Army Sex Scandal Raises Questions About Whether Officers Were Asleep at Posts

A court-martial jury will soon decide the fate of the central figure in the Army’s Aberdeen sexual misconduct case, yet that verdict will leave unanswered a far more urgent question: Where were the officers when the military’s worst sex scandal was taking shape?

In eight days of testimony about accused rapist Staff Sgt. Delmar G. Simpson, the officer corps of the Aberdeen Proving Ground was scarcely mentioned until the captain who was supposed to supervise Simpson’s company became the 36th and last witness to take the stand.

Instead, the testimony painted a picture of an insular training school for Army mechanics where a handful of drill instructors operated like racketeers in pursuit of sex, competing for conquests, talking in a special language, covering for each other and suppressing talk that might tip off the outside world.

Prosecutors say Simpson’s units carried on this way for at least 20 months while its officers missed numerous hints that their unit was a hotbed of coerced sex--or in the defense’s version, home to rampant consensual sex between the ranks, which is also against Army rules.

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“You just didn’t hear talk of officers,” acknowledged Ed Starnes, a spokesman for the base, 30 miles northeast of Baltimore.

Simpson’s case, which involves 19 rape charges and 35 other alleged infractions, is only one of 12 courts-martial that will take place here in connection with a scandal that has now touched bases across the country and abroad.

But his saga, involving the largest number of alleged crimes, will provide the basic information the Army brass will use in trying to repair flaws in the Army’s culture and its procedures for enforcing proper relations between the sexes.

Whether he is a rapist or merely a playboy of rare ardor, as the defense contends, the case demonstrates that the Army’s well-intentioned rules can be entirely short-circuited by a cadre of powerful drill instructors working together--especially if their superiors aren’t paying close attention.

“They just shut off the flow of information,” said one Army official.

Trainees in the 143rd Ordnance Battalion worked, played and slept in the semi-isolation of the Edgewood section of the Aberdeen base, a satellite location next to Chesapeake Bay about 6 miles from the rest of the installation. The barracks, the recreation center and the huge one-story, open-bay training building were all within a six-block area largely encircled by forest.

Within that closed environment, the drill instructors--those who allegedly engaged in misconduct and as well as those who did not--were all friends.

In Bravo Company, Simpson’s best friend, Sgt. 1st Class Tony Cross, was the drill sergeant’s immediate supervisor and the “equal opportunity” officer, which meant that some complaints about gender issues would come to him.

Over the months, witnesses said, Simpson and some peers ran up a list of conquests by questioning and prodding women to find out who they could recruit to be “in the game,” in their phrase.

According to the prosecution, Simpson interrogated the women to find personal weaknesses--some past infraction, for instance, or an improper affair with another sergeant--that he could use to extort sex from them.

Simpson told trainees to “raise their hands if they were stressed out--then come see me,” one witness testified.

His usual routine, said the prosecution, was to order the trainees to his office--two floors above the women’s barracks--then follow them up to sweet talk or coerce sex from them. Simpson used the near-total power of the drill sergeant to create an environment of “fear, intimidation and control,” the prosecution said.

The sergeants pimped for each other, according to testimony. Cross, a witness said, asked a female private at a parade, “Do you know Sgt. Simpson likes you?” And Simpson apparently sought to return the favor, once ordering a trainee to Cross’ office after hours.

Indeed, according to testimony, many trainees learned soon after arriving that Simpson and Cross, who faces 17 charges, kept lists of their conquests. They sought women of all descriptions--large and small, white, black and Latino.

“I thought Aberdeen was really messed up,” one trainee testified. “It was sex, sex, sex.”

The sergeants watched out for each other, according to witnesses. On one occasion, a witness said, a sergeant buddy knocked on Simpson’s door to urge him to finish up quickly with a woman because a superior noncommissioned officer, the command sergeant major, was approaching.

And on several occasions, the sergeants or an officer suppressed complaints that might have exposed “the game,” witnesses said.

Cross, for instance, dragged his heels when a trainee went to him to complain about Simpson. Cross said he needed time to prepare a written report, but he soon allegedly began a sexual relationship with the woman.

It was clear that in many other cases, the trainees knew how tight Simpson’s circle was, and didn’t risk even making a complaint that they figured would be suppressed.

“We were supposed to go to our chain of command,” one victim testified. She said she thought about going to a certain officer. “But then I thought about it. He and Sgt. Simpson were friends.”

All the while, Simpson’s superiors firmly believed that they were doing an exemplary job.

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Capt. Scott Alexander, who ran Bravo Company for the first year Simpson was there and has not been accused of any wrongdoing in the scandal, testified that he was a “hands-on” officer, helping soldiers with personal problems and keeping an open door for anyone with complaints. So why did he not know of the rampant abuses?

“It’s beyond me why there was no inkling to me whatsoever,” Alexander said, acknowledging that he found it “very disturbing.”

Asked about some specific complaints from women, Alexander said he could not remember if he received any. “I’ve had 1,400 soldiers” under command at Aberdeen and received “thousands” of complaints, he said. “I do not recall. I’m sorry.”

Further up the chain, Lt. Col. Martin T. Utzig, the battalion commander, has said he thought all was well because he heard only about minor infractions, such as sexually suggestive jokes.

Other officers may have missed signs because they simply couldn’t believe that such problems could occur.

When two trainees came forward on one occasion to complain of misconduct, a sergeant who was on an equal-opportunity investigative team checked their allegation and suggested further inquiries. But Command Sgt. Major Mary Kyser, the battalion’s senior noncommissioned officer, ignored the suggestion because the sergeant “wasn’t school-trained” in such matters, she testified.

To correct the problems revealed by the Aberdeen cases, the Army has added chaplains and arranged to add a second officer at the company level to increase the number of eyes on lookout.

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But Simpson’s saga suggests that adding more formal regulatory structure to enforce the rules may not be enough. In the 143rd, officers and senior sergeants conducted special consciousness-raising sessions, routinely briefed trainees on the rules, and invited the enlisted to come to them.

“It seems we may have on an official level an atmosphere where you can report, but the culture in the unit that existed was one that you don’t report,” said Col. Paul Johnston, the judge in the court-martial.