Sexual Harassment Can’t Be Tolerated

Tailhook, the Navy’s sexual harassment scandal, has now netted three big fish. Following a Pentagon report harshly critical of the Navy for failing to “aggressively pursue” the men involved in the episode, acting Navy Secretary Sean O’Keefe Thursday accepted the quickly tendered resignations of two admirals and reassigned a third. O’Keefe’s actions and the strong tone of the Pentagon deputy inspector general’s report indicate not only that the Navy botched its own investigation of Tailhook last year but that some officers may have deliberately undermined it.

Rear Adm. Duvall M. Williams, one who resigned, is a case in point. Williams directed the Navy’s initial probe into the events at the 1991 Tailhook convention, an annual gathering of Navy aviators where 26 women, some of them officers, allegedly were assaulted. Yet Williams tried to stop that inquiry, arguing that his office could not get to the bottom of the incident.

The Pentagon concluded that Williams’ attitude toward women in the military should have raised concerns about his ability to conduct a full and proper investigation. According to the report, Williams said “men simply do not want women in the military” and appeared to share that view himself.

To date, only two men have been identified as primary suspects in the assaults, despite the presence of as many as 200 men when the alleged assaults occurred.

O’Keefe sent a clear signal to other naval personnel as well: “Sexual harassment will not be tolerated,” he said. “And those who don’t get the message will be driven from our ranks.” Quite right.