In Darmstadt, West Germany, PFC Kathryn Newman got the word from a sergeant: Women had no place in a combat unit. On field maneuvers, she was issued a soiled sleeping bag, a broken locker and a stove that exploded. Another time she was ordered to stand guard duty for eight hours in subfreezing cold—and could not leave her post to use the latrine. After standing in her own excrement, she was treated for a bladder infection and frostbite. She has been transferred. No charges were filed.
Lori Lodinsky saw it coming the day she first visited a recruiting station and the recruiter made a pass at her. But she joined up anyhow, and as a Fort Meade MP, she recalls, "They'd grab me all day long—whenever they felt like it—walking down the hall to my room or cleaning a Jeep or working on a detail. It was supposed to be funny." Then it got serious: A superior threatened Lodinsky with cancellation of leave and all-night cleaning duty unless she had sex with him. She did—for six weeks—until he was transferred. Last May, after more harassment, she decided to quit the service with a Chapter Five discharge. Lori says the Army is investigating her charges.
The armed services always have been intensely male institutions. Generations of American boys came to maturity in "this man's Army," and Marine recruiting posters advertise for "a few good men." But the military today is 7.4 percent female; the number of women in uniform has tripled in the seven years since the Volunteer Army began. Yet as President Carter pushes for authority to register women for the draft, reports suggest that the integration of the sexes in the military has a long way to go. Sexual harassment seems to exist in all branches. A congressional subcommittee is investigating; prosecutions for crimes ranging from improper advances to rape are under way at bases across the country; and, yielding to pressure from legislators and women's groups, the Pentagon has for the first time begun collecting statistics on women's complaints of harassment. "Probably every post has the problem," Maj. Gen. Mary Clarke, commander of Fort McClellan in Alabama, told a House Armed Services subcommittee in January. "Anytime you have the numbers of men and women that you have serving together on Army posts, you are going to have sexual harassment."
Spec.-4 Jimi Hernandez, 23, stationed at Fort Meade, has seen the problem from the other end of the command chain. "They say a woman enlists in the Army for one of three reasons—she wants to get married, she's a prostitute, or she's a lesbian," says Hernandez. "When you get in the Army, you're harassed from Day One."
It could be that the problem is no greater in the military than it is in the civilian population. In both, for instance, sexual assaults often go unreported. The Army's Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland documented an "unprecedented number" of rape cases—five—last year. Yet a female sergeant says there may have been 10 times that many. The Navy admits to only four cases of sexual harassment in 1979, but Rear Adm. Frances McKee, the highest-ranking woman in the armed forces, says, "The women involved tend to be young, low on the power ladder and inexperienced in dealing with large organizations. The first reaction of many of them is to attempt to ignore the behavior."
One observer, at least, says that is the wisest course. "I choke on the words," admits Rep. Patricia Schroeder of Colorado, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, "but I have to tell women, 'If you go public with this you're fighting the system, and you've got your whole life ahead of you. Don't make a fuss, just bail out of the military.' I can't say 'Wonderful, you're a martyr like Joan of Arc' Remember, she went up in flames." That advice applies as well, apparently, to men who report their fellow soldiers. Sgt. Steve Heinrich, Lori Lodinsky's boyfriend, told the Baltimore Sun last year about the harassment problem at Fort Meade. Since then, he says, his job rating as a traffic-accident investigator has plunged from above 100 to below 50. "Several people have told me that my career is shot," Heinrich says.
There are some signs that the situation may improve. Admiral McKee insisted at the hearings that the Navy is trying hard to make "enlisted people comfortable in addressing such problems to either male or female officers," and all the services seem to be taking complaints more seriously. The Army has reportedly started an investigation of one of the highest-ranking officers ever charged with sexual misconduct—Col. Romano J. Parini, 48, former commander of the Northwest Criminal Investigation District in San Francisco, who allegedly attempted to rape a captain and two civilian employees.
The changes may simply be cosmetic. "At this point I feel that women really don't belong in the Army," Jackie Lose says sadly. "It's a shame that because of the way it is, women can't have an opportunity to contribute." Capt. Kathryn Cooney, a military lawyer who has handled a half-dozen sexual harassment investigations at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego, is more hopeful: "Now the military is reponsive to this kind of thing—If you tell them." That remains a fearful if, but Fort Hood's public affairs officer, Maj. Larry Retta, says it shouldn't be: "We're trying to let female personnel know that charges will be acted on. We want women to know that somebody cares."
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
