Tailhook Behind Her, She Starts a New Life : Courts: Had she known how painful life would become, Paula Coughlin says she might have rethought the whole thing. But having won a civil suit, she says she can again be proud of herself.

“My mother always said to me, ‘Right makes might.’ At last, I can believe her.” --Paula Coughlin

She has lost her career, most of her friends, and nearly a third of her weight. She has been called a man-hater and a slut, a disgrace to the Navy and a crybaby who should have known better.

But last week, a federal jury said that Paula Coughlin, the woman who blew the whistle on Tailhook, was right. She had been hurt and she had been wronged, and for that, said the jurors, she should be compensated to the tune of $6.7 million.

“Even if I never see one penny, it is worth it,” says Coughlin, 32, without hesitation, “because for the first time in a very long time, I am proud of myself. I’ll never forget how really, really bad it was, but I am very gratified by the fact that I had the strength to stick it out.”

After deliberating for two hours, a federal jury ruled Oct. 28 that the Las Vegas Hilton Hotel and its parent company was guilty of “oppression or malice” for its role in the sex-abuse scandal and awarded Coughlin $1.7 million in damages. Three days later, the jury returned to award her another $5 million in punitive damages.

Coughlin’s suit charged the hotel chain with failing to provide adequate security during the notorious 1991 Tailhook aviators convention. Hilton Corp. Vice President Mark Grossman said last week that the decision will be appealed.

In her first interview since the verdict, Coughlin--the first of 12 women to take Tailhook-related charges to trial--told The Times that while the nightmares continue, she is ready to give herself “the luxury of assuming that life will return to normal.”

“I used to just daydream about coming home to this,” says the former helicopter pilot and admiral’s aide from her cozy brick home in Virginia Beach, Va.

“All my mums are in full bloom and the pansies are ready to go in and it’s a beautiful sunny day. I must still be in denial about all that’s happened because I feel like it is my friend who just got back from Las Vegas and not me.”

The seven-week trial was an ordeal, she said, but one she had been prepared for by years of attacks and counterattacks that preceded it.

From the morning after Tailhook when she reported the incident to her admiral, the Navy, she says, began punishing her for speaking out. Spokesmen for the Navy have said Coughlin’s subsequent transfers and her ultimate grounding were a result of her mental instability, which they agree resulted from the stresses of Tailhook.

Before the trial began, Hilton lawyers asked her to produce every photograph taken of her from 1986 to 1993, every piece of clothing she’d worn during the three days of the Tailhook convention, and every piece of paper relating to the trip, including the receipt for a red silk dress she bought at Neiman Marcus.

Her mental stability was tested and retested at every turn by expert witnesses for the court, including a Hilton-hired psychiatrist who reported that Coughlin was indeed suffering “severe acute stress” as a result of the Tailhook attack. During the convention, she was groped and pawed by a line of men taunting her and chanting “Admiral’s aide! Admiral’s aide!” as they plunged their hands into her bra and grabbed her crotch in a Hilton hallway.

According to Dr. Richard Rahe, a Hilton witness, Coughlin’s self-image was damaged because until Tailhook, she had viewed herself as “a full peer” with the Top Gun male aviators who later molested her. Rahe also found that Coughlin exhibited paranoia, but conceded that her belief she was being plotted against was “likely accurate.”

Before the pressures of Tailhook forced her resignation in May, Coughlin was one of a handful of women entrusted by the Navy to pilot its biggest, meanest helicopter--the CH-53 Sea Stallion. Until Tailhook, she was “the best of the best,” according to her San Diego lawyer Nancy Stagg.

Now, Coughlin says her Navy days are over. She will probably go back to college in January to train for a new--as yet undecided--career. “There are so many misconceptions of who I am and what I am. As much as I wish it weren’t true, I don’t see how I could ever go back. The Paula Coughlin Hate Club is still out there.”

Despite her reputation as “the Rosa Parks of the ‘90s” and “the woman who changed the U.S. Navy,” Coughlin believes that her victory in civil court may not erase the long tradition of military animosity toward women.

On Sunday, a Navy spokesman acknowledged that seven male instructors at a Navy school in San Diego are being investigated on charges they demanded sexual favors from women students in exchange for passing grades. Most of the allegations involve verbal harassment, with some physical abuse such as grabbing, the spokesman said.

Days before the Coughlin jury handed down its verdicts, 18 female cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point charged that some members of the football team had groped their breasts at a pep rally. Three cadets were later barred from the team.

Coughlin said she was sorry for the latest victims but was not surprised. Attitudes toward women, she predicts, will not change overnight. “First we’re going to see (men) following the rules against sexual harassment just to stay out of trouble--not because they believe that behavior is wrong, but because they don’t want to get caught.

“I am convinced that you can’t change the way a person thinks, but you can change their behavior. And eventually, that will change the way they think as well . . . eventually.”

Still, Coughlin, ever the patriot and loyal daughter of retired career aviator Paul Coughlin, says she misses the Navy--”especially now.” She says she was saddened that none of her former colleagues called with congratulations on the court decision. But her expectations of her fellow officers have never recovered from what happened that night in September, 1991.

Never during the seven-week federal trial was there any dispute that Coughlin had indeed been groped by drunken male aviators as she was passed along a crowded third-floor gantlet.

Last year, a 23-month Pentagon investigation concluded that Coughlin wasn’t the only Tailhook victim--and named 82 other women who had been assaulted or harassed at the annual pilots gathering. Although Secretary of Navy H. Lawrence Garrett III was forced to step down and several other high-ranking officers pushed into early retirement, no officer was ever disciplined and no courts-martial were ever convened.

The Defense Department’s failure to punish any of the aviators involved in Tailhook fueled a backlash against Coughlin. Her enemies stepped up their smear campaign, which for a time, included a newsletter titled “The Gauntlet,” published by an ex-naval aviator, sometimes under the pseudonym Paul A. Coffin.

As Hilton lawyers would attempt to do later in court, the newsletter portrayed the former Navy lieutenant and admiral’s aide as a party girl who only wanted money and publicity.

Today, Coughlin says if she had known how painfully public her case would become, she might have rethought the whole thing.

“I don’t think I was weighing the costs every time I came to a crossroads and chose to push on. Maybe it was Irish stubbornness, I don’t know. I do know that I am grateful that the jury wasn’t persuaded by any of the old sexist defenses that were thrown out--that I shouldn’t have been there in the first place, that I should have known better, that I shouldn’t have been dressed the way I was dressed.

“I know I am going to stop running six, seven, eight miles a day now. I’m going to spend time with my boyfriend, Joe, whom I’ve known since fourth grade, and I’m going to be proud of myself and my lawyer Nancy Stagg and my mother and everyone else who never lost sight of what we were doing.

“A message has been sent here: You can’t allow women to be abused. You just can’t.”