When the Aberdeen story first broke last fall, there were troubling reports about a “rape ring.” But after months of testimony and investigation, the scandal appears to be more complicated than originally thought. Three drill sergeants stand accused of forcing their charges to have sex: Sgt. Delmar Simpson is now on trial on 25 counts of rape with seven women. Prosecutors have generally found, however, that the sex between the sergeants and the new enlistees was more commonly consensual. To be sure, the army forbids sex between soldiers of different ranks, and, a military judge ruled last week, even consensual sex can be deemed rape if the recruit can show that she was afraid to say no to her superior. Yet in most cases–10 sergeants and one captain at Aberdeen have been charged with various lesser offenses–the recruits seem to have been willing partners. Army officials privately concede that sex in the ranks seems to be as regular as reveille at some bases, causing serious morale and image problems. And because of age, hormones and the military’s in-your-face method of training raw recruits, it is a problem that is not easily fixed.
Female recruits, who now make up about 20 percent of the army, learn how to say “Yes, sergeant” in their sleep. They have to snap to night and day for 8 grueling weeks at boot camp and for 9 to 12 more weeks of specialty training at bases like Aberdeen, which teaches soldiers how to handle explosives and ammunition. In the workplace of the ’90s, employers are supposed to refrain from bullying or making offensive remarks. The military tradition is quite different. Sergeants are trying to break down soft civilians in order to transform them into tough soldiers. They are not allowed to physically abuse their charges, but they are free to hector them.
Predictably, relationships between female recruits, usually in their late teens and early 20s, and drill instructors, typically five to 15 years older, can be ambiguous and sexually charged. The sergeants leer, but the trainees often flirt back. Drill sergeants can be at once mentor and tormentor. In The Washington Post last January, a former private named Alysia Bennett described her conflicted feelings toward her DI: the sergeant built her up and made her strong, Bennett wrote–but he also made crude jokes and once slid his hands down her pants. Many trainees end up like her, unsure whether to salute–or to sue.
Sexual harassment is not just a problem at the grunt level. At the military academies, more than half the women cadets are routinely harassed during their four-year officer-training course, according to a confidential GAO poll. Last week a West Point plebe named Su Jin Collier, who faces expulsion for having sex with another plebe, charged that she had been raped. She claimed officials had not taken her allegation seriously in part because she had accused a different plebe of raping her the year before. She had broken the warrior’s code: never complain.
Consensual sex in the barracks has a real cost. Sexual jealousies can ruin the discipline essential to “unit cohesion.” Indeed, it was a breakdown in the chain of command that prompted the Aberdeen scandal. A DI ordered a female recruit to perform a menial task. When she refused, the sergeant threatened to put her on report. The woman, who had slept with the sergeant, decided to call his bluff–and was demoted. Furious, she reported the relationship to a senior officer, who told her to go to the military police. Incredibly, the same officer, a captain, later began sleeping with her.
The army was able to tame racial prejudice and conquer its post-Vietnam drug habit largely by fiat and strict enforcement. Sex, however, may be harder. Race was a matter of attitudes; lust is biological. Some GOP lawmakers think the only answer is to separate the training of men and women recruits. But as women are increasingly allowed in harm’s way–able to fly warplanes and serve on warships–the brass thinks they need to be treated equally. “Separate but equal doesn’t cut it,” says retired army Maj. Lillian Pfluke. But in a coed army, soldiers may always be tempted to become comrades in arms in more ways than one.
