COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Military Recruiting: Women
AP Probe Looks at Recruiters' Misconduct
Martha Mendoza, The Associated Press
August 20, 2006
More
than 100 young women who expressed interest in joining the military in
the past year were preyed upon sexually by their recruiters. Women were
raped on recruiting office couches, assaulted in government cars and
groped en route to entrance exams.
A six-month Associated Press investigation found
that more than 80 military recruiters were disciplined last year for
sexual misconduct with potential enlistees. The cases occurred across
all branches of the military and in all regions of the country.
"This should never be allowed to happen," said one
18-year-old victim. "The recruiter had all the power. He had the
uniform. He had my future. I trusted him."
At least 35 Army recruiters, 18 Marine Corps
recruiters, 18 Navy recruiters and 12 Air Force recruiters were
disciplined for sexual misconduct or other inappropriate behavior with
potential enlistees in 2005, according to records obtained by the AP
under dozens of Freedom of Information Act requests. That's
significantly more than the handful of cases disclosed in the past
decade.
The AP also found:
_The Army, which accounts for almost half of the
military, has had 722 recruiters accused of rape and sexual misconduct
since 1996.
_Across all services, one out of 200 frontline
recruiters - the ones who deal directly with young people - was
disciplined for sexual misconduct last year.
_Some cases of improper behavior involved romantic
relationships, and sometimes those relationships were initiated by the
women.
_Most recruiters found guilty of sexual misconduct
are disciplined administratively, facing a reduction in rank or
forfeiture of pay; military and civilian prosecutions are rare.
_The increase in sexual misconduct incidents is
consistent with overall recruiter wrongdoing, which has increased from
just over 400 cases in 2004 to 630 cases in 2005, according to a
General Accounting Office report released this week.
The Pentagon has committed more than $1.5 billion to
recruiting efforts this year. Defense Department spokeswoman Lt. Col.
Ellen Krenke insisted that each of the services takes the issue of
sexual misconduct by recruiters "very seriously and has processes in
place to identify and deal with those members who act inappropriately."
In the Army, 53 recruiters were charged with
misconduct last year. Recruiting spokesman S. Douglas Smith said the
Army has put much energy into training its staff to avoid these
problems.
"To have 53 allegations in a year, while it is 53
more than we would want, is not indicative of the entire command of
8,000 recruiters," he said. "We take this very seriously and we take
appropriate action as necessary to discipline these people."
___
The Associated Press generally does not name victims
in sexual assault cases. For this story, the AP interviewed victims in
their homes and perpetrators in jail, read police and court accounts of
assaults and in one case portions of a victim's journal.
A pattern emerged. The sexual misconduct almost
always takes place in recruiting stations, recruiters apartments or
government vehicles. The victims are typically between 16 and 18 years
old, and they usually are thinking about enlisting. They usually meet
the recruiters at their high schools, but sometimes at malls or
recruiting offices.
"We had been drinking, yes. And we went to the
recruiting station at about midnight," begins one girl's story.
Tall and slim, her long hair sweeping down her back,
this 18-year-old from Ukiah, California, hides her face in her hands as
she describes the night when Marine Corps recruiter Sgt. Brian
Fukushima climbed into her sleeping bag on the floor of the station and
took off her pants. Two other recruiters were having sex with two of
her friends in the same room.
"I don't like to talk about it. I don't like to
think about it," she says, her voice muffled and breaking. "He got into
my sleeping bag, unbuttoned my pants, and he started, well ..."
Her voice trails off, and she is quiet for a moment.
"I had a freak-out session and just passed out. When I woke up I was
sick and ashamed. My clothes were all over the floor."
Fukushima was convicted of misconduct in a military
court after other young women reported similar assaults. He left the
service with a less than honorable discharge last fall.
His military attorney, Capt. James Weirick, said
Fukushima is "sorry that he let his family down and the Marine Corps
down. It was a lapse in judgment."
Shedrick Hamilton uses the same phrase to describe
his own actions that landed him in Oneida Correctional Facility in
upstate New York for 15 months for having sex with a 16-year-old high
school student he met while working as a Marine Corps recruiter.
Hamilton said the victim had dropped her pants in
his office as a prank a few weeks earlier, and that on this day she
reached over and caressed his groin while he was driving her to a
recruiting event.
"I pulled over and asked her to climb into the back
seat," he said. "I should have pushed her away. I was the adult in the
situation. I should have put my foot down, called her parents."
As a result, he was convicted of third-degree rape,
and left the service with an other-than-honorable discharge. He wipes
the collar of his prison jumpsuit across his cheek, smearing tears that
won't stop.
"I literally kick myself ... every day. It hurts. It
hurts a lot. As much as I pray, as much as I work on it in counseling,
I still can't repair the pain that I caused a girl, her family, my
family, my kids. It's very hard to deal with," he says, dropping his
head. "It's very, very hard to deal with."
In Gainesville, Fla., a 20-year-old woman told this
story: Walking into an Army recruiting station last summer, she was
greeted by Sgt. George Kirkman, a 6-foot-4, 220-pound soldier. Kirkman
is 41.
He was friendly and encouraging, but told her she
might be a bit too heavy. He asked if she wanted to go to the gym with
him. She agreed, and he drove her to his apartment complex.
There, he walked her to his apartment, pulled out a
laptop, and suggested she take a basic recruiting aptitude test.
Afterward, Kirkman said he needed to measure her. Twice. He said she
had to take her pants off. And he attacked her.
Kirkman, who did not respond to repeated requests
for an interview, pleaded no contest to sexual battery in January and
is on probation and a registered sexual offender. He's still in the
military, working now as a clerk in the Jacksonville, Fla., Army
recruiting office.
Not all of the victims are young women. Former Navy
recruiter Joseph Sampy, 27, of Jeanerette, La., is serving a 12-year
sentence for molesting three male recruits.
"He did something wrong, something terrible to
people who were the most vulnerable," State District Judge Lori Landry
said before handing down the sentence in July, 2005. "He took advantage
of his authority."
One of Sampy's victims is suing him and the Navy for $1.25 million. The trial is scheduled for next spring.
___
Sometimes these incidents are indisputable, forcible rapes.
"He did whatever he pleased," said one victim who
was 17 at the time. "... People in uniform used to make me feel safe.
Now they make me feel nervous."
Other sexual misconduct is more nuanced. Recruiters
insist the victims were interested in them, and sometimes the victims
agree. Sometimes they even dated.
"I was persuaded into doing something that I didn't
necessarily want to do, but I did it willingly," said Kelly Chase, now
a Marine Corps combat photographer, whose testimony helped convict a
recruiter of sexual misconduct last year.
Former Navy recruiter Paul Sistrunk, a plant
supervisor in Conehatta, Miss., who had an affair with a potential
recruit in 1995, says their relationship was entirely consensual.
She was 18, an adult; he was 26 and married.
"Things happen, you know?" says Sistrunk, who opted
for an other-than-honorable discharge rather than face court-martial.
"Morally, what I did was wrong, but legally, I don't think so."
A nine-year veteran of the Navy, Sistrunk lost his
pension and health benefits. His victim, who discovered during a
medical exam at boot camp that she had contracted herpes,
unsuccessfully tried to sue the federal government.
"In my case," said Sistrunk, "I was flirted with,
and flirting, well, that's something I hadn't seen a lot of until I
became a recruiter. I had no power over her. I really didn't."
Kimberly Lonsway, an expert in sexual assault and
workplace discrimination in San Luis Obispo, Calif., said "even if
there isn't overt violence, the reality is that these recruiters really
do hold the keys to the future for these women, and a 17-year-old girl
often has a very different understanding of the situation than a
23-year-old recruiter."
"There's a power dynamic here that's obviously very
sensitive," agreed Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for
Military Readiness, a group that studies military policy.
"Let's face it, these guys are handsome in their
uniform, they're mature, they give a lot of attention to these girls,
and as recruiters they do a lot of the same things that guys do when
they want to appeal to girls. There's a very fine line there, and it
can be very hard to maintain a professional approach."
Weirick, the Marine Corps defense attorney who has
represented several recruiters on rape and sexual misconduct charges,
said it's a problem that will probably never entirely go away.
"It's difficult because of the nature of nature," he
said. "It's hard to put it in another way, you know? It's usually a
consensual relationship or dating type of thing."
When asked if victims feel this way, he said, "It's
really a victimless crime other than the institution of the Marine
Corps. It's institutional integrity we're protecting, by not allowing
this to happen."
Anita Sanchez, director of communications at the
Miles Foundation, a national advocacy group for victims of violence in
the military, bristles at the idea that the enlistees, even if they
flirt or ask to date recruiters, are willingly having sex with them.
"You have a recruiter who can enable you to join the
service or not join the service. That has life-changing implications
for you as a high school student or college student," she said. "If she
does not do this her life will be seriously impacted. Instead of
getting training and an education, she might end up a dishwasher."
Ethan Walker, who spent eight years in the Marine
Corps including a stint as a recruiter from 1998 to 2000, said he was
warned.
"They told us at recruiter school that girls, 15,
16, are going to come up to you, they're going to flirt with you,
they're going to do everything in their power to get you in bed. But if
you do it you're breaking the law," he said.
Even so, he said he was initially taken aback when
he set up a table at a high school and had girls telling him he looked
sexy and handing him their telephone numbers.
"All that is, you have to remind yourself, is that
there's jail bait, a quick way to get in trouble, a quick way to
dishonor the service," he said.
All of the recruiters the AP spoke with, including
Walker, said they were routinely alone in their offices and cars with
girls. Walker said he heard about sleepovers at other recruiting
stations, and there was no rule against it. There didn't need to be a
rule, he said. The lines were clear: Recruiters do not sleep with
enlistees.
"Any recruiter that would try to claim that, 'Oh,
it's consensual,' they are lying, they are lying through their teeth,"
he said. "The recruiter has all the power in these situations."
___
Although the Uniform Code of Military Justice bars
recruiters from having sex with potential recruits, it also states that
age 16 is the legal age of consent. This means that if a recruiter is
caught having sex with a 16-year-old, and he can prove it was
consensual, he will likely only face an administrative reprimand.
But not under new rules set by the Indiana Army National Guard.
There, a much stricter policy, apparently the first
of its kind in the country, was instituted last year after seven
victims came forward to charge National Guard recruiter Sgt. Eric
Vetesy with rape and assault.
"We didn't just sit on our hands and say, 'Well,
these things happen, they're wrong, and we'll try to prevent it.'
That's a bunch of bull," said Lt. Col. Ivan Denton, commander of the
Indiana Guard's recruiting battalion.
Now, the 164 Army National Guard recruiters in
Indiana follow a "No One Alone" policy. Male recruiters cannot be alone
in offices, cars, or anywhere else with a female enlistee. If they are,
they risk immediate disciplinary action. Recruiters also face
discipline if they hear of another recruiter's misconduct and don't
report it.
At their first meeting, National Guard applicants,
their parents and school officials are given wallet-sized "Guard Cards"
advising them of the rules. It includes a telephone number to call if
they experience anything unsafe or improper.
Denton said the policy does more than protect enlistees.
"It's protecting our recruiters as well," he said.
The result?
"We've had a lot fewer problems," said Denton. "It's
almost like we're changing the culture in our recruiting."
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