TAILHOOK VICTIM FEARS FOR PRIVACY IN TESTIFYING

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, February 7, 1993                   TAG: 9302070211
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: RICHMOND                                LENGTH: Medium
TAILHOOK VICTIM FEARS FOR PRIVACY IN TESTIFYING
A Navy helicopter pilot whose sexual assault report led to the Tailhook investigation said Saturday she did not look forward to the prospect of testifying against fellow officers who may face charges in the scandal.
Lt. Paula Coughlin, who went public last year about being grabbed and fondled by a line of drunken aviators during the 1991 Tailhook Association convention in Las Vegas, said her feelings about being a professional among a group of fellow professionals "vanished in about 40 feet of hallway."
The Los Angeles Times reported Saturday that the Pentagon's final report on Tailhook is expected to be released later this month and will be accompanied by memos recommending that about 15 officers face courts-martial on charges of assault or indecency.
Coughlin, speaking at the Virginia Press Association's winter meeting, said the most devastating realization at Tailhook was that the men who assaulted her did not respect her as a colleague.
"I wasn't an aviator," she said. "I was a piece of trash."
She said she had been told that the association's gatherings were like a big cocktail party, but no one warned her about possible danger. "I had absolutely no reason to believe I was in jeopardy with a group of aviators," she said.
Her greatest fear about telling her story afterwards was the possibility of intense scrutiny of her personal life, she said. The prospect of courts-martial proceedings has raised that fear anew, she said.
She also said she feels there has been some retaliation against her on fitness reports and assignments, although nothing overt, since she came forward. But she said she still intends to make the Navy her career and that attitudes against women are slowly changing.
"There's got to be an inherent respect, and that respect has got to come from professionalism," she said.
Coughlin is assigned to a combat support squadron at the Norfolk Naval Air Station. She has been in the Navy about eight years.
The Los Angeles Times said the Tailhook report would be about 300 pages long and would be illustrated with explicit photographs taken at the convention.
The report will cite instances of exposure and public sex. "There was a lot of public sex," one source who saw an early draft of the report told the newspaper. "It's a pretty tawdry picture."

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB