Military investigators delved into allegations that recruiters were engaged in sexual misconduct at the Ukiah office...Excuse me? Sleepovers? Sleepovers?The investigation into misconduct by North Coast recruiters surfaced this week when a Ukiah high school student told reporters that three male recruiters had sex with young women, some of them poolees, at a Feb. 17 sleepover in the Ukiah office.
The girl, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said she had sex with one recruiter two previous times at the office after he told her it was a requirement to join the Marines.
"A sinister cabal of superior writers."
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Z.Z. Bachman
I suppose we are to believe that this was not consentual sex? These "recruits", if that's what they actually were and not goldiggers, must of had the IQ of a pea IF this story is true.
2 - Dave Nalle
How about a link to a source on this one? I'd love to read more. Some details might help clarify what sounds highly implausible at first read.
Dave
3 - Dave Nalle
NM, here's the link to the Ukiah Journal article. Lots more details that make the accuser sound pretty flaky and the situation sound even weirder and more suspicious.
Dave
4 - Greg Burton
A link to source? sure thing.....
Ukiah Daily Journal Online - Local: "Mendocino County District Attorney Norm Vroman said Tuesday he would not press charges, seeing no actual crime committed. He added however, that some military action might be appropriate.
According to the girl, the preliminary military investigation of her charges was conducted by an officer out of San Diego who contacted her, heard her story and told her to keep her mouth shut.
5 - Dave Nalle
Beat you to it, Greg. By 4 minutes even.
Dave
6 - Tan Hoang
You can blame men, in general, all you want, but there is so need to blame the woman because anyone who would believe that having sex, unless it's in the oval office, is a requirement for anything is an idiot.
7 - Victor Plenty
That's not what she was told, according to the article linked by Dave and Greg. It would appear that whatever source Miriam is quoting may have the details significantly wrong.
Here is the relevant quote from the Ukiah Daily Journal Online:
Note the crucial difference in wording here. If this is what was really said, there was no claim about any official "requirement." It was simply an abuse of personal power. This is a recruiter telling a young woman he will use his personal knowledge and influence to keep her out of the Marines unless she has sex with him.
If this is the way things actually happened, the woman would not have to be an idiot to believe this threat was plausible, and there is no justification for placing any of the blame for the incident on her.
8 - Tan Hoang
Yes. That man is a sleaseball. Yes. He took advantage of her. But maybe I'm looking at this objectively enough. If I was a woman, and some man (more generally, taking out of military context) told me that I would get a job if I had sex with him, then I should fully be aware that it wasn't a requirement. Well, rereading it, it appears she did know that it was not a requirement. Then I think she is an idiot for having sex with him and publicizing it. Now I'm just going to have to assume that she just wanted to have sex with him and her 5 minutes of fame.
9 - Victor Plenty
You're blinded by your own narrow view, Tan. As an adult male with extensive education and life experience, you are in a much stronger position to resist if anyone attempted to sexually harass you.
You don't know anything near enough about the education and life experiences of this 17 year old girl to be able to make the statements you are making about her here. You are assuming she knew everything you know about life and the law, and making moral judgements against her, based on that totally unjustifiable assumption.
Beyond that, you are still arguing from a shaky premise. The "requirement" claim has not been reliably established. You accomplish nothing but weakening your own position by continuing to rely on it as a central premise of your argument.
It is far more likely the recruiter simply persuaded her he had enough inside knowledge and influence to quietly prevent her from entering the Marine Corps.
10 - Dave Nalle
You folks are ignoring the earlier part of the article where she says that she was interested in having a sexual relationship with him and he had initially refused because of military policy prohibiting it, but then he subsequently changed his mind. This creates a situation so ambiguous and peculiar that I don't see her credibility holding up if it ever goes to court.
Dave
11 - Victor Plenty
Coercion is not excused by her earlier interest, Dave.
Suppose I meet a guy selling watches on the street. I express some interest in buying, but for some reason he decides against selling to me. Later on the same guy mugs me at gunpoint in a dark alley and takes my wallet.
Does my earlier interest in buying his wares really mean he is now within his rights to grab my wallet whenever he feels like it?
That sounds exactly like the line of reasoning you are trying to establish here by playing up the young woman's earlier interest in the guy who later sexually harassed her.
If the events happened the way she says they did, her earlier interest in a relationship with him became totally irrelevant from the moment he decided to threaten her.
Sadly, you may be right about a court or prosecutor deciding the case is too complicated to resolve, but that doesn't make the recruiter blameless, nor does it make the young woman at fault for what happened.
12 - Dave Nalle
Well, a court martial can act against the recruited with much more latitute than a civilian court, so he ought to get some sort of punishment.
In a civilian court case it's going to be a mess, plus I can't believe the woman in question is dumb enough to believe his line - not when she'd been looking into joining up for as long as she had.
I still say there's something more to the story.
Dave
13 - Victor Plenty
His line may well have been "I know people who can make sure you are never allowed to join the Marines."
This could be a credible threat coming from an experienced recruiter, and the young woman would not have to be "dumb" or an "idiot" to see it as a serious possibility.
Of course there's something more to the story. The details we have here so far are fragmentary at best, and perhaps contradictory.
But so far I see no solid evidence to justify blaming the victim.
14 - SFC SKI
The recruiters are well aware of what they can and cannot do with regards to candidates, no matter what, the USMC is not going to look favorably on this sort of conduct, nor should it.
15 - miriam
The poor girl was naive. At her age, we all were.
16 - Victor Plenty
At 17 I was already fairly cynical, but I'd prefer to see our culture and our legal system moving toward a society where it's safe for a 17 year old to be naive about at least a few things.
No longer being 17 or naive myself gives me many defenses against predators, but it also gives me a duty to advocate better societal protections for those who are not yet so good at defending themselves.
Speaking of which, Miriam, if you happen to drop by again, could you perhaps remember the source you were quoting for the bulk of your original post? It seems to be different from the article Dave and Greg linked us to, and it could be informative to compare the full articles. Thanks.
17 - miriam
For those who have asked, here is the link
18 - Tan Hoang
Well, I am blinded by my narrow-mindedness. I just fear that people might use this against military recruitments. It looks like the girl wanted to have sex with him, but didn't want to make the first move. She might have used his "words" as an excuse. It does look bad for the military, but it seems that it's an isolated group of recruiters who have used their jobs to their advantage.
19 - Victor Plenty
Thanks, Miriam. The full article seems to mostly fit with the other reports I've been seeing in various outlets, and it looks like the details we've been debating here may not emerge more clearly until the courts-martial processes have been moved closer to their conclusions.
20 - SFC SKI
At 17, th girl, who originally wanted to have sex, was naive? Spare me.
21 - Victor Plenty
Medieval attitudes on moral purity aside, SFC, it's quite possible for a 17 year old girl to both be naive about the internal politics of Marine Corps recruiting, and also at the very same time be interested in having sex with someone.
So maybe you'd be better off to quit while you're ahead. Stop making such lame excuses for these men's slimy actions. What these recruiters have done, if the allegations are true, is a real insult to the honor of the Marine Corps and every other branch of the military.
22 - bhw
From one of the articles linked above:
Discovering they had a similar taste in music, the two quickly became friends, she said. The young woman, 17 at the time, thought there might have been something more and she says Dunzweiler alluded to the possibility as well.
Marine Corps policy, however, expressly forbids such personal relationships between recruiting personnel and potential recruits. The young woman, despite wishing otherwise, grew to understand this policy and the impossibility of a relationship with her sergeant.
Not all 17-year-old girls plan to have sex with someone, just because they are interested in a romantic relationship. Some teenage girls have boyfriends they don't sleep with.
So we don't know if she wanted to have sex with him or not, just that she was romantically interested in him.
23 - Victor Plenty
You're right, bhw. Damn, now I've been caught up in a bad assumption along with everybody else, even as I've been arguing against even worse assumptions.
Thanks for correcting our collective mistake.
24 - brooke
the very first thing i want to say off the bat the recruiters were wrong! i dont care whether it was consentual or not it's called fraterzation. the recruiters job is to recruit ppl not have sex with them i can say this of my experience with the marines. it does not matter if you are butt ass ugly male marines will sleep w/ any female. but these girls didn't realize i am sure that they were doing anything wrong. as they have not gone thru boot camp yet and do not know the articles and ucmj but to be a recruiter you have to at least be a sgt or above which is an E-5 they know what they can and can not do. and on top of that what in the hell was wrong w/ those recruiter most poolee's arent even 18 yet! thats a big fat no no anyone's chain of command will tell you you dont do that or the marine corps will hold you in the brig for statatory rape. and these females what in the hell were they thinking? i guess they don't know how small the marine corps is and if they ever make it to boot camp their D.I.s will know who these girls are and they will embarrass the holy hell outta them for it so that means everyone in their platoon is going to know and then they are going to split up but go thru mct together and they are going to tell more ppl and then the male marines will know along w/ the instructors then they will go to mos school and everybody there will know it too and then to their permant base and everyone there will know too and they will be despised and hated and made fun of this is what all female marines go thru at some point in time whether they did something stupid or not you can go thru this for not giving it up. we as female marines are second class citizens in our society. however that is something you either have the balls to stand up too or you don't and if you don't you wind up in stupid positions like these dumb ass females. that makes me want to jerk them up and slap the living crap outta them and the recruiters they will get what is coming to them they will be lucky to see freedom again within 10 yrs! dude thats just wrong and its ppl like that that give all female marines bad names and it isnt just the female poolee's it was the recruiters too they just thought they would never get caught! bastards ggggrrrrrrrrrr i hate stupid ppl who will not abide by our rules after so long they know better and they know our rules and lets say by some god forsaken chance they really didnt know it was wrong ignorance is no excuse. those bastards god they piss me off i can promise you their chain of command is having a field day w them and probably already treating them like pvt's cuz as soon as their court martials go thru thats what they will be.
steviebrat
http://spaces.msn.com/members/steviebrat/
25 - Bob A. Booey
With all the trouble the military has had recruiting, who wants to go to Iraq and die so bad that they'll have illegal, underaged sex with older men?
I'm guessing these girls weren't lookers.
That is all.