BY MEGAN ARNEY
With the number of sexual misconduct charges against
high-ranking Army personnel mounting in recent months, the
Senate Armed Services Committee called a February 4 hearing
on the issue. The day before the hearing convened,
Sergeant Major Gene McKinney stepped down from a panel
reviewing the Army's policies on sexual harassment.
McKinney, the Army's top-ranking enlisted soldier and chief
advisor to Army Chief of Staff Gen. Dennis Reimer, was
accused of sexually assaulting a former female officer
directly under his command.
A focus of the debate in the Senate hearing was whether women and men should be segregated by gender during their military training. The Army has had sex-integrated training since 1974.
Sen. Rick Santorum from Pennsylvania said, "I have some fundamental concerns about throwing very young women in a position with a drill sergeant.... That's, you know, [like] sitting there with a match near some gunpowder and expecting a spark not to fly every now and then and cause a problem."
"Sexuality is one of the most basic of all human instincts," declared Sen. Dan Coats, also arguing against co-ed training units.
Gen. Reimer stated, "It's a high stress environment, senator, and we put a lot of pressure on our drill sergeants, and everybody has their breaking point at a certain point."
The Army has been mired in sexual harassment and violence scandals. The Senate hearing was called following a series of complaints of misconduct, rape, extortion, assault, and threatening military personnel at Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland last November. When a toll-free number was set up by the U.S. Army after the first allegations surfaced, 3,100 calls were logged in the first few days. The Army's Criminal Investigative Division has opened new criminal cases in response to at least 155 of these calls.
A seventh Army drill sergeant at Aberdeen was charged February 4 with rape, extortion, obstruction of justice, and other offensives against three trainees - the most serious charges so far.
On February 4, a judge in El Paso, Texas, awarded Peggy Graham, a civilian employee of Col. Allen Hasbrouck at Fort Bliss, $300,000 in damages for sexual harassment that lasted six years.
In one 1995 Pentagon survey of 90,000 female soldiers in various branches of the military, 60 percent said they had been subject to sexual harassment, and nearly 10 percent reported being sexually assaulted. Most of the recent misconduct cases involve male supervisors abusing females under their command.