ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, November 19, 1996 TAG: 9611190048
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: ELLEN GOODMAN
SOURCE: ELLEN GOODMAN
AT ABERDEEN the soldiers walk in pairs now. They go everywhere on the military grounds two by two, according to what the Army calls the ``buddy system.''
But female ``battle buddies'' are not emblems of teamwork these days. Nor are they partners protecting each other from a foreign enemy. In this sorry chapter of military life, the danger to the women is from the friendly fire of sexual combat. From their own superiors.
At the old Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, a few brave women have broken the silence even at the risk of breaking ranks. Now, the circles are widening in what is called an army sex scandal - as if it were merely an item for the gossip columns.
The other day, the Army charged two drill sergeants and a company commander with rape, coerced sex, sexual harassment. Another 15 men in Aberdeen have been suspended. All 17 of the training bases are now under investigation.
The original 12 women have escalated to include more than 50 from the Maryland site and hundreds elsewhere. Present and former military women who never believed that the Army would listen are suddenly calling the hot line.
The picture of military life being drawn from all this is by no means as assuring or as stirring as the images used to recruit young men and women to be all they can be. On the Army home page, the words speak of becoming ``a protector of the greatest nation on earth'' and ``the one the nation turns to in need.'' But this invitation to empowerment and to service may collide with a very different reality.
Young women arrive at the Maryland training ground straight out of boot camp after weeks pushing their physical limits. They are taught - above all else - to respect authority and to follow orders.
What many encountered at this early moment in their military careers was, at minimum, abuse by the authority they were supposed to respect. What others encountered were, at worst, orders that Sgt. Delmar G. Simpson is said to have given more than one of his alleged rape victims: ``If you ever tell anyone about this, I'll hurt you.''
The stories fit into the all-too-familiar pattern of sexual harassment - a pattern of powerful men and vulnerable women. As Nancy Duff Campbell who has been working on women in the military at the National Women's Law Center for two decades, describes it, ``You have women right out of high school coming into a situation with the most powerful authority figures they have ever had. And they are told by the establishment that this person is God.''
Throughout the military, women are a minority, less than 20 percent, clustered at the lowest end of the hierarchy in a hierarchical culture. A full 61 percent of women in the Army surveyed last year experienced sexual harassment.
What the military lacks, says Campbell, ``is a critical mass of women, and women in positions of leadership seen as equals.'' Without this climatic change, women in the military sometimes feel as welcome in the man's world as those fresh arrivals at The Citadel who last week shaved off their own hair to ``belong.'' Without these changes the atmosphere crackles with the power disequilibrium that makes harassment possible.
The battle of the sexes may not be a military prerogative. In any population of a million and a half surely there are rogues and rapists. The military may be no more hostile an environment for working women than a construction site or a firehouse.
Women in the Army, however, cannot quit their jobs. Indeed, many military women perceive complaining as a weakness in a culture that values toughing it out.
But the annals of Aberdeen, like the tales of Tailhook, capture our attention and dismay for good reasons. In a time when few institutions teach the values of citizenship, the military loudly promises to ground its members in ``duty, honor, country.'' Even in its volunteer incarnation, the military retains a special place in national life.
We pay to be protected by our armies. We don't expect to be endangered by them. No wonder that Maj. Gen. Robert Shadley's voice cracked at the press conference when he told reporters that trainers were there to teach and protect new recruits, ``not prey on them.''
In the end, what is most painful about this growing scandal is the knowledge that young women who sign up to serve, even to die, are being put in harm's way of their own commanders.
- The Boston Globe
LENGTH: Medium: 82 linesby CNB