Sexual Misconduct

After years of highly publicized incidents of midshipmen sexually abusing classmates, the Naval Academy appears to have turned a corner with a prevention and education program that has been held up as a model for other universities to emulate. Studies, including one released Friday by the Defense Department, show that misconduct incidents have dropped at the academy and an insidious macho culture is giving way to more tolerance and self-policing. But now the academy is reeling from a string of incidents that surfaced during the past year involving sexual misconduct by people in positions of authority - incidents that some fear could reverse the progress and leave midshipmen less willing to report abuse.

SPARKS, Nev. -- At 12: 30 Sunday morning, in the hotel that is playing host to this year's Tailhook convention, the hallways were stone silent. A handful of pilots drank beer in a suite with the door open; two women passed by, without incident. As 1 a.m. neared, one of the men peeled off to bunk down for the night.This is what the Tailhook Convention looks like eight years after a sexual misconduct scandal that came to symbolize what critics said was an official tolerance for swaggering libido in the armed forces.

Pietr Hitzig, Baltimore's Internet diet doctor, has surrendered his license to practice medicine to state authorities, agreeing never to seek reinstatement in Maryland and admitting that he engaged in sexual misconduct with patients.Hitzig's license was accepted yesterday by Maryland's Board of Physician Quality Assurance, which described the Harvard-educated doctor's conduct as among the worst it had investigated.Maryland's physician board, which brought the claims against Hitzig, suspended his license Dec. 16 and had scheduled a seven-day hearing this month to decide whether to revoke it. Hitzig is under federal investigation of allegations he practiced medicine through the Internet.

WASHINGTON -- An Army major general has been found guilty of sexual misconduct and stripped of both stars, an unusually harsh punishment intended to send a message to the troops, Army officials said yesterday.Maj. Gen. John J. Maher III, a 51-year-old, married Vietnam combat veteran, is retiring at the lower rank of colonel as punishment for having had sexual relationships with the wives of two subordinate officers and for having sought an improper relationship with a female enlisted soldier.

EVERY YEAR a few midshipmen are "separated" from the Naval Academy for sexual misconduct. For some of these individuals who are close to completing four mentally and physically demanding years, the process may seem incredibly unfair and arbitrary.It is true that academy rules prohibit romantic and sexual relations between midshipmen that are commonplace at other institutions of higher learning. But the academy's policy is no different from what the Navy demands of its officers once they join the fleet -- a work environment much different from the corporate, government or academic world most college graduates enter.

THE EXONERATION of Sgt. Maj. Gene C. McKinney on charges of sexual misconduct -- though surprising, given that six females independently claimed he groped and crudely propositioned them -- may be seen as a bad moment for women, but it should not necessarily be viewed as a step backward for women in the armed services.The Army took this case seriously, suspending McKinney, its highest-ranking enlisted man, when complaints were lodged. Then it prosecuted him in a court-martial it called the most important in 20 years.

COMPLAINTS by feminist groups that the U.S. Army is not doing enough to stop sexual harassment -- in wake of the recent acquittal of Sgt. Maj. Gene McKinney -- is perplexing. I was involved in the Army's zealous legal effort to combat sexual misconduct for almost two years. As the Army's senior defense counsel in the military district of Washington, I defended officers and enlisted soldiers in the mid-Atlantic region against allegations of sexual misconduct. I was also the first military lawyer to represent Mr. McKinney during the first week after allegations of sexual misconduct surfaced against him. Unfortunately, I had to withdraw from the case because it conflicted with my representation of then-Staff Sgt. Delmar G. Simpson in the Aberdeen Proving Ground sex scandal cases.

WASHINGTON -- Lawyers for Paula Corbin Jones vowed yesterday to continue to pursue an out-of-court settlement of her sexual misconduct case against President Clinton, and the president's attorney said he was waiting to hear further "to get all of this behind us."Each side's legal team spoke out in St. Paul, Minn., after a federal appeals court there explored whether to revive Jones' now-dismissed case and send it back to a federal judge to examine the evidence anew.All three judges on the panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals took an active role in a hearing on Jones' appeal but gave few hints about how they were leaning.

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court, widening its review of sexual harassment in the workplace, agreed yesterday to decide whether employers are to blame if a supervisor makes unwanted advances toward a worker who suffers no harm on the job for rebuffing the overtures.A company based in Chicago, Burlington Industries, contends in an appeal that if the worker is only threatened with some loss of job opportunity for failing to submit, the threat alone should not make the company liable for supervisors' sexual harassment.

WASHINGTON -- Far from retreating after the dismissal of Paula Corbin Jones' sexual misconduct lawsuit, independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr came out swinging yesterday, declaring that he will press on with his investigation into whether President Clinton or his top advisers committed criminal violations."

Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski grilled Naval Academy officials about food services and about creating a standardized system of documenting and reporting sexual misconduct at a meeting yesterday on the Annapolis campus. Mikulski asked whether the main dining hall on campus employs enough cooks - there are 95 - and why midshipmen have a $6.95 daily allotment for meals while sailors have a $9 allotment. "Why is there a discrepancy?" the Maryland Democrat asked at the quarterly meeting of the Board of Visitors, an oversight panel on which she serves along with other lawmakers, civilians and retired military officials.

The nation's military academies have taken significant steps to address allegations of sexual misconduct but are inconsistently reporting incidents to Congress, according to an independent report that calls on policymakers to set reporting standards. The report released yesterday by the Government Accountability Office also suggests that a significant number of assaults and harassment incidents are going unreported by students at the academies. The study, covering a three-year period ending in 2006, was undertaken after members of Congress expressed concern about incidents at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo.

After years of highly publicized incidents of midshipmen sexually abusing classmates, the Naval Academy appears to have turned a corner with a prevention and education program that has been held up as a model for other universities to emulate. Studies, including one released Friday by the Defense Department, show that misconduct incidents have dropped at the academy and an insidious macho culture is giving way to more tolerance and self-policing. But now the academy is reeling from a string of incidents that surfaced during the past year involving sexual misconduct by people in positions of authority - incidents that some fear could reverse the progress and leave midshipmen less willing to report abuse.

List them. Call them out. Go ahead, don't be shy, urge the two midshipmen, who are looking for fellow students to help them compile a list of common terms for promiscuous men and women. The men are "studs" and "pimps." And the women? "Slut" and "door knob" are called out immediately, and beyond that, well, suffice it to say the words aren't really allowed in a family newspaper. And the list in this category, it goes on and on. Midshipmen Joy Dewey and Joshua Foxton have a point to make to their classmates, one that isn't quite new in the lexicon of gender studies and societal perceptions but still hits home to the ones they're trying to reach: Men who sleep around are lionized, and women are put down, objectified, shunned.

The gestures are sweet, but modest: One husband carried his wife's purse. Another made his wife breakfast. And another taped a note to her mirror telling her he liked her haircut. Nothing earth-shattering there. And yet the Roman Catholic Church is counting on publicizing these small acts of everyday kindness to revitalize the institution of marriage. Alarmed by the persistently high divorce rate and the explosion in couples living together without a license, Catholic bishops nationwide have teamed up on a media blitz aimed at promoting and strengthening marriage.

Anne Arundel Woman accuses Mid of forcible sex One of the two women who have accused a former Navy football player of sexual misconduct - the second case of its kind in a year at the Naval Academy - testified at his military trial that he forced her to have sex with him three times. "I had my hands between my legs to shield him," said the woman, a senior at the academy who remained composed during the hour she was on the stand Thursday at the Navy Yard. "I was still saying no at this time."

WASHINGTON -- One of the two women who have accused a former Navy football player of sexual misconduct - the second case of its kind in a year at the Naval Academy - testified at his military trial yesterday that he forced her to have sex with him three times. "I had my hands between my legs to shield him," said the woman, a senior at the academy who remained composed during the hour she was on the stand at the Navy Yard. "I was still saying no at this time." A civilian defense lawyer for Kenny Ray Morrison, 24, focused on the woman's admission that she kissed the accused and asked him if he had a condom, hinting that the sex was consensual.

The Naval Academy is seeking to expel Lamar S. Owens Jr., a former standout quarterback who was acquitted in July of raping a female classmate, after he rejected several offers aimed at persuading him to resign. Owens, who had volunteered to quit last summer to avoid prosecution, will appeal the recommendation by Vice Adm. Rodney P. Rempt, the academy superintendent, to the secretary of the Navy in hopes that he can graduate and be commissioned a surface warfare officer, sources close to Owens said yesterday.

Acting on new allegations, a Howard County grand jury indicted a science teacher on sexual misconduct charges involving a third student at River Hill High School, the state's attorney's office said yesterday. Alan Meade Beier, a 52-year-old chemistry and physics teacher at the Clarksville school, was charged by the grand jury with sexual abuse of a minor and second-degree assault involving a boy younger than 18. The charges come a month after Beier was arrested and charged with sexual misconduct in separate incidents involving two other students.

Jesuits seek to contact those priest might have abused The regional Jesuit institution is looking for any people who might have been abused by a priest who lived at Loyola College from 1979 to 1981. The Rev. H. Cornell Bradley was removed from ministry in January 2006 after an investigation confirmed allegations of sexual misconduct with a man in Baltimore in the early 1980s, said Kate Pipkin, a spokeswoman for the Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus, which includes eight Mid-Atlantic states.