‘Great And Sustained Discipline’ Required

What exactly were they proving at the infamous Aberdeen Proving Grounds? When the story broke last fall, a rash of instructors seemed more interested in improving sexual score sheets than in training recruits.

From the very beginning, this was labeled an Army “sex scandal,” as if the tales were grist for the gossip sheet instead of the criminal blotters. The Maryland Army base became the backdrop for an entire spectrum of behavior, from sexual license to sexual harassment to sexual assault.

Now, at last, the most serious of the verdicts is in. Staff Sgt. Delmar G. Simpson has been found guilty on 18 charges of raping six women. Yet even before the sentencing, a set of nagging questions has surfaced in civilian quarters: Were these military rapes “real” rapes? Is there, should there be, a double standard of sexual misconduct in and out of the Army?

It’s fair to say that the American public has learned more about sex and the single soldier - or, for that matter, the married soldier - than we ever wanted to know. We’ve learned that the Army doesn’t consent to consensual sex across ranks. We’ve learned that adultery is a crime in the military. And we’ve learned that something called “constructive force” is enough to prove rape.

The six trainees didn’t say that the 6-foot-4-inch drill sergeant used physical force. They didn’t all resist nor did they all say “no.” One had eight encounters with Simpson; another five. It’s hard to imagine a woman winning this case in a civilian court.

But if there’s a double standard, it may be because the Army is a separate world. In that hierarchical world, after all, a drill sergeant like Simpson was described as a “demigod.” In that authoritarian world, he had virtually total control over the trainees’ lives.

So under military law, fear is a kind of force. A power imbalance can create “a reasonable belief in the victim’s mind that death or physical injury would be inflicted on her and resistance is futile.” In such situations, he has used “constructive force.” It’s force that makes this a “real,” if less vicious, rape.

What is fascinating is that military justice actually encodes what everyone else says. By now it’s common to say that rape is about power, not sex.

Where else is the power structure so obvious as in the military, where superiors can order inferiors to do anything, even if it means dying? Where else are enlisted men and women trained to obey without protest and follow orders without question? The possibilities for sexual abuse by a predator like Simpson, who admitted to sex with 11 trainees, are easy to imagine. So is an environment which the prosecutor described as one of “fear, intimidation and control.”

When the trial was over, a defense attorney warned that the verdict would undermine the authority of a drill sergeant. Did he believe that the power to order a soldier up the hill was the same as the power to order her into bed?

In turn, one of the women testified, “Each time he did it, I’d just take it. So if I didn’t fight him, I knew it wouldn’t be long.” Did she believe that sex was another order to obey as automatically as if he had asked her to perform 50 push-ups?

The only law comparable to “constructive force” in civilian life is, I suppose, the law of statutory rape. Age, too, can create such a power imbalance that a child cannot truly “consent.” These trainees are not children. But they are at the bottom of the power structure.

Here I must disclose that for many years my father taught military justice for the Army. Sometimes he called it an oxymoron. I think today’s military is muddled about what to do about sex. If the Army wanted soldiers to have sex lives, it would have issued them. Adultery? Consensual Sex? Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell? Some revision is way overdue.

But at the same time, I know that we ask the military to walk a fine line. Soldiers are expected to kill but not murder. To prepare for violence but exercise restraint. We ask for officers who can make others do what they want, but who won’t abuse their authority. The performance requires a great and sustained discipline.

So at its heart, this case was never just about men and women in the Army. Nor just about “constructive force” and “real” rape.

It’s been about rogues and rules. About the use and abuse of power. This isn’t what divides the men from the women. It’s what divides a disciplined Army in a democracy from an Army that can easily spin way out of control.

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