Tailhook Assaults Ignored, Lawyer Says : Lawsuits: Women’s complaints to hotel and police officials were snubbed during naval aviators convention, according to their attorney.

Two of the four women who sued after they were allegedly sexually assaulted at Tailhook Assn. conventions complained immediately to management at the Las Vegas Hilton and police, but their complaints went unheeded, a lawyer for the women said Wednesday.

San Francisco attorney Shamoon Zakaria said the two women, who are from Sacramento, were invited to last year’s Tailhook party by unidentified Navy officers whom the women met in the hotel’s casino. Zakaria is one of three attorneys representing the four women in separate lawsuits against the Tailhook Assn. and Las Vegas Hilton.

The Sacramento women, identified as Lisa C. Reagan and Marie Colleen Weston, were on a weekend excursion to Las Vegas on Sept. 7, 1991, and were staying at the Hilton but were not there expressly to attend the Tailhook Assn. convention, Zakaria said.

However, the two other women, Suzanne Hallett, 28, of San Diego and Judy Mas of Los Angeles, voluntarily attended the 1990 and 1991 conventions, he said. Hallett attended the 1990 convention with two women friends and was allegedly sexually assaulted, but waited until now to sue, Zakaria said.

He said that widespread media coverage of sexual misconduct by Navy and Marine officers at the 1991 convention persuaded her to file a lawsuit.

Mas, who Zakaria said is “a seamstress in her 40s,” was allegedly sexually assaulted at both the 1990 and ’91 conventions. According to Zakaria, Mas attended the 1990 convention with a woman friend, but went to the 1991 convention alone and stayed at the Hilton. When asked why Mas returned in 1991 after she allegedly had been sexually assaulted in 1990, Zakaria said:

“She thought that in 1990 it was a freak thing. She had no idea this was a ritual until she went back the next year. She was horribly surprised that this was not a freak incident but a tradition.”

None of the women are married, and each is seeking at least $2.5 million in damages. Reagan, a real estate agent, and Weston, a computer engineer, were the only ones who complained to hotel and police officials about the alleged attacks, Zakaria said.

“The Navy officers invited (Reagan and Weston) to the third floor,” Zakaria said. “They got in the elevator and immediately upon getting out, they were mobbed and stalked. They had no idea if they were going to be gang-raped. They were horrified.”

He said that each of the four women was “grabbed by hundreds of men.” The drunken Navy and Marine officers poured alcohol over the women’s heads, fondled the victims and “pinched them in the most reprehensible animal-like behavior,” Zakaria said.

Reagan, 34, and Weston, 32, left the third floor as quickly as possible and reported the incident to hotel officials and Las Vegas police, the lawyer said.

“The hotel’s security people came up, took a report from them and basically told them that if their clothes were damaged the hotel would pay for the clothing,” Zakaria said. “The police told them that since they couldn’t identify any of the attackers, nothing could be done. It was the police who told (Reagan and Weston) that if they wanted to do something about it to hire a lawyer.”

On Wednesday, Hilton spokesman Marc Grossman said the hotel had not been served with the lawsuits. But an investigation of the 1991 Tailhook incident conducted for the hotel by an independent attorney showed that “the hotel acted properly and did nothing wrong,” Grossman said.

The Las Vegas Hilton had been the home of the annual Tailhook Assn. conventions for several years. But recently Hilton informed the group that it is no longer welcome at any of the chain’s hotels.

Tailhook Assn. spokesman Stephen Millikin said he had not seen the lawsuits, which were filed Tuesday in Las Vegas, and declined comment.

Each of the women’s lawsuits are similar in that they allege they were sexually molested by unidentified Navy and Marine officers and were forced to endure “unconsented sexual contact.” The incidents also left the women with deep emotional scars that require them to seek extended medical and psychological treatment, the lawsuits say.

Mas’ lawsuit alleges that she was also forced to endure an additional humiliating experience at the 1991 convention when she was detained against her will for 30 minutes in a hotel suite and “forced to observe an unidentified woman have her pubic hair shaved by several” officers.

The lawsuits, which also name 50 John Does, were filed in Clark County Nevada District Court on Tuesday. Last week, tort claims were filed against the Navy in federal court in Las Vegas.

Allegations of sexual misconduct by Navy and Marine officers at the 1991 Tailhook Assn. convention are under investigation by the Pentagon. Navy officials have refused to comment on the allegations pending the Pentagon investigation.

However, not all women identified as Tailhook victims by Navy and Department of Defense investigators agree with government officials that they were sexually assaulted.

Beth Rudd, 33, of San Diego said she was bitten twice on the buttocks by an Australian officer who attended the 1991 convention.

The Aussie was engaging in what is commonly known at Tailhook conventions as “butt rodeo,” where an officer bites a woman’s rear end “and hangs on as long as he can.” Rudd, who works at a health care consulting firm, said the bites left her “with a bad welt,” but that she “never considered myself a victim of Tailhook.”

“I’ll be damned if I’m ever going to send a man to prison for biting me on the butt or pinching me in the ass,” she said in a recent telephone interview.

Rudd, who said she is dating a Navy aviator, wrote a six-page letter defending the Tailhook Assn. to various government officials in August. In the letter, she described the bite by the Australian officer as “a minor incident.”

In the interview with The Times, she described herself as “a veteran Tailhooker” and “expert” on the subject of conduct at Tailhook conventions.

Although Rudd said she did not witness any illegal or untoward behavior at the 1991 convention, she said she also does not “in any way condone any such activity, if in fact it happened.”

However, in the letter she sent to government officials, Rudd said that on the last night of the 1991 convention, an unidentified man warned her against walking through the third-floor hallway, where most of the reported sexual assaults occurred, because the crowd was “ugly in there.”

Rudd said she heeded the advice and “ducked out a nearby side door.”

On Wednesday, Rudd criticized the lawsuits and argued that they will only “disable women and impede their causes.”