Treating Women With Respect : A powerful indictment in the Tailhook case

In a scathing report, the Pentagon’s chief investigative officer has moved to fix individual responsibility in the 1991 Tailhook sexual misconduct case. His findings implicated nearly 10% of the 1,500 officers who attended the now-infamous Las Vegas naval aviation convention in a range of misdeeds that he describes as growing out of a “general atmosphere of debauchery.”

Specific allegations include taking part in indecent assaults and indecent exposure. The Pentagon report found that 83 women and seven men, ranging in age from 18 to 48, were assaulted at the three-day convention. Dozens of women, more than half of them naval officers, told investigators of being groped and stripped by drunken colleagues.

Included as well are 51 cases in which personnel who attended the convention allegedly lied to investigators about what took place.

Besides forwarding the investigative files on at least 140 convention attendees to military authorities for possible legal action, Inspector General Derek Vander Schaaf has called attention to the possible “leadership failure” on the part of 33 active-duty and reserve admirals and two Marine generals who attended the convention.

It will now be up to the Navy and Marine Corps to decide what disciplinary actions to take.

Some of the men identified by the inspector general are likely to be court-martialed. Others could face lesser forms of punishment. For some, perhaps for quite a few, it will mean an end to any hope of promotion and, effectively, an early end to their military careers.

The Navy was given a chance to clean its own house after the first complaints were made by women who attended the convention. Last year Vander Schaaf issued a report saying in so many words that the Navy had botched that opportunity.

A major problem was lack of cooperation from those under investigation, an old-boy network closing of ranks. The inspector general has now pretty clearly succeeded where the Navy failed.

It might be premature to conclude that the Tailhook investigation and what is yet to follow signal a new era in which full acceptance and respect will be assured women in the military. Certainly, though, this sordid affair and its aftermath can be taken as announcing the passing of an old era.

Largely as a result of the Tailhook scandal there are new rules in all the services aimed at preventing the mistreatment of female personnel, with strict punishment specified to make sure that the new standards are followed. The new Tailhook report offers overwhelming evidence, if any were needed, of why those rules are overdue.