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1991, the U.S. launches a ground and air war in the Persian Gulf.
Among the troops are 40,000 American women,
and not all the men like the idea.
-I don't know exactly how these women are gonna handle this.
I think this should be, you know, a man's war here.
-By law, women were not allowed in ground combat
or fighter jets or combat ships,
but many coveted those jobs,
including Navy lieutenant Paula Coughlin.
-I grew up in a Navy family where we all understood
you could do whatever you wanted to do in life.
You just had to be hardworking and set your mind to it.
-Coughlin wanted to be an aviator like her father,
but as a woman, she was allowed to fly
only support aircraft like helicopters.
She excelled and landed a plumb job as an admiral's aid.
-I was really confident
that I would have a pretty long and successful career.
-It was in the company of her boss
that Coughlin attended the Tailhook convention
in September 1991.
She remembers this panel discussion
where a question came up
that was front and center for Navy women at the time --
whether women would ever be allowed
to fly fighter jets like the men.
-I was wondering, sir, when you plan to implement that
and if it's gonna be soon.
[ Men murmuring ]
-The male pilots in the audience started jeering
even before they heard the answer.
By not condemning the outburst,
Coughlin believes the admiral sent an ominous message.
-"Women are second-class citizens,
and whether they can fly a jet or not,
let's party and have at it,"
and that's really how it all kind of played out.
-It all played out on the hotel's third floor,
where convention after parties turned ugly.
Drunken aviators roamed the halls
exposing their genitals
and attacking unsuspecting Navy and civilian women.
When Lieutenant Coughlin entered this corridor
packed with partiers,
a crowd of male aviators surrounded her and pounced.
-People were actually closing in
and trying to pull my clothes off.
I got knocked to the floor, and I kicked, and I punched,
and I actually bit somebody who was reaching down my blouse.
-She eventually escaped and later told her boss,
Admiral John Snyder, about the incident.
He promised to report it.
Coughlin remembers him saying something else,
something Snyder denies.
-He told me, "That's what you get
when you go down a hallway full of drunk aviators.
That's what you get."
-I chose to meet with her 'cause I was appalled
that nobody on behalf of the Navy had apologized,
you know, to Paula and said, "I am sorry this occurred."
-Barbara Pope was then
the Navy's first female Assistant Secretary.
She says from the start of the Tailhook investigation,
the Navy's top men weren't taking what happened seriously.
-They thought it was misbehavior,
you know, some behavior that got out of hand,
and they missed assault.
You know, my point was that assault is criminal, you know?
There's no acceptable assault.
If you are manhandled against your will, it's assault.
-Charges of sexual harassment by women
who say they were manhandled at a gathering of Navy fliers.
-Behind the specific assault lies a macho culture
which belittles women.
-Seven months after Tailhook, the Navy issued its report.
1,500 officers were questioned,
but only two were named as suspects
because most of the Navy men involved refused to cooperate.
The investigation was led by Admiral Duvall "Mac" Williams.
-I said to Mac,
"I'm not buying that nobody's talking,"
and Admiral Williams had said,
"Well, you know, some of these women were kind of
bringing it on themselves,"
and that started my outrage, my indignation,
and I said, "Nobody brings assault on themselves,"
and he said, "Men and women cannot work together.
It all comes down to sex."
This is the man who was in charge of the investigation.
-In the wake of an apparent whitewash,
Paula Coughlin took a radical step.
-Until one woman came forward and said, "Enough,"
there was a very good chance it was going to be covered up.
-Dressed in her uniform,
Coughlin went on national television
to demand that the men who had attacked her at Tailhook
be brought to justice.
-Not every man in the Navy behaves like that,
but those who did shouldn't remain in the Navy
or the Marine Corps.
-Coughlin's media appearances transformed Tailhook
from a Navy embarrassment to a national scandal.
The Secretary of the Navy was forced to resign,
and Congress temporarily froze 4,500 Navy promotions.
-Sexual harassment will not be tolerated,
and those who don't get the message
will be driven from our ranks.
-The new Navy secretary, Sean O'Keefe,
instituted gender-sensitivity classes,
closed officers' drinking clubs,
and set up a commission to study whether women
should be allowed to serve on combat ships and planes.
The changes made Paula Coughlin a hero to many women
but a pariah in the Navy.
-I had to walk into a room full of naval aviators
that felt like I had betrayed their tribe.
I had to listen to a live talk show
about how I had ruined the Navy and what a slut I was.
I just was treading water and trying not to kill myself.
-What really happened at the Tailhook convention
finally emerged in a blistering Pentagon report --
90 victims in all,
140 officers facing possible punishment,
but in the end, while dozens of military careers were damaged,
no one was criminally prosecuted,
and with that, Paula Coughlin quit the Navy.
-It's been more than four years
since the infamous Tailhook incident.
-Tailhook exposed the sexual-assault problem
in the military,
but the reforms did not end it.
Navy Petty Officer Jenny McClendon
was shocked at what she faced in 1999,
just a few years after Tailhook.
-I presumed that I was going to join
a group of people who were my comrades.
When I got to the ship, it was a while before --
It was probably a couple of months
before we went from harassment to the groping,
and the groping eventually culminated
in several physical assaults and a few rapes.
-She wasn't alone.
In 2008...
-Women serving in the U.S. military today
are more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier
than killed by enemy fire in Iraq.
-...largest sexual assault...
-And in 2012 came news that 62 female recruits
were sexually assaulted by their Air Force instructors.
Paula Coughlin, who had married,
started a business, and put Tailhook behind her,
felt compelled to step forward again.
-We represent over 500,000 veterans...
-Working with the group Protect Our Defenders,
she helped pressure Congress to hold hearings on the issue.
-We have been trying a number of programs,
a number of training activities,
a number of educational initiatives.
-Since then, there has been some progress.
Service members are reporting sexual assaults more often,
over 6,000 in 2018,
but that's still a fraction of the 20,000 assaults
that the Pentagon estimates took place that year.
-We know that this is an underreported crime.
-Buried in the data is another striking fact --
of those 20,000 assaults, 7,500 of the victims were men.
-Rape is a crime about power and control.
The military is very much about power and control.
-Navy Petty Officer Brian Lewis
says he was raped by a superior officer at knifepoint
on a submarine base in 2000.
He says he told his command about the rape,
but men rarely do.
-A lot of it has to do with gender norms,
that men cannot be victims,
that you're serving in the military
and you're able to defend yourself
against this aggression.
And a lot of it is just --
A lot of it is shame at having had this happen.
-Lewis says his case was never investigated.
-I was given a general discharge for...
-He told Congress that he was retaliated against
and discharged with a diagnosis of personality disorder,
something he says happens to many sexual-assault victims.
-I'm here today because I am not alone.
My story is all too common.
-It's like seeing America's youth
and the way that I used to be,
so completely virtuously enamored with the idea
of serving your country
and then being so desperately betrayed.
-Earlier this year, military officers
were called back to Capitol Hill
after revelations that sexual assaults
at the service academies
had nearly doubled since 2016.
And at one hearing...
-Like you, I am also a military sexual-assault survivor.
-...Senator Martha McSally, a retired Air Force colonel
and the first female pilot to fly in combat, told her story.
-I was preyed upon and then raped by a superior officer.
I was horrified at how my attempt
to share generally my experiences were handled.
I almost separated from the Air Force at 18 years
over my despair.
-The Department of Defense insists it prosecutes every case
where sufficient evidence exists,
but less than 3% of the incidents investigated last year
resulted in a conviction.
-I think that prosecuting rapists in the military
is pretty vital to eradicating rapists in the military,
and I know that sounds almost remedial,
but it's what's not happening.
Someone who commits a criminal offense in the military
like driving drunk or doing drugs
or stealing hand grenades, boom, they go to jail.
They get kicked out really quickly,
but if you rape a woman or you assault a man, you --
"Oh, wait a minute. You're okay."
-Tailhook forced the military
to begin addressing its sexual-assault problem,
but it had another unexpected legacy.
The Pentagon commission formed in the wake of the scandal
recommending lifting the age-old restrictions
on the kinds of jobs women could hold.
And within two years,
the Navy and Air Force opened combat jobs to women.
Since then, the Army and Marines have done the same.
-Today, 40 women Marines
checked into the Marine Combat Training Battalion
at Camp Pendleton in San Diego County.
-With all occupations now open to women,
the military is seeing healthy increases in female enlistment.
Former Navy official Barbara Pope
says credit for much of that progress
goes to Paula Coughlin and Tailhook.
-It forced the Department of Defense to look at,
could women fly?
Could women be commanding officers of warships?
And so the Navy will be forever indebted to her for,
you know, forcing those changes.
I mean, sometimes you have to have a crisis
to speed up change, and Tailhook was that.
-For a long time, I said, "I was in the hallway.
I was in the wrong place at the wrong time,"
and I thought that for, I don't know, 10 years at least,
and then I started considering
that maybe I was in the right place at the right time.
Somebody had to be there.
Somebody had to be the one to start the ball rolling.