Henrietta Hay's Column

They still don't get it. Admiral Richard Macke, who commands all U. S. forces in the Pacific, didn't get it. He apparently never heard of Tailhook and he obviously has not had the Navy course, or any other, insensitivity.

I was outraged by a recent event in Japan and by the comment made by the Admiral. Three U. S. servicemen are being tried under Japanese law for snatching a twelve-year-old girl off the streets in Okinawa on September 4 and raping her in the back seat of their rented car.

U. S. relations with Japan were strained even before that incident. And then the Admiral gave his famous explanation. "I think it was absolutely stupid. I've said several times, for the price they (the servicemen) paid to rent the car they could have had a girl." He thinks it was about sex. After all, boys will be boys.

He really didn't get it. The "oldest profession in the world" has offered sex for sale since the beginning of time. Legal or illegal, moral or immoral, it involves a business deal between two consenting people.

But rape is a crime of violence, of power, of dominance. It's rape if the woman says no. And it is something even more unspeakable if the female is 12 years old. When the American sailors raped a little girl it was not about sex but about power -- power over a female child who could not defend herself. It was a vicious crime.

The Admiral failed to know the difference, and by his comment trivialized a tragic incident. After several calls from the White House he admitted he "made a serious mistake," and somewhat later offered to retire early, with full pension no doubt. No date was set for the retirement. Yes, his career is over, not because of one stupid mistake but because of an attitude no longer tolerable. The fate of the sailors is not known yet.

I had hoped that the Tailhook episode just four years ago had sensitized Navy brass to the fact that human rights include women's rights. Three Admirals and a Navy civilian were cited for failing to pursue aggressively officers who sexually assaulted at least 26 women at the Tailhook aviator's convention. Two of the Admirals resigned under pressure.

It's not only the military. The sexual abuse of power over women in various fields is oh so slowly being exposed and punished in this country. Professional organizations are beginning to root out the abusers. Men are speaking out and women are gaining the courage to fight abuse.

Just this fall women from 181 nations met in Beijing for the U. N.'s 4th World Conference on Women. For the first time, women from all over the world were able to insert into a U. N. document a statement affirming woman's rights to make sexual decisions free of coercion and violence. It declared, worldwide, a woman's right to say no.

It also addressed the rights of children. Dottie Lamm, a lifelong defender of children's rights reported, "Out of Africa and into the Platform of Action ... comes a brand new chapter entitled, 'The Girl Child'. Delegates from around the world are uniting in their passion to end atrocities and discrimination practiced against the world's daughters and to eliminate the laws and cultural practices that render girls less valuable.

We have come a long way -- from the days when a woman was legally the property of her husband to the U. N. document -- but we still have a long way to go. Most men know that rape is not about sex, but about owning and dominating women. They are as angry as the women over the incident in Okinawa." But the Admiral didn't "get it." Too many men still "don't get it." When will they ever learn?

I think of the twelve year old girls that I have watched playing soccer on fall afternoons here in Grand Junction. They are the same age as the little girl in Okinawa. Somehow the violence has to be stopped.

I wonder what happened to that little girl in Okinawa.