Army Expands Inquiry Into Sex Scandal Missouri Base Targeted As Investigation Broadens; Is Sexual Harassment Systemwide?

Amid an expanding investigation into rape and sexual misconduct charges at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, Army officials disclosed Monday that they are conducting a strikingly similar - but unrelated - inquiry at a second training post, Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri.

Confirmation of the Missouri probe, which came late on the Veterans Day holiday, is likely to give new urgency to a question that has been raised about what may have occurred at Aberdeen: Is there a systemwide problem of sexual harassment in the training of Army recruits?

During a round of television interviews Monday morning, Gen. John M. Shalikashvili, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the Army is determined to answer that question.

“We certainly have to assume that it could be happening somewhere else,” the four-star Army general said on the CBS-TV show “This Morning” before news of the Missouri probe broke. “And that’s why the Army is casting its net very wide all across the Army, and certainly all training centers, to get to the bottom of this.

“But right now,” he added, “I don’t think we have all the evidence, or it’s very difficult to determine just how big that problem really is.”

Officials revealed few details of the probe at Fort Leonard Wood except to say that the investigation has been going on since September - as has the inquiry at Aberdeen - and could result in charges from rape to fraternization. So far, no charges have been brought.

According to the officials, who asked to remain unidentified, Army lawyers still are trying to decide what charges to bring, if any, in the Fort Leonard Wood probe. The investigation involves two or three suspects, the officials said, and is not expected to mushroom the way the Aberdeen investigation has.

Like its Maryland counterpart, the Missouri post is a training facility where young recruits, fresh out of boot camp, learn the skills that form the foundation of their Army careers. At Fort Leonard Wood, these trainees - many still in their teens - learn to become combat engineers; at Aberdeen’s Ordnance Center and School, they train to be mechanics.

At Aberdeen, calls continued to flow into the toll-free hotline that the Army has set up. As of Monday afternoon, the hotline had received nearly 2,000 calls; 145 of them were complaints of sexual harassment that the Army deemed serious enough for investigators to pursue.

Not all pertained to the Army, however, and fewer than half - 56 - involved Aberdeen. The rest were complaints about military installations scattered all over the world.

What makes the allegations at the 94-year-old Maryland school particularly troubling, Army officials said, is that they involve military supervisors who apparently took advantage of the vulnerable young recruits they were entrusted to train.

Shalikashvili called the incidents “a tragedy.” On Monday, the general was asked if he had any advice to young women thinking of entering the military.

“Well,” he replied, “I would tell them, first of all, the commitment of everyone in leadership positions to ensure that we provide them as safe an environment, as wholesome an environment, an environment where they can grow and be all they can be.”

So far at Aberdeen, three soldiers - a captain and two sergeants - at the Ordnance Center and School have been charged with various offenses. All the men are married; all arrived at Aberdeen in 1995.

Sgt. Delmar G. Simpson, a 12-year veteran, is accused of a variety of charges, including nine rapes involving three recruits and consensual sex with seven women. He is jailed at the Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Va.

Capt. Derrick Robertson, an 11-year-veteran who is Simpson’s boss, faces charges that include rape, sodomy and adultery; he remains at Aberdeen but has been reassigned. Sgt. Nathanael Beach is accused of adultery, threatening a soldier and violating an order to stay away from trainees; he, too, remains on post but has been reassigned.

Another two soldiers, who have not been identified, have been charged with lesser violations of Army rules, and an additional 15 have been suspended while the Army looks into allegations against them.

So far, 19 Aberdeen women have come forward to say they were victims of sexual harassment or abuse. The Army already has interviewed 550 trainees who have been at the base over the last two years, and is trying to track down 500 more. Officials have said additional charges are likely.