Army Finds ‘Major Flaws’ at Fort Hood; 14 Officials Disciplined, by Sarah Mervosh And John Ismay, New York Times (December 08, 2020)

Several officials were fired or suspended after an investigation into the culture at Fort Hood in Texas. Women were “preyed upon” but afraid to report sexual harassment, investigators found.

More than a dozen Army officials have been fired or suspended as part of a sweeping investigation into the climate and culture at Fort Hood, a sprawling military base in Texas that has been rocked by a series of violent deaths, suicides and complaints of sexual harassment.

The investigation released on Tuesday found “major flaws” at Fort Hood and a command climate “that was permissive of sexual harassment and sexual assault,” said Ryan D. McCarthy, the secretary of the Army.

“Unfortunately, a ‘business as usual’ approach was taken by Fort Hood leadership causing female soldiers, particularly, in the combat brigades, to slip into survival mode,” the report said, where they were “vulnerable and preyed upon, but fearful to report and be ostracized and re-victimized.”

The Army secretary ordered that 14 officials, including several high-ranking leaders, be relieved of command or suspended and vowed sweeping reform that would extend far beyond Fort Hood to affect more than one million soldiers and Army civilians nationwide.

“This report, without a doubt, will cause the Army to change our culture,” Mr. McCarthy said.

The damning report comes as the military faces mounting public pressure to address years of allegations that harassment and sexual assault among soldiers had gone unaddressed. A Defense Department survey released last year estimated that there were 20,500 instances of “unwanted sexual contact” in the 2018 fiscal year, up 38 percent from 2016, and that the uptick was driven almost entirely by an increase in assaults on women in uniform.

Fort Hood, the nation’s third-largest Army base in terms of population, has been at the center of the conversation amid a rash of homicides, suicides and violent crime this year. The investigation came in response to the slaying of Vanessa Guillen, a 20-year-old Army specialist, who disappeared on the base in Killeen, Texas, after telling friends that she had been sexually harassed; the authorities say she was killed by a fellow soldier who burned and dismembered her body.

The findings of the investigation were seen as a significant step by military observers, lawmakers, advocates for Latinos and representatives for Specialist Guillen, who welcomed the changes as an initial but necessary move toward justice.

“They told the truth and they let the heads roll,” said Natalie Khawam, a lawyer for Specialist Guillen’s family who credited the Army for taking on systematic change. “I’m getting phone calls from colonels and everyone you can think of, contacting me and telling me, ‘I have never seen anything like this in my 30 years in the military.’”

The Army’s investigation dealt potentially career-ending blows to two generals. Maj. Gen. Scott L. Efflandt, a deputy commanding general of the Third Corps, who was the senior commander in charge at Fort Hood when Specialist Guillen disappeared, was relieved of his leadership duties. Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Broadwater, the commander of the First Cavalry Division, was suspended pending an investigation.

Col. Ralph Overland, the commander of the Third Cavalry Regiment, Specialist Guillen’s unit, was also relieved of his command.

“The Army has a very low tolerance level for weaknesses in command and that’s clearly what they found at Fort Hood,” said Loren Thompson, the chief operating officer at the Lexington Institute, a conservative think tank in Arlington, Va., who said it was unusual to see so many officers disciplined. In addition to the named senior leaders, Mr. McCarthy said he had also ordered action against other unnamed officers up and down the ranks.

“There was a time when the institutional Army might have looked the other way,” Mr. Thompson said. “But it’s exactly the opposite now.”

Fort Hood stretches for miles across central Texas between Dallas and Austin and is home to tens of thousands of people. Physically larger than New York City, it is subject to the same crime and problems that any community might have.

But the report found that the base had higher levels of crime than other Army installations, including sex crimes, assault and battery, drug offenses, drunk and disorderly charges, and larceny. The report found that “serious crime issues on and off Fort Hood were neither identified nor addressed.”

Sexual assault and harassment were particular problems. After the body of Sgt. Elder N. Fernandes, 23, was found hanging from a tree in August about 30 miles from Fort Hood, his family said he had reported sexual assault by a superior and had been retaliated against.

The investigation documented a failure to properly staff and fund the sexual assault and harassment prevention program, and a culture in which women did not feel comfortable coming forward.

Of more than 500 female soldiers interviewed, investigators found 93 credible accounts of sexual assault; of those, just 59 had been reported, according to the report. They also found 135 credible instances of sexual harassment; just 72 were reported.

“If any of them see this, I want them to know, we believe you,” said Carrie F. Ricci, a retired Army officer who was part of the investigation team.

Perhaps the most serious finding of the Army’s monthslong review of Fort Hood was that no commanding general or subordinate senior commander proactively intervened to mitigate “known risks of high crime, sexual assault and sexual harassment.”

Still, the investigation determined that the culture was not attributable to any one leader, but rather that it developed and persisted over time. Exacerbating the situation, the report found, was the Army’s two decades of constant war since the Sept. 11 attacks, which created a climate in which military readiness was valued over all other responsibilities, to the detriment of integrity and respect between soldiers.

Lt. Gen. Pat White, the commander of Fort Hood, said he was taking ownership of the situation. He was deployed in Iraq when most of the recent incidents occurred and was not one of those disciplined.

“All of the Army is responsible for the culture, but commanders are responsible for the climate,” he said. “I own this, and I’m going to get after it.”

The report drew attention from military advocates and lawmakers around the country, including Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, a Democrat, who has been vocal about prosecuting sexual assaults in the military.

“These issues are not restricted to Fort Hood,” she said in a statement. “The current system continues to fail our service members and needs a complete overhaul.”

Specialist Guillen, who grew up in Houston, had dreamed of joining the military since childhood, when she would play with her brother’s toy pistol, family members said. Young and athletic, she enlisted in the Army at 18.

She later told friends and fellow soldiers that she had been sexually harassed, though officials said she had not made any formal complaints.

She went missing on April 22, and her remains were found in June. Federal investigators said that a soldier in her unit, Specialist Aaron D. Robinson, struck her in the head with a hammer and that he and his girlfriend dismembered and burned her body.

Specialist Robinson later killed himself as the police approached him, the authorities said. His girlfriend, Cecily Aguilar, faces a charge of conspiracy to tamper with evidence.

Specialist Guillen’s family spoke at an impassioned news conference in Houston on Tuesday, endorsing the Army’s decision to discipline the officers but also saying the action was long overdue, coming nearly eight months after Specialist Guillen’s death.

Her sister, Lupe Guillen, said that like so many others, Specialist Guillen was afraid to report harassment because she feared retaliation.

“I am saying this as a woman, as someone who wanted to sign up for the military,” she said, urging Army officials and Congress to get behind the “I Am Vanessa Guillen” Act, which would require that sexual harassment complaints involving service members be sent to an independent investigator.

“We don’t want another soldier going missing,” she said. “It will save lives.”

Gloria Guillen, Specialist Guillen’s mother, said she was pleased to see officers fired, but for her, it was not nearly punishment enough.

“Today I told the secretary of the Army, yes, it’s fine, they relieved them, they took a few out, but no, I want prison, and to discover the truth of what really happened,” she said. “What really happened to my daughter? Why that horrible murder? She was not a cockroach. She was an innocent human being.”