Tailhook victim criticizes ‘ludicrous’ sentence in Tuesday’s Nellis court-martial

“I thought the sentencing was pretty ludicrous,” said Paula Coughlin, who blew the whistle on the 1991 Tailhook aviators conference at the Las Vegas Hilton. A number of officers were disciplined or denied advancement in rank after that scandal.

“I’m cautiously optimistic that they got any kind of guilty verdict out of it all. They watered down the charges and went for the easy ones,” Coughlin said in a telephone interview Wednesday from Florida, referring to the Nellis case.

She offered her perspective after reading a Las Vegas Review-Journal story about Maj. Charles Cox’s court-martial.

Coughlin spurred the investigation of male officers at the raucous 1991 conference in what became known as the Tailhook scandal. She has said the drunken aviators indecently assaulted her and other women who were forced to “run the gantlet” with fear of being gang-raped.

Cox, a nurse in the 99th Medical Operations Squadron at Nellis, pleaded not guilty to three charges in October including a violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice for touching the buttocks and anus of an enlisted man “with intent to arouse or gratify his own sexual desire.” The incident occurred while the man was asleep at an off-base house in Las Vegas on Aug. 4, 2012, after a night of heavy drinking that ended with a game of beer pong.

But when the court-martial resumed Tuesday, the five officers chosen to serve as jurors were released after Cox changed his plea to guilty on two charges — conduct unbecoming of an officer for being drunk and disorderly in the presence of enlisted airmen, and assault for unlawful touching the 22-year-old airman’s back and buttocks with his hand. For those guilty pleas, prosecutors asked the military judge to dismiss the sexual abuse charge and the judge, Lt. Col. Christopher Schumann, granted their request.

Coughlin speculated on the plea agreement, saying, “Having taken a beating as a victim myself, they really don’t want to push too far with prosecution.”

She said that’s because the trial and defense counsels assume the victim “had some kind of participation in the attack and there is some embedded bias. It is this gray area, and they don’t verbalize about it but say it’s too difficult to try.”

In Cox’s case, the victim said the encounter and the investigation that followed took “a huge toll” on his life.” He ended up leaving the active-duty Air Force because he “could no longer look up to the expectations.”

Coughlin had a similar experience. “You really lose faith in the command, the command structure and the entire military justice system. And, you’re broken because you have sustained an injury to your soul,” she said. “They do not understand the damage that has occurred.”

A spokesman for Protect Our Defenders, a nonprofit human rights advocacy group for military sexual assault victims, also weighed in Wednesday on Cox’s sentencing.

“This is yet another example of why we need fundamental reform to our broken military justice system,” group spokesman Brian Purchia wrote in an email. “Our brave sons and daughters, brothers and sisters that risk their lives for us deserve to receive justice equal to the civilians they protect.

“Military leaders have been given deference on this issue for too long. They have promised time and again to tackle this problem and eradicate it from the force. But the system is broken,” Purchia said. “Victims won’t come forward when those found guilty of such abuse receive such a light sentence.”

Contact reporter Keith Rogers at krogers@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0308. Follow him on Twitter @KeithRogers2.