THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, May 20, 1995 TAG: 9505200310
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: By KERRY DEROCHI, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 99 lines
Three years later and the images still shock.
Young men wearing plastic rhino horns on their heads, rolling a keg of beer down the third floor of the Las Vegas Hilton. A stripper performing in a crowded hotel suite, gyrating to music and the chants and jeers of Navy and Marine Corps fliers. Two women in torn dresses being tossed like rag dolls and pulled through a line of sweaty, groping hands.
All are contained in the upcoming made-for-TV movie about the 1991 Tailhook convention and Lt. Paula Coughlin, the female helicopter pilot who was assaulted by fellow aviators while walking through a gantlet at the Hilton.
Those who produced the two-hour presentation, ``She Stood Alone,'' concede their project - while based in fact - is a dramatization of the scandal that rocked the world of naval aviation and cost several top admirals their jobs, including former Chief of Naval Operations Frank B. Kelso.
And after a special screening of the movie Friday, local attorneys involved in the Tailhook prosecutions agree the movie is more a drama than a documentary. They say the last lines of the movie are its most accurate.
In that scene, Coughlin is standing with her father in a field as fighter jets fly above them. Coughlin's father tells her she is a warrior who fought a battle fate handed her, and he is proud.
``You have changed the Navy irrevocably,'' he says.
That much, the lawyers say, is true.
``She changed the Navy forever, that is accurate,'' said D.J. Hansen, a former Navy prosecutor. ``There will be echoes of Tailhook for a long time to come.''
Even now, nearly four years after the September 1991 gathering of aviators, the prospect of nationally broadcasting the images of Tailhook concerns the Navy's top brass.
On May 9, a five-page memorandum was sent from the Chief of Navy Information, Rear Adm. Kendell M. Pease Jr., to all Navy flag officers warning them of the upcoming movie and offering advice on how to handle the media.
The memo cites statistics: among them, that 9,000 women serve on 61 ships, 1,250 of them on combat vessels. It mentions the recent deployment of the first gender-integrated aircraft carrier, the Dwight D. Eisenhower.
``While the movie Tailhook may put the Navy in the position it doesn't like from four years ago, it's also an opportunity for our commanders to say, look where we are today,'' said Lt. Cmdr. Kenneth Ross, a Navy spokesman.
From the beginning, the movie, which opens and closes with pictures of a little girl sweeping a model fighter jet through the air, focuses on the Navy's treatment of women.
Coughlin began her military career by enrolling in ROTC while attending Old Dominion University, and would later fly helicopters at the Norfolk Naval Air Station. She resigned from the Navy last year and recently won a $5.2 million civil judgment against the Las Vegas Hilton.
In the movie, Coughlin is portrayed as an ambitious woman who wants to be an admiral one day.
It's the men around her who are problems.
``They've operated under the assumption that every man in a uniform is a sexual harasser,'' said Reserve Lt. Cmdr. Priscilla Rae, who worked as a Navy lawyer for 10 years before going into private practice.
``I find that offensive.''
Rae and her husband, Bob, who is also an attorney, defended two fliers accused of misconduct at the Tailhook convention. One, Lt. Rolando Diaz, accused of shaving legs, was taken to a nonjudicial hearing known as Admiral's Mast and disciplined.
The other, Cmdr. Gregory S. Tritt, had the charges against him dismissed when a military judge in Norfolk threw out all of the Tailhook cases.
In Friday's interview, Bob Rae pointed to inaccuracies in the movie, namely the creation of a second woman pilot who claims she was molested in the gantlet during the 1986 Tailhook convention.
Nowhere, Rae said, is there any suggestion that such an assault took place. He criticized the movie for failing to address key investigative blunders by defense department agents, mistakes that would later weaken the prosecution of some 43 Navy fliers.
Rae also disputed the movie's portrayal of the gantlet - the long narrow hallway on the hotel's third floor, where aviators groped women.
``I think they really overdid the assault scene. That was clearly exaggerated for the effect,'' Rae said. ``The close-ups of sweaty, lusty aviators standing there was hype.''
But Hansen, who prosecuted several of the Tailhook cases, said the images - while unfair in their broad brush depiction of the aviation community - raise issues the Navy is still dealing with.
``The Navy's going to take a black eye on this, no matter what happens,'' Hansen said. ``It's clear the Navy knew these antics were going on for years. The Navy knew it. It was a bomb waiting to go off.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
D.J. HANSEN
Prosecuted several of the Tailhook cases
PRISCILLA AND BOB RAE
Defended two Navy fliers accused of misconduct
KEYWORDS: TAILHOOK CONVENTION by CNB