ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, March 12, 1997 TAG: 9703120072
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
The group complained that the Army has failed to keep promises to them to trade immunity from prosecution for their statements.
Five women at an Army training school in Aberdeen, Md., said Tuesday that Army investigators had pressured them to make rape accusations.
The women, who said they had resisted the pressure, also complained that the Army had failed to keep promises to them to trade immunity from prosecution for their statements. Most of the women confessed to having had consensual sex with superiors at the base, a crime under military law.
``Something really wrong is happening,'' Pvt. Darla Hornberger said. ``I told the truth in my statement. That's not the truth they wanted to hear ... I still refused to say that I was raped.''
The women's charges added a new twist to the ongoing investigation of sexual misconduct at Aberdeen, a scandal that erupted last year and prompted an Army-wide investigation into sexual harassment. Seven instructors at the base have been charged with rape or other sexual misconduct.
The women who spoke Tuesday - who are not involved in any of the cases awaiting trial - said they did believe that incidents of rape and misconduct had occurred at Aberdeen.
The women spoke at a news conference outside the home of an area representative of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. NAACP President Kweisi Mfume, who also attended, called for an independent investigation of possible human rights violations in the Army's ongoing sexual harassment investigations.
Local NAACP officials have said they were worried about possible discrimination because a large number of the accused in the sexual harassment investigation were black men while a large number of the accusers were white women.
``There are possible civil rights violations on behalf of the accusers and the accused that ought to be looked at,'' Mfume said. ``We think that it [the investigation] borders on illegality.''
Pentagon officials said they would look into the women's allegations but denied there was any racial harassment.
``[Army] Secretary [Togo] West told me that he will look very closely at these charges but it is not his belief that the investigators pressured women into making statements,'' said Defense Department spokesman Ken Bacon.
``The issue with Aberdeen is not race but sexual harassment, misconduct,'' he added.
Two of the seven instructors charged at the base took early discharge in lieu of courts-martial, while the other five were awaiting trial.
Lt. Col. Gabriel Riesco, a spokesman for the Aberdeen base, said that none of the statements made to investigators by women at the news conference had ``anything to do with rape charges. ... None of the statements that they have made alleged rape.''
On the question of discriminatory prosecution raised by Mfume, Riesco said ``we share the NAACP's concern that all people need to be treated fairly, justly and equally.''
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