Military Must Win The Sexual Harassment War

As a woman, would you feel safe in a community of about 12,000 where only five sexual assaults have been reported in the last 12 years?

As a woman, would you be fearful to live in a community where men dominate the power structure and where lurid accounts of sexual harassment misconduct fill the news?

Flip a coin.

Heads, you live at Fairchild Air Force Base in Spokane.

Tails also means being part of the Fairchild community.

This week Master Sgt. Napolean Bailey will face an Article 32 investigation, meaning a military grand jury will weigh the evidence against him and decide whether the Fairchild Air Force Base security guard should be tried on rape charges.

Three women have come forward and claimed Bailey sexually assaulted them.

The Fairchild case joined a growing list of military sex scandals reported in the last few months:

At least 34 women Army trainees at the Aberdeen Proving Ground have come forward to say they were victims of sexual assault while at the Maryland base.

The only female B-52 pilot in the Air Force has been charged with adultery and disobeying orders for her involvement with a low-ranking airman.

Ongoing investigations continue in the Navy over charges of continued harassment of females since the Tailhook party.

Amid these headlines, however, another story also is playing out.

The military is fully engaging the enemy of sexual harassment in ways that need to be appreciated, even emulated in the civilian workplace.

The Army has assigned most of its Criminal Investigation Command, a group of about 650 detectives, to look into issues related to sexual harassment and assault.

Defense Secretary William S. Cohen has ordered the secretaries of the Navy and Air Force to follow the Army’s lead in looking for, and rooting out, sexual harassment and sexual misconduct.

At Fairchild, the aggressive investigation into charges against Master Sgt. Bailey is an example of this new, focused emphasis.

“The Air Force has a zero tolerance policy when it comes to sexual harassment and assault,” said Fairchild Capt. Mark Brown, a spokesman for the base. “Basically that means no second chances.”

This isn’t the standard for conduct that is practiced in civilian communities.

Only a few days ago Robert Peter Clark, a Washington state civilian convicted of raping a 13-year-old girl and taking indecent liberties with an infant and two other boys was relocated to Spokane.

State authorities had no way of keeping him in prison even though police consider Clark a serious sex offender who likely will rape again.

Today, his whereabouts are unknown.

“I think one of the things we are trying to get across is that the standard by which military folks have to live are far more stringent than what you or I have to abide by,” said John Madri, chairman of the Spokane Chamber of Commerce Armed Services Committee and the president of Global Federal Credit Union.

Indeed, a five-year examination of Fairchild’s record of sexual assault investigations shows only five cases, including the Bailey case, according to base spokesman Brown. This in a community with 4,968 enlisted personnel, 1,015 civilian workers and 6,209 dependents.

And while it’s anybody’s guess how many assaults have gone unreported at Fairchild, these numbers stil cannot be matched in Spokane, or in many other cities and towns. This fact helps explain the frustrations felt by many men in uniform that the headlines suggesting the armed forces are the home of large numbers of sex offenders don’t tell the whole story.

Surely there is a danger in drawing generalizations about the treatment of women in the military from a few high-profile cases.

But there also is a danger in minimizing the harm done to the military if these cases, and others that may come, are not dealt with in a way that builds confidence among women currently enlisted or who might enlist in the future.

Today, women account for about 14 percent of the military population. The number will grow as the miliary requires more technical support, computer skills and non-combat duties.

“And it would be a big mistake to try to take the military back to the days of separate women’s forces,” said the Chamber of Commerce’s Madri.

Our society already has embraced the idea that women can, and will, bring their abilities and skills to all aspects of the workplace. The Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines know this.

Their challenge is to create a work environment where women can succeed right along with men.

Confronting bad behavior in civilian life and military life represents one of the big challenges of our day. Leadership must find it, root it out, and reward those people who are brave enough to bring their complaints forward.

Though the headlines are bleak, the prospect for a military victory over widespread sexual misconduct is quite good. After all, the military can order it done and enforce its word.

And, if the military can find a way, perhaps the lessons learned will trickle out to civilian work forces, too.

, DataTimes