Speaking Truth to Power

by Anita Hill

  When navy officials discovered the cover-up in the investigation of the Tailhook incident, some of those directly and indirectly responsible resigned under pressure. Yet the second investigation netted few convictions for the molestations. Admiral Frank Kelso, commander in chief of naval forces during the incident, was awarded a fourth star upon his retirement. Accountability and responsibility, lessons endemic to the military, were low, given the severity of the infractions. Kelso was rewarded for his career, his responsibility for the misconduct overlooked.

  The official response to this incident compares unfavorably with the response of the Canadian government to a videotaped episode of racial harassment and hazing. Recruits to the Canadian Airborne Regiment were forced to eat urine-soaked bread and fecal matter as part of the initiation rite. One black recruit was forced to walk on all fours while wearing a leash. As if that were not degrading enough, his initiators smeared the message “I Love the KKK” on his back with feces. The same division was accused of racist acts while acting on behalf of Canada as part of the United Nations peacekeeping forces in Somalia. The hazing behavior was the ultimate expression of obedience. The racist element of the division’s activities reflected and reinforced to an unacceptable extreme the hierarchical ordering basic to the military system. In the same way, sexist behavior and sexual abuse represent an extreme way of promoting a hierarchy.

  Over protests from various sources, Canadian Defence Minister David Collennette announced approximately one week after news media aired the videotape that the regiment would be disbanded. No videotape of the Tailhook wrongdoing exists. All that existed was the word of nearly eighty women and formal complaints from over two dozen coupled with clear evidence that those present wanted to avoid a proper investigation. But more important, the difference between the two episodes is that the Canadian episode involved leadership with a will for accountability. None was evident in the Tailhook episode. No official entertained abolishing the Tailhook Association or official recognition of it. Clearly, that is what it will take for the message of zero tolerance to be taken seriously.

  Paula Coughlin sued the Tailhook Association and settled out of court. She also sued the Las Vegas Hilton for failure to provide adequate security. Evidence showed that hotel personnel had warned female hotel security guards to stay away from the Tailhook parties for their own safety, and were thus aware of the activity that the Tailhook conventioneers engaged in. In her suit against the Hilton, Coughlin testified that the harassment from navy personnel after she complained was relentless, so extreme that she considered suicide as the only way to end her misery. Her colleagues, who resented her role in the investigation and the attention brought upon the navy, treated her with contempt and shunned her, the ultimate renunciation in a climate that preaches camaraderie. Her tormentors, no doubt, thought their actions a proper response to her “treachery” in complaining. Before giving her a poor performance evaluation one of her supervisors said that her complaint had injured his career. One commander recommended that she return a bonus which she had received prior to the convention when her evaluations were outstanding.

  In the end, Paula Coughlin left the navy, stating that the “covert attacks” on her by her colleagues left her no other choice. With little hope of advancing in the military, she left the navy at a time when the demand for commercial pilots was low. Thus, her skills as a pilot have limited utility in the civilian marketplace. In arguing against the stiff punitive damage award, one hotel representative suggested that the hotel had suffered enough in loss of business surrounding the scandal. A jury, obviously moved by the extent of Coughlin’s suffering, awarded her $1.7 million in compensatory damages and assessed $5 million in damages against the hotel. The Hilton has appealed the award. The Nevada legislature quickly went to work to undo the damage award, passing a bill in one house to elevate the standard for corporate liability for failure to protect hotel guests from sexual assaults and making it retroactive to cases on appeal. Not surprisingly, the hotel lobby in the state of Nevada, home to resorts in Lake Tahoe, Reno, and Las Vegas, strongly supports the measure.

  When I think of Paula Coughlin, I am frightened for her and for many other women in military and civilian service who have attempted to pursue careers and press their claims of harassment or other forms of sexual abuse. Two dozen women formally complained of being raped or sexually assaulted by fellow military personnel during the Gulf War. Such cases seem always to precede a cover-up or mismanaged investigation and result in termination of the complainant’s career. What is equally devastating is that the sexual harassment not only spoils careers but shatters dreams. Women in the 1980s were told that sexism was dead—that it was safe to have dreams and best to dream big. Unredressed sexual harassment not only takes away our dignity but spoils our belief in ourselves and in the fairness of life and conveys the message that our dreams are pointless.

  As had been the case with Paula Coughlin, I relived my own experience when I learned of Suzanne J. Doucette. Doucette, an FBI agent who complained about being harassed by her supervisor, represents one more story of unofficial abuse leading to official mistreatment recorded since the hearing of October 1991. A ten-year veteran of the bureau, she broke unwritten agency rules and told her story of sexual harassment. In one incident her supervisor caught her in a choke hold from behind and demanded sexual favors. She managed to break free, but afterward the same supervisor began to devalue her contribution to the agency.

  Prior to the incident, Doucette received commendations and bonuses for her performance as an agent, but afterward she was told that her evaluations would improve if she learned to get along with her male colleagues better. She filed a complaint which met with classic institutional denial. Her evaluations fell to “below acceptable.” Once considered a bright, up-and-coming member of the force, she was ostracized.

  Doucette’s testimony about the harassment before the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs resulted in her being placed on administrative leave without pay. She later left the force and pursued her complaint in court. She, too, abandoned her dream of service and she had to sell her home to finance her lawsuit. Yet she continued to pursue the claim not simply for her sake but for her two daughters, who adore and support her. She wants to be an example for them—to make the world better for them.

  Winning a suit against the FBI may be as difficult as filing a complaint with the navy. The FBI is considered worldwide to be one of the premiere law enforcement agencies. It was venerated in a television series which ran during the 1960s and 1970s. Until the death of J. Edgar Hoover, its long-reigning chief, in 1972, the bureau refused to hire women as agents. As such, the FBI represents the classic paradigm of an institution where sexual harassment is likely to occur—a hierarchical organization which is historically male-dominated. Doucette’s was not the only complaint about harassment. She was one of the few to go public with her complaint. Afterward, she said, other women started telling about their experiences in the agency. Yet it took on the average over a year for the agency to investigate and process complaints about the behavior.

  The FBI, under the direction of Louis Freeh, settled the Doucette suit, and it settled sexual harassment claims raised by other female agents. In the case of two agents in California, a harassing supervisor was dismissed. Suzanne Doucette’s supervisor is now retired. The two California agents remained with the bureau. Suzanne Doucette resigned, under pressure, before suing the agency.

  Inescapable is the irony that the agency embroiled in its own claims of harassment and retaliation was the same agency charged with investigating my statement to the Senate. Inexperience with investigations and resistance to the validity of sexual harassment charges appears to be part of the workplace culture of the FBI. Perhaps this explains in part why the agency went along with the order to attempt to contradict my testimony despite contrary practices and procedures.

  Soon after the Supreme Court adjourned for its October 1991 term, it heard arguments in Christ
ine Franklin’s lawsuit against her school. Ms. Franklin was a high school student who claimed that, from the time she was in the tenth grade, one of her teachers continually harassed her. The record shows that Franklin complained that he “forcibly kissed her on the mouth in the school parking lot,” “asked her about her sexual experience with her boyfriend and whether she would consider having sexual intercourse with an older man,” “telephoned her at home and asked her to meet him socially,” and, finally, one day “took her to a private office [at the school] where he subjected her to coercive intercourse.” The school system took no action.

  Later the Association of American University Women and the Center for Research on Women would inform us through studies that sexual harassment is prevalent in high schools and junior high schools. Moreover, the studies would reveal that many times, in fact more times than not, schools did nothing about the behavior.

  Christine Franklin’s lawsuit before the Supreme Court was about damages. The trial court concluded that she could not sue for them under Title IX (the statute which prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender in the schools). The Bush administration had filed a brief supporting the position taken by the trial court denying Ms. Franklin’s suit.

  The Supreme Court announced its unanimous decision in February 1992 and ruled that Christine Franklin could sue for damages. Many of the lawyers who worked on the case were surprised at the decision, which in no way restricted the amount recoverable under the Franklin suit. Clearly, the impact of the October 1991 hearing was on the minds of the commentators if not the minds of the Court. Despite the despicable facts which led to the lawsuit, the case had received relatively little attention prior to the hearing. Upon the announcement of the decision it became a cause for celebration by women who had prior to October 1991 taken the fact of sexual harassment for granted.

  I was pleased with the outcome of the suit but was all the more angry with the Bush administration, an administration which claimed to be sensitive to the problem, but which was unwilling to hold a school system accountable for neglecting to protect young victims. The hypocrisy was underscored by President Bush’s assurances to Paula Coughlin that he would see to it that her assailants were punished. That promise, too, proved to be empty.

  Two years after the October 1991 hearing, the Supreme Court rendered the second sexual harassment decision in its history. Not since 1986, when the Court concluded that sexual harassment was a form of sex discrimination prohibited under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, had it ruled on a workplace sex harassment claim. Teresa Harris brought the suit against her employer, Forklift Systems, Inc. She alleged that the company’s president, Charles Hardy, subjected her to numerous sexual and sexist comments: “You’re a woman, what do you know” and “We need a man as the rental manager.” Hardy suggested that Harris and he “go to the Holiday Inn to negotiate her raise.” He asked female employees to retrieve change from his front pocket and threw objects on the ground and asked them to bend over and pick them up. Hardy defended his behavior as joking. He apologized but did not stop.

  Teresa Harris lost her lawsuit at trial, even though the court ruled that she was, in fact, offended by the behavior and reasonably should have been. Nevertheless, it concluded that Hardy’s vulgar behavior was not illegal because Harris’ job performance had not suffered as a result. Again the suit was about damages. In essence the court ruled that because Harris could take the behavior and still perform, she had to continue to take the behavior and could not be compensated.

  By the time the Harris case was argued, the second female Supreme Court justice had taken her position on the Court. Ruth Bader Ginsberg heard the oral argument in the Harris case and actively participated in questioning the attorneys. She also traded comments with her colleagues, reminding Justice Antonin Scalia that a comment directed at him suggesting that he knew little because he was a man had far less impact than a comment directed at a woman suggesting lack of intelligence because of her gender. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote the opinion, for, again, a unanimous court, in the Harris case. She concluded that “Title VII comes into play before the harassing conduct leads to a nervous breakdown.” She added that the law provides relief for a “discriminatorily abusive work environment” even when it does not “detract from employees’ job performance.”

  The Court’s opinion decisively affirmed the ban against sexual harassment in the workplace and strengthened the definition of what was actionable under the law. I was overjoyed at the speed with which the Court rendered its decision. To me it sent a clear message to the trial courts around the country that the Supreme Court took the problem of sexual harassment seriously. Even the separate opinion by Justice Scalia recognized the fact that further understanding about the problem was necessary before the Court could draw hard definitions which effectively eliminated lawsuits.

  I agreed to comment on the case on the CBS Morning News and NBC’s Today show. The night before the interview, I spent hours poring over the briefs filed in the suit and the cases cited in justice O’Connor’s opinion. It was a labor of love. To me the Harris suit represented affirmation, a victory for working women. The interview with Harry Smith of CBS went smoothly. The case is a landmark case on a prominent problem affecting working women in this country. It did not represent a panacea for all the ills of sexual harassment but it was a start. It was all the more significant because it represented only the second time that the High Court had addressed sexual harassment in the workplace since the concept was introduced to the courts in the 1970s.

  I was angry and disappointed when Katie Couric of NBC asked me to address David Brock’s allegations about me. The question had nothing to do with the Harris case and had not been raised by the show’s producers as one of the subjects they were interested in hearing about. Yet the question was revealing especially in the context of the discussion of a major legal decision. Ms. Couric’s question reminded me that no matter what the breakthrough in law and in our understanding of the problem of sexual harassment, there will always be those who want to reduce us to talking about the salacious and the sordid.

  Interestingly, she did not ask me to comment on the irony of the fact that Thomas, in whose confirmation hearing sexual harassment charges played prominently, was deciding cases on that issue. Nor did she comment on the potential conflict of interest that Justice Thomas might have in deciding the Harris and Franklin cases. The emotions, anger and hostility, he displayed at his hearing regarding my claim suggest that he might have been less than objective in his review of the cases and, moreover, might even compromise the entire Court by weighing in on these decisions. Since the Supreme Court is the court of final review and given the significance of the issue, these seemed to me the more critical questions. Yet again, I became the subject of the scrutiny, not Thomas or the important issue of sexual harassment. That I may always be viewed through the prism of my detractors is not surprising. In that, I am sadly not alone. For every woman I know who has complained about harassment—those who are successful in their efforts and those who are not—unfounded accusations continue as well.

  The energy breathed into the issue in the wake of the hearings was reflected in the number of suits filed soon after and the innovation with which attorneys pursued them in court. That added support led to women complaining in groups rather than alone. Women miners were the first to be certified as a class in a hostile environment sexual harassment suit against their employer, Eveleth Taconite Co., a mining company. Female bottlers and machinists at Stroh Brewery Company sued the brewery for sexual harassment. Lori Peterson, the young lawyer in the case, asserted that Stroh’s advertising encouraged sexual harassment. Company work sites featured promotional posters that were takeoffs from television advertisements, such as those featuring the “Swedish bikini team.” The advertising suggested that men could have both the beer and the women and that both were equally valued. In another suit involving multiple complainants waitresses from the Hooters restaurant chain
sued their employer. In addition to complaining that the company failed to stop customer harassment, the women complained that the company contributed to it. Revealing uniforms which the company required them to wear contributed to the sexual harassment they experienced.

  These cases are important because they represent group complaints about hostile environment sexual harassment—a new wave in the area of the law. They are important as well because they prove that the issue concerns women of different occupations and income classes. The miners, machinists, waitresses, and bottlers in these lawsuits can hardly be characterized as members of a privileged class of workers, out of touch with the reality of the work world. Rightfully, the rules applied to them in the same way that they applied to women in offices and professional settings. Finally, it seemed, the rules of law were finding their connection with the people which the law was supposed to protect. The gap between the law’s protections and the law’s promises was being filled.