WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Navy is restoring full ties to the Tailhook Association, the naval aviators organization whose 1991 Las Vegas convention created a sex scandal that forced the resignation of the Navy's civilian chief and focused attention on sexual harassment throughout the military.
"We've concluded that the time is right to restore ties," Navy Secretary Richard Danzig said in announcing the decision Wednesday.The move means Navy and Marine Corps aviators will once again be allowed to attend Tailhook conventions and professional development seminars on official military business. Ties were severed in October 1991 after word got out about drunken sexual debauchery at the Las Vegas convention a month earlier.
Female officers were groped by aviators attending parties during the three-day conference at the Las Vegas Hilton hotel. The Defense Department inspector general implicated 117 officers in various offenses, ranging from sexual assault to indecent exposure and other acts, and faulted the Navy's leaders for failing to stop the behavior.
The episode triggered the resignation of Navy Secretary H. Lawrence Garrett and the early retirement of Adm. Frank B. Kelso, then the chief of naval operations. It also led to lawsuits, multiple investigations and changes in the Navy -- including more emphasis on ethics and sexual harassment awareness and an opening of more aviation opportunities for women.
Paula Coughlin, a Navy lieutenant who was molested at the convention, filed a lawsuit and received $400,000 from the Tailhook Association and $6.8 million from Hilton Hotels. Her trial attorney, Dennis Schoville, said in an interview Wednesday that he realizes the Navy sees professional benefit in having ties to Tailhook.
"But it needs to be properly monitored," he said. "Hopefully people learned lessons from this and they must not let it happen again."
The Tailhook Association is named for the hook on an aircraft that snags an arresting cable on the landing deck of an aircraft carrier. As of last year, it had about 10,000 members, down from a 1991 peak of about 16,000.
Besides its annual conventions, which include professional seminars, the group sponsors college scholarships for children of former naval aviators and publishes a magazine on carrier aviation called Hook.