Surprised John Kelly would overlook abuse? The military that bred him is rife with it.

By Joanne Lipman
USA Today
February 13, 2018

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/02/13/john-kelly-rob-porter-donald-trump-overlooking-abuse-military-culture-column/328994002/

Gen. John Kelly in New York in 2015. Photo by Peter Foley

For days, pundits have been puzzling over how John Kelly, the straight-arrow retired general brought in to restore order to the Trump White House as chief of staff, could have tolerated an accused wife-beater as staff secretary.

After all, Kelly was told about Rob Porter’s alleged abuse weeks ago by the FBI, which also informed him that Porter was unlikely to receive security clearance because of it, according to Politico. On Friday, a second White House staffer stepped down after he too was accused of abusing his wife.

The question is, why would Kelly have put up with it?

Here’s one answer that few have dared raise: the ingrained, extensive culture of sexual harassment in the military. Not just tolerating abuse, but allowing it to fester, particularly at the highest levels. The military culture that turned a blind eye to domestic abuse and sex scandals by top brass over a period of many years is the same one that bred John Kelly.

In October, a USA TODAY investigation by military affairs reporter Tom Vanden Brook revealed that the Pentagon had documented 500 cases of serious misconduct among generals and other senior personnel, many of them involving sexual abuses. Yet few of those cases are made public, and senior officers have been permitted to keep their ranks and retire with full honors.

As Vanden Brook noted, “Sexual harassment by top brass in many cases is considered an open secret.” The military has resisted efforts for reform, and instead “has often closed ranks.”

Vanden Brook documented numerous incidents of abuse, including an Air Force general who coerced a younger woman to have sex with him and a former Army major general who engaged in trysts in sex clubs. The senior brass “start to feel above the law,” Don Christensen, former top prosecutor for the Air Force and president of the advocacy group Protect Our Defenders, told him. “They feel like royalty vs. an officer dedicated to the country.”

USA TODAY has also reported on the military’s kid-glove treatment of those accused of domestic violence. The Air Force, for example, dropped gun charges five years ago against Airman First Class Devin Kelley after he threatened his wife with a loaded gun and attacked her 1-year-old child. In November, he gunned down his mother-in-law’s church congregation in Texas, killing 25 people, including a pregnant woman whose unborn baby also died, and wounding 20. 

Kelly’s career was forged in this environment, in which abuse hasn’t been taken seriously, and military leaders believe the brothers in arms they know rather than the female victims they don’t. So perhaps it’s not surprising that Kelly — a retired four-star Marine Corps general — would defend Porter, calling him “a man of integrity and honor.” As The New York Times reported, Kelly also served as a character witness for a Marine colonel who was accused of sexually harassing two female subordinates.

That culture of complicity is compounded by a White House that is overwhelmingly male. A Guardian analysis this past fall found that 80% of nominations for top Trump administration jobs have gone to men, a proportion far higher than both Republican and Democratic presidents over the past quarter of a century.

President Trump has expressed a particular predilection for military generals. He also has consistently supported men accused of harassment and domestic abuse, from Roger Ailes to Senate candidate Roy Moore.

And Trump himself has his own history of brushing off sexual abuse claims, including accusations by at least 19 women that he harassed them.

So it is entirely in character that Trump, when asked about Porter, painted him as the victim, without mentioning the two ex-wives he allegedly abused: “It's obviously a very tough time for him. He did a very good job while he was in the White House. ... We hope that he will have a wonderful career." Trump doubled down on Saturday, with a tweet that supported accused men whose lives are “destroyed by a mere allegation.”

As I document in my new book That’s What She Said, researchers have shown that men in general underestimate sexist behavior. While half of women in a nationwide poll said they had been touched inappropriately by a man, for example, only a third of men thought their partners had experienced that kind of harassment. 

Men who can’t see the problem can’t be expected to take steps to fix it. This doesn’t just apply to the extremes of abuse and harassment. At the root of all of this is a lack of respect for women. An environment that tolerates abuse is also one that is likely to marginalize, undervalue and underpay women. The Trump administration itself last year rolled back an Obama-era equal-pay rule. In the Trump White House, men make 37% more than women, a wage gap that has tripled since the Obama administration.

In the end, that will damage American competitiveness. Economists estimate that simply paying women equally could add $4.3 trillion to the American economy. Researchers who have studied investments, board composition, risk taking and creative problem solving have all concluded the same thing: The best step you can take to increase financial success and American competitiveness is to add more women.

But that won’t happen if American leadership doesn’t recognize the value of women, doesn’t believe them, and continues to tolerate abuse. Men in an all-male bubble, talking to one another, are unlikely to be the bearers of change. And in the end, that will hurt all of us.