Link fixed - until further notice.

Nope, not working.

WASHINGTON - The Japanese woman was drunk when the four American sailors picked her up outside a bar in the port city of Yokosuka, Japan, and offered to drive her home.

Somewhere between ``Soul Harlem,'' the American bar where she had been drinking, and the hotel where she thought she was going, the driver pulled into an alley and stopped. One by one, the four sailors had sex with her, according to their own testimony and sworn statements to investigators. Two sailors held her down on the hood of the red Toyota, while another had sex with her. Then they rotated. They rotated again. And again. While the Army finds itself confronted with growing charges of sexual abuse of female troops by drill instructors and other wielders of authority, the Navy's most serious problem appears to be in Japan, a long way from boot camp.

The Sept. 13, 1993, incident in the Yokosuka alley accounted for four of the 203 charges of rape and other sexual assaults brought to court-martial against Navy sailors and Marines in Japan between 1989 and April 1996, according to a Dayton Daily News analysis of computerized records from Navy courts.

In the Yokosuka incident, each of the sailors described having sex with the woman. One of them accused the other three of rape, and said by the time the third one took his turn, she was "too tired to resist." Another said no rape took place. Still another admitted having sex with her "missionary style" after two others held her down. When she fought him, he said, he and one of the others punched her in the head and stomach and "smashed her face down with the back of her head against the car."

The chaotic scene ended with the woman naked in the alley, but not before one of the sailors grabbed a handful of gravel and threw it at her. When South Patrol policemen found her a short time later, she gave them a wallet belonging to one of the sailors.

After the Navy criminal justice system sorted through the conflicting statements, it concluded that just one sailor was guilty of rape.

Although all were initially charged with rape, the other three were allowed to plead guilty to the ``indecent act'' of having consensual sex with the woman in the presence of other sailors.

The sailor convicted of rape was given five years at hard labor and a dishonorable discharge from the Navy.

The three who pleaded guilty to the consensual, indecent sex charges were given 90 days, 45 days and no confinement, respectively.

The Daily News, using figures from 1989 to 1994, reported in October 1995 that more Marines and Navy sailors were tried for rapes, child molestations and other sexual assaults in Japan than at any other U.S. military site in the world. The updated figures for 1995 and the first four months of 1996 show the same trend.

Even though the Navy court system for Japan is responsible for fewer sailors and Marines than other areas, more are court-martialed for sex crimes there than at Camp Lejeune, N.C.; Pearl Harbor, Hawaii; Camp Pendleton, Calif.; San Diego Naval Station, Calif., or Norfolk Naval Base, Va.

A highly-publicized case in which two Marines and a sailor were charged with raping a 12-year-old girl in Okinawa last year was not included in the computerized records, probably because the three men were tried by Japanese courts rather than courts-martial.

Navy spokespersons at first refused to answer questions about cases in the updated computer records, despite Navy regulations stating that Navy public affairs personnel are supposed to release names of persons accused of crimes and the ``substance of the offenses.''

The 1995-96 Navy figures show that accused sex offenders often are allowed to go free or serve only light sentences, despite having confessed to or been convicted of sex crimes. For example:

* A Marine Corps recruiter in Buffalo, N.Y., was found guilty of ``various improprieties'' with female recruits, as well as indecent assault and indecent language. He was sentenced to 90 days.

* A seaman at the Navy telecommunications center in Pensacola, Fla., was accused of rape, but his case was assigned to a ``special court-martial'' by his commanding officer. Since a special court-martial cannot consider rape cases, the rape charge was dropped and the sailor pleaded guilty to assault and battery. He was sentenced to 30 days.

* A Marine corporal found guilty of rape at Camp Lejeune was sentenced to six months in prison.

* A Naval Reserve chief petty officer in San Antonio pleaded guilty to sexually harassing and assaulting another person by ``rubbing against'' the person's breasts and using indecent language. He was sentenced to no time in jail but given a bad conduct discharge from the Reserve.

* A petty officer first class in Orlando, Fla., was convicted last year of sexual assault and use of indecent language and sentenced to 15 days in jail.

* A petty officer third class stationed in Naples, Italy, was found guilty of sexual harassment and assault by placing his hands on the crotch and breasts of another person, fined $1,000, reduced in grade and sentenced to no time in prison.

* A chief petty officer in Hawaii pleaded guilty to four counts of ``indecent acts with a child under 16'' and given a bad conduct discharge but no time in prison.

* Three Marine corporals in Japan were charged with statutory rape in what appears to have been the same incident and sent to special courts-martial, where the maximum sentence is six months. All three pleaded guilty and were given no time in prison and were not given punitive discharges.

Copyright, 1996, Cox Ohio Publishing. All rights reserved.

The USA is acting not a lot differently than any other occupying country or world empire has acted for many thousands of years. And to be honest, the British didn't act that damn much better in the colonial days. Their boys were flying planes in WWI and WWII on the prairies, knocking up our girls and getting away with whatever they wanted simply because they were the sons of British nobility.

This sort of slander directed at American soldiers (due to the actions of a few) is practically identical to the slander directed by the Liberals and the CBC against Canadian soldiers thanks to the behaviour of a few cretins in the Airbourne Regiment.

Must be some kind of pathological uber-lefty thing to hate all soldiers so.

I guess these anti-Western nut-bars prefer the gender persecution that Islam hands out. I doubt any woman from Afghanistan would want to return to the second class status that the were forced to endure under the taliban. What a bizarre contradiction the left has placed themselves in with this stance.

I guess these anti-Western nut-bars prefer the gender persecution that Islam hands out. I doubt any woman from Afghanistan would want to return to the second class status that the were forced to endure under the taliban. What a bizarre contradiction the left has placed themselves in with this stance.