Army’s Hotline Is Nerve Center for Growing Sex Harassment Inquiry

On the ninth floor of a dreary federal office building a few miles from the nation’s capital, there is a windowless room with faux wood paneling hidden behind an unmarked door. Here, in this unremarkable place, the U.S. Army is gathering evidence for what amounts to a massive apology to women, a mea culpa of the grandest order.

Five soldiers sit behind computer terminals, answering telephones and typing notes as they catalog a litany of complaints. The obscurity of their location is by design. This is, Army officials say, highly sensitive work.

On a gray December afternoon, the calls roll in. A woman reports that her boss fondled her repeatedly throughout the 1970s. A man inquires about the status of a sexual harassment investigation in which his wife was the victim. Another woman says that she was raped but she is afraid to give investigators her name.

This is the Army’s toll-free sexual harassment hotline, established Nov. 7 in the wake of disclosures that drill sergeants at a Maryland training school allegedly had raped young recruits. Over the last several weeks, those initial reports have grown into a far-reaching inquiry that has left deep footprints on the Army, much the way the notorious 1991 Tailhook scandal left its mark on the Navy.

If the Army scandal were a human being, this nondescript room in Alexandria would be its brain--the nerve center sending impulses to the rest of the body.

New Complaints

So far, nearly 6,600 calls have come in and, as of Thursday, the Army had deemed 977 new complaints of sexual misconduct worthy of investigation--a staggering number that is having ripple effects throughout the military’s largest branch.

Of the new complaints, 145 are the subject of full-scale criminal investigations, Army officials say. An additional 444 are in the preliminary investigative stages, while 144 have been referred by Army detectives to other agencies, such as the Army’s equal opportunity office, because they involve harassment but not criminal activity. More than one-quarter of the cases--244--have already been closed for insufficient evidence.

New allegations are being logged every day, some dating as far back as World War II. The Army’s criminal investigative division--a detective unit with 780 enlisted and 1,100 civilian agents scattered at posts around the globe--has pledged to examine every single complaint, no matter how old.

To accomplish this herculean task, investigators have been interviewing victims and potential witnesses worldwide, in some cases hopping planes to do so. Their goal: to contact every hotline caller at least by telephone within five days after a complaint is lodged. At the same time, the Army detectives are tracking down 990 recruits who over the last two years have trained at Maryland’s Aberdeen Proving Ground, where the scandal broke. About two-thirds of the women, some of whom had been absent without leave, have been contacted.

Army lawyers, meanwhile, are preparing themselves for prosecutions. At Ft. Leonard Wood, Mo., one drill sergeant has been convicted of sexual misconduct and another has been acquitted but is expected to face additional charges. At Aberdeen, a captain and two sergeants face charges ranging from adultery to rape; one drill sergeant is said to have 26 female victims, allegedly raping seven soldiers.

Many Kept Quiet

The charges, not surprisingly, have horrified the Army’s top brass. But as the hotline calls mount, an equally horrifying message has emerged: Hundreds, if not thousands, of women have kept quiet about all forms of sexual misconduct, despite procedures designed to encourage them to report it.

Indeed, the Army updated its system for reporting sexual harassment two years ago and, according to Army Secretary Togo West Jr., the new method was at the time hailed by top Defense Department officials as a model for other services to follow. If the hotline has demonstrated anything, West said in a recent interview, it is the foolhardiness of trusting what seems like a good system.

“We can never again blindly trust in a policy or a complaint procedure without also being careful to make sure that our soldiers have confidence in it,” the Army secretary said.

The investigation is affecting the lives of the Army’s 495,000 soldiers and 259,000 civilian employees in ways large and small. Sexual harassment experts, who had been preparing a new training video before the scandal erupted, are now working hurriedly to distribute it throughout the Army so that a new round of prevention workshops can begin. Some posts, including Ft. Knox, Ky., are already offering refresher courses.

At Ft. Riley, Kan., the commanding general recently conducted a focus group--a “sensing session,” in Army lingo--with female soldiers to assess the mood on post. Public affairs officers are run ragged by media interview requests.

At the Personnel Command in Alexandria, 15 soldiers have been removed from their customary duties and “detailed” to the hotline, where they take turns at the graveyard shift. The soldiers can always tell when the talk shows are on the topic--their phones ring off the hook.

Computer programmers have been tapped to write special software for the new phone system, enabling officials to print “daily situation reports” and track complaints by age, race and other factors.

Army recruiting officials, meanwhile, have sent letters to the parents of all incoming female enlistees, assuring them of the Army’s “zero tolerance” of sexual harassment. While West said that the scandal has had little effect on enlistments, at least one recruiter thinks otherwise.

“It’s really put a scare on females,” said Sgt. Rebecca Reed of San Antonio, Texas. She said that her office has not signed up a single woman since the scandal broke.

“In a couple of cases, parents have talked with our recruiters and told them that they just wanted their child to go to college. . . . It’s a touchy situation.”

There are, however, bright spots. Many Army women share a sense of hope that finally something is being done about a problem that, fueled by the Army’s macho culture, has persisted for years.

“No one wants to air their dirty laundry,” said Sgt. Valerie Reed, “but, if this is a way to fix the problem, then it’s a positive thing.”

Said Capt. Kate Scanlon, the 34-year-old career soldier who is commanding the hotline: “The longer I am here and the more calls I take, I’m actually very proud of the Army. There is a sincere interest in getting to the bottom of this.”

Yet there is also a sense of sadness that this proud institution must suffer a blot on its reputation.

And there is a feeling of dismay. Many women--and men--remain mystified by a central question: In an organization that had strict rules designed to prevent sexual misconduct and encourage its reporting, how could this have happened?

West has given an independent review board 120 days to examine the Army’s policies for preventing and reporting sexual harassment and to make recommendations. At the same time, a congressional panel is conducting its own inquiry.

While the calls have tapered off a bit as the weeks wear on, the complaints show few signs of abating. Initially set up at Aberdeen, the hotline was moved to Alexandria on Dec. 12. In its first five days, 222 calls came in. Of those, 59 were designated by the Army as “main topic,” meaning they involved sexual harassment complaints that could form the basis of administrative or criminal charges.

The work has been eye-opening for the hotline staff, particularly the men. Sgt. Timothy Prescott generally works in the Army’s “psychological operations” branch--a euphemism for the propaganda division. Among his recent callers, he said, was a woman who said she had been raped repeatedly.

“I’m sure everybody here has seen some form of sexual harassment to a certain level,” Prescott said. “But when you talk to some of these people on the phone and you realize the blatancy of it . . . .”

He shakes his head in disbelief, absorbing the hard lesson his female colleagues say they learned long ago. “There are actually people out there,” he says, astonished, “who think they can get away with it.”