Speaking Truth to Power - Anita Hill [147]
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