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Preying on recruits

[This story originally appeared in Air Force Times in the Sept. 11, 2006, issue.]

More than 100 young women who expressed interest in joining the military in the past year were preyed upon sexually by their recruiters — 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 assault and 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 11 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 results of the AP investigation offer far greater detail on recruiter irregularities than was presented in a recent Government Accountability Office report summing up numbers of reported and substantiated violations of policies and procedures, to include criminal violations, by recruiters.

The AP also found that:

* 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 161 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 through nonjudicial punishment, facing a reduction in rank or forfeiture of pay; courts-martial and civilian prosecutions are not the norm.

* 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 the GAO report released Aug. 8.

Of 19 Air Force recruiters disciplined for misconduct since January 2004, seven went to general, special or summary courts-martial. One of those court-martialed also was tried in civilian court and pleaded guilty to third-degree statutory rape, according to information the Air Force provided to Air Force Times. Nine airmen received Article 15s, nonjudicial punishment for serious matters that fall short of court-martial offenses. Only three received a letter of reprimand or a letter of counseling, according to information provided by the Air Force.

Air Force Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said the military, which will commit more than $1.5 billion to recruiting efforts this year, does not track sexual misconduct cases among recruiters and had no comment on the AP’s findings. She referred the question to the individual services.

Marine Corps Maj. Stewart Upton, also a Pentagon spokesman, said Aug. 25 in an e-mail that the Defense Department “has zero tolerance for misconduct by military recruiters.”

He also wrote that Defense Department officials “would systematically collect data defining offenses and disciplinary action taken over the next 5 to 10 months” to shape potential policy reviews and changes.

Meanwhile, Upton wrote, commanders overseeing recruiters have the authority to take action against rules violators.

In the Army, 53 recruiters were charged with misconduct last year. Douglas Smith, an Army Recruiting Command spokesman, 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.”

Of the Army’s recruiting force, which includes regular Army and Active Guard and Reserve, little more than one-quarter are career recruiters, in Military Occupational Specialty 79R. The rest, more than 6,000 recruiters, are on temporary recruiting detail, an assignment that typically runs up to three years.

“One case of sexual misconduct is one too many,” said Air Force Maj. Crista L. D’Andrea, an Air Force Recruiting Service spokeswoman. “The Air Force and Air Force Recruiting Service have a zero-tolerance policy and will not accept inappropriate conduct — period. There are 33 commanders in Air Force Recruiting, all committed to making sure our mission is accomplished successfully, that discipline and behavior is in good order and crimes are punished.”

Part of a pattern

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, and 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, Calif., hid her face in her hands as she described 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 said, her voice muffled and breaking. “He got into my sleeping bag, unbuttoned my pants, and he started, well ...”

Her voice trailed off, and she was 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 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 wiped the collar of his prison jumpsuit across his cheek, smearing tears that wouldn’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 said, 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 41-year-old Sgt. George Kirkman, a 6-foot-4, 220-pound soldier.

He was friendly and encouraging, but he 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. Kirkman then 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 requests for an interview, pleaded no contest to sexual battery in January and is on probation and registered as a sexual offender. He’s still in the military, working as a clerk in the Jacksonville, Fla., Army recruiting office. However, he does not have contact with potential recruits as he awaits pending court-martial proceedings on charges of rape of an applicant and related allegations, said Smith, the Army recruiting spokesman.

Not all 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 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 will be next spring.

Criminal acts

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.

Former Navy recruiter Paul Sistrunk, a plant supervisor in Conehatta, Miss., who had an affair with a potential recruit in 1995, said their relationship was entirely consensual. She was 18, an adult; he was 26 and married.

“Morally, what I did was wrong, but legally, I don’t think so,” said Sistrunk, who opted for an other-than-honorable discharge rather than face court-martial.

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, head of the Center for Military Readiness, a group that studies military policy and has long opposed allowing women to serve in the military.

“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,” Donnelly said.

Weirick, the Marine Corps defense attorney who has represented several recruiters on rape and sexual misconduct charges, said the problem will probably never go away entirely.

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 phone numbers.

“All that is, you have to remind yourself, is that there’s jail bait, a quick way to get in trouble,” he said. All of the recruiters the AP spoke with, including Walker, said they were often 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. But there didn’t need to be a rule, he said. Recruiters don’t 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 16 is the legal age of consent. So if a recruiter is caught having sex with a 16-year-old, and he can prove it was consensual, he’ll likely face only an administrative reprimand.

In the Air Force, “every recruiter receives a presentation from our legal team covering moral and ethical obligations of applicant and recruiter relationships during their initial recruiter training,” said D’Andrea, the Air Force Recruiting Service spokeswoman. That training specifically addresses sexual misconduct.

“Past case examples are presented, including actions taken against the offenders,” she said. “When recruiters arrive at their first duty location, their training is continued on a quarterly and/or annual basis. Also, within the past year, the Air Force’s ‘Targeting Sexual Assault’ video was shown by the recruiting commander to all Recruiting Service personnel.”

The Indiana Army National Guard has a strict policy regarding recruiter-applicant relations, apparently the first of its kind in the nation. It was instituted last year after seven people came forward to charge 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” telling them the rules. The cards include a phone number to call if they experience anything improper.

The result? “We’ve had a lot fewer problems,” Denton said. “It’s almost like we’re changing the culture in our recruiting.”

The ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee would like to see such changes go militarywide.

Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., reacting to The Associated Press investigation, said Aug. 20 he would push to increase penalties for sexual misconduct by military recruiters. He said the Indiana National Guard’s policy “makes a great deal of sense and should be followed by all services, whether active duty, National Guard or reserve.”

Skelton said he would seek a committee hearing with a view toward inserting language in the 2007 defense authorization bill that would increase penalties for “such outrageous activities.”

Congress will take up the authorization bill after returning from its August recess.

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Staff writer Gina Cavallaro contributed to this report.