Think women get harassed and assaulted a lot in Hollywood and New York media circles? The military is even worse

If you think women in Hollywood have it bad, or those who worked for the New Republic’s former literary editor Leon Wieseltier, or MSNBC’s Mark Halperin, try serving while female in the military. There, Harvey Weinsteins abound, stalking the barracks with near impunity. Reprisals are more likely than justice, and perpetrators get promoted before they get prosecuted.

It’s worse than the casting couch, a newsroom or Silicon Valley. In civilian life, as damaging to a career as it might be to flee a predatory colleague or boss, you can, in fact, flee. Few do, of course. Instead, most women develop interpersonal coping mechanisms to let the jerk know he’d better quit while stopping short of wounding his ego to the point where he retaliates. The skill should be taught in business school.

Post-Weinstein, thousands of women are sharing their experiences on social media using the #metoo hashtag. If enough women speak up, others won’t be so scared of being slut-shamed if they do. Non-disclosure agreements are being questioned as everyone wonders what exactly former Fox News anchor Bill O’Reilly could have done to pay out a record $32 million.

And this is just a guess, but I’d bet something close to that sum that fewer men are holding business meetings in their hotel rooms.

But in military life, the old saw “you’re in the Army now,” applies. There’s no Option B. Once Uncle Sam gets you, you are there for the duration of your tour, no matter how horrendous your treatment. You often don’t get to go home at night, and you report the attack knowing you may end up in a foxhole or other close quarters alone, with your fellow soldiers angry that some fragile flower has ruined esprit de corps for everyone.

A recent study by USA Today showed how the system rots from the top. Its investigation documented at least 500 cases of serious misconduct, largely sexual, among its generals, admirals and senior civilians that slides by until someone cries foul.

The list is long, so hunker down. There was a promiscuous Army general who led a swinging lifestyle at strip clubs using his official credit card. Another general had an affair and then, without a place to live when it ended, moved in with a defense contractor, a situation the Army saw nothing wrong with until the USA Today report.

Gen. Joseph Harrington, in charge of forces in Africa (Niger anyone?), badgered the wife of an enlisted man with increasingly offensive emails: “Make up sex is fun.” “I’d enjoy being in a tent with U.” “U can be my nurse,” to quote a few. U get the drift. When sexting got old, he asked if they could get together, all the while asking her to please delete their emails. She didn’t, and when they became public, Harrington was cashiered out.

Harrington is an outlier. Military justice remains an oxymoron. The most recent Defense Department report estimated there were approximately 15,000 sexual assaults in 2016, with 6,000 victims willing to report them, a slight uptick in the number of women willing to run the gauntlet.

At the same time, the ability to hold people accountable decreased, with only 389 courts martial and 124 convictions. Seven out of 10 survivors did not have enough confidence in the system to seek justice.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s been trying to correct that since 2013 when, as chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee’s subcommittee on personnel, she called the first hearings on the subject since an inquiry into the Air Force Academy scandal in 2003. “The Invisible War,” a riveting Oscar-nominated documentary on sexual assaults at the elite Marine barracks in Washington, had just come out. And Congress couldn’t turn away from the infamous case of Lt. Col. James Wilkerson.

An ace fighter pilot at Aviano Air Base in Italy, he was accused by Kimberly Hanks, a house guest and civilian contractor, of waking and assaulting her at three in the morning, with his wife in the next room. When Mrs. Wilkerson heard the ruckus, she threw Hanks out in the in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere, with only one shoe — and then proceeded to lie about what happened. Hanks’ defense attorney, Don Christensen, a celebrated third-generation Air Force officer who’s handled more sexual assault courts martial than anyone, got his conviction. Wilkerson was dismissed from the Air Force and sentenced to a year in prison.

But then the powers that be weighed in. Lt. Gen. Craig Franklin overturned the conviction, reinstated Wilkerson, consulted with him about what he’d like to do next, and gave him a promotion.

That’s when Christensen snapped. He’d been watching men of high rank routinely get off (he defended as well as prosecuted). In 70 years, not one Air Force general had ever been prosecuted for anything, despite the improbability of their being no occasion to do so.

He watched as women coming forward were considered liars until proven otherwise, and then maybe not even then. The few victims who make it to court find they sit on the quiet side of the courtroom while character witnesses and boosters of the accused crowd benches behind the defense. There’s little deterrence when if those guilty as charged lose only one star and keep most of their pay.

And so, here were are: Despite Christensen’s efforts and Gillibrand’s, you are still more likely to be sexually attacked in the military by someone you know than in a dark alley at home and without the protections of your local police precinct. It’s a closed system where the hunter and hunted work in close quarters and a power imbalance means the victim may have to salute her attacker the next day.

Although commanding officers are no longer permitted to quietly move perpetrators from base to base, like bishops inflicting abusive priests on unsuspecting parishes, a victim getting a transfer is a hurry-up-and-wait process.

Retaliation is now a crime but not prosecuted, so that 59% of those who report assaults state that they are disbelieved, given bad assignments and shunned. One witness testified that every woman is warned that the most dangerous place on base is the secluded path to