BY MEGAN ARNEY
On March 11, five female soldiers said that Army investigators at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland attempted to bully and badger them into accusing their military superiors of rape. The women said they had been compelled to make statements after promises of immunity from prosecution and under threat of retaliation if they did not.

One of the women, Pvt. Brandi Krewson, said, "I agreed to tell them what they wanted to hear in order for them to leave me alone." Another woman, Kathryn Leming, who was discharged from the Army, said, "I never admitted that I was raped." She was told, however, by military investigators that consensual sex was considered rape under military law. The five women refuse to say if they had consensual sex with any instructors.

The women spoke at a press conference arranged by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The NAACP has claimed the Army has unfairly targeted Black soldiers based on complaints of white female recruits. All eight men criminally charged with sexual misconduct at Aberdeen are Black. The NAACP has called for an independent investigation of the allegations of sexual abuses that surfaced late last year.

A lawyer for the NAACP, Stuart Jay Robinson, said that some of the women might have engaged in consensual sex - which is prohibited between officers and recruits under military rules - and that the Army had goaded them into calling it rape.

In response, Lieut. Col. Gabriel Riesco, said accusers also include Black women so, "Race has never been an issue in this investigation. It is an investigation of sin, not skin."

So far, at least 50 women have made official complaints of sexual abuse at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, including 27 rape complaints.

One officer and 20 noncommissioned officers, mostly drill sergeants, have been implicated. One of the women, Pvt. Darla Hornberger, said that although the women soldiers who were at the press conference had not been raped, some at the post have been.

Of the 14 men accused of sex crimes at Aberdeen, six face courts-martials, two have received discharges in lieu of court martial, four have been fined, demoted or otherwise disciplined, and two were acquitted. The day before the press conference, the eighth instructor was criminally charged. Staff Sgt. Herman Gunter, who is Black, is accused of rape, assault, sexual harassment, and other offenses involving recruits.

The charges of sexual abuse at Aberdeen surfaced last November, setting off a major scandal in the armed forces.

Assertions from thousands of women included a series of complaints of misconduct, rape, extortion, assault, and threatening military personnel at bases across the country. When a toll-free number was set up by the U.S. Army after the first allegations came to light, some 3,100 calls were logged in the first few days. The Army's Criminal Investigative Division has opened new criminal cases in response to at least 155 of these calls.

In one 1995 Pentagon survey of 90,000 female soldiers in various branches of the military, 60 percent said they had been subject to sexual harassment, and nearly 10 percent reported being sexually assaulted.

The five women did not come forward to discount the entire scandal at Aberdeen, Hornberger noted.  
 
 
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