by far too many, and by all the leaders over the years who turned a blind or bemused eye to the crude, alcohol-inspired antics of a few idiots in our ranks.”

The Navy has ordered service-wide training “stand-downs” in the past, but usually to address safety issues after a fatal accident. Howard said that over the next several weeks every Navy and Marine Corps unit must suspend training for a full day to review service laws and regulations against demeaning behavior and language directed at women.

The Tailhook Assn. takes its name from the hook that snags cables to bring landing planes to a stop on aircraft carriers.

An association spokesman said Friday he was “shocked and bitterly disappointed” by Howard’s call for the 35-year-old, Bonita-based booster group to disband. Stephen T. Millikin, a retired naval aviator, said the controversy over the sex scandal at last year’s convention has obscured the “unique” forum the Tailhook convention offers.

Millikin said the event gives junior pilots a place and time to ask direct questions of ranking Navy brass and aviation industry representatives. Formalities of rank and experience are put aside and even the lowliest ensign is encouraged to sharply query top policy-makers, Millikin said.

Two weeks ago, because of the flap over the 1991 convention, the Tailhook Assn. canceled the 1992 meeting, which had been scheduled for Sept. 18-19 in San Diego. But to disband, Millikin said, seems unwarranted.

“We provide a truly unique dialogue,” he said. “It’s unparalleled anywhere in the armed forces. In my opinion, that sort of dialogue must continue.”

In the Miramar incident, Capt. Richard Braden, the No. 2 man at the Navy wing that oversees fighter aircraft in the Pacific Fleet, and Cmdr. Dave Tyler, commanding officer of Fighter Squadron 51, were reassigned on Wednesday.

The Navy said a female patron at the officer’s club saw an “offensive” sign during the “Tomcat Follies” party.

Braden had been serving as chief of staff at the Pacific Fleet’s Fighter Airborne Early Warning Wing, the senior command at Miramar.

Tyler was one of the 14 F-14 squadron commanders at Miramar.

Like Braden and Tyler, the two officers relieved of duty Friday, Clement and Moe, have been assigned to the staff of Vice Adm. Edwin R. Kohn, the commander of the Naval Air Force in the Pacific, the Navy said.

On Thursday, Kohn made a public apology for the sign incident.

“We are going to make changes,” Kohn said during a news conference at the North Island Naval Air Station. “We are going to change . . . a decaying culture that has been proven more and more unproductive and unworthy.”

Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has asked Defense Department officials to report to the panel about the Miramar incident.

In a signal that reports of such sex-related incidents may be spreading to other branches of the armed forces, an Army sergeant has been charged with sexual assault in the alleged attack on a reservist while both were stationed in Saudi Arabia during the Persian Gulf War.

Sgt. David Martinez was charged Thursday, two days after the woman testified before Congress that she would “rather have been shot” than to have been treated the way she was by the Army.

“It’s a year past due, but that’s great. It is very good news,” Spec. Jacqueline Ortiz told the Associated Press. “My battle has paid off. The only thing I wanted was the truth to be known, and now it’s up to the court.”

Earlier this week, Ortiz was among a group of servicewomen who testified before a Senate panel about alleged sexual attacks. She said she immediately reported the alleged assault but that officers ignored her complaint and later reprimanded her for sexual improprieties.

Broder reported from Washington and Abrahamson from San Diego.