Ex-Officer Says She Feared Gang Rape at Tailhook

Paula Coughlin testified Monday that she feared her fellow officers were going to rape her in a hotel hallway during the 1991 Tailhook convention.

“They were trying to pull my underwear off from between my legs,” she sobbed in her first testimony before a federal jury.

“I thought if I didn’t make it off the floor, I was sure I was going to be gang raped.”

She said that at one point she tried to move ahead of a man and he turned, grabbed her breasts and smiled. Coughlin said she finally was able to reach an empty suite.

The next morning, she said, she told her boss, Adm. Jack Snyder, about the attack. Snyder has said that he did not know of the attack until two weeks later.

Snyder’s response, according to Coughlin, was, “Well, that’s what you get for going down a hallway of a bunch of drunken aviators.”

Coughlin is suing the Las Vegas Hilton, where the convention occurred, and Hilton Hotel Corp., saying they failed to provide proper security. She settled her suit against the Tailhook Assn.

A lieutenant, she resigned from the Navy earlier this year.