From Draft NOtices, October-December 2022
— Lauren Reyna Morales
The article “‘I Felt Trapped’: Sexual Abuse of Teens in the Military’s JROTC Program” was the result of a thorough investigation performed by the New York Times. Research for the report included interviewing 13 victims, school employees, and a former JROTC instructor. “Thousands of court documents, investigative files and other records obtained through more than 150 public disclosure requests” were also examined. The findings of this wide-scope examination are shocking and plentiful. The investigation uncovered that in the last five years, at least 33 JROTC instructors have been criminally charged with sexual misconduct involving their students.
Various other instructors were also accused of sexual assault during this time, but never criminally charged. The Times findings show that there is one arrest in every 232 instructor positions — a rate that is severely more frequent than the civilian-teacher arrest ratio. Students have reported incidents of sexual assault at the hands of JROTC instructors “in classrooms and supply closets, during field trips or on late-night rides home, sometimes committed after instructors plied students with alcohol or drugs.” Victims interviewed in the article shared their unique experiences falling into the hands of this abuse. Geography and specifics may have separated them, but their stories followed roughly the same outline: A military veteran who led a JROTC course offered at their school posed himself as a mentor to gain their trust, exploit his power, and horrifically abuse them.
There are many factors that contribute to the frequency of the incidents detailed in the Times article. The investigation exposes that the structure of the JROTC program itself is conducive for creating conditions perfect to manipulate and mistreat students. First veterans that instruct JROTC are certified for their positions by the military institution itself. They are provided with a short training in the wildly problematic and historically inaccurate JROTC curriculum, take a course on military ethics, and are then eligible to be hired by school districts across the United States. Candidates are provided with next to no training on what it means to be a teacher or work with youth. Most have no experience in education, let alone a standard teaching credential. In fact, many states don’t even “require JROTC instructors to have a college degree.” Once at their school sites, instructors are given little oversight in their new roles as an adult working very closely with youth. This is all the more alarming when coupled with the fact the JROTC instructors receive no ongoing supervision from the military and receive little scrutiny by the school district or state.
According to the Times, these disturbing loopholes and the overall lack of accountability for JROTC instructors emboldens predators to push their aggressive abuse to the limit. Their positions also grant them an “unusual level of access to students,” despite their lack of experience or qualifications. For example, JROTC requires or encourages students to participate in extracurricular hours and off-site events with their instructors. Veronica Garcia, the former superintendent of schools in Santa Fe, New Mexico, explained that students were “often traveling to competitions with their instructors outside of school hours,” making the program nearly impossible to monitor. In addition to the many activities that take place outside of school hours, the JROTC classrooms themselves are usually positioned in an area separate from the rest of school. Sometimes they even have their own distinct facilities. The physical separation of the program from the larger school community, combined with the general lack of management and oversight, gives predator instructors the ideal conditions to abuse young students.
All of the victims interviewed by the Times expressed that their initial participation in JROTC inspired high hopes in themselves. Victoria Bauer of Picayune, Mississippi aspired to join the Marines after high school. She saw the trajectory provided by JROTC as one of her only options to lift herself out of her destitute surroundings. Bauer was a freshman in high school when she first encountered retired Navy officer Steve Hardin (45) across the hall from her algebra class. Hardin enthusiastically welcomed the student into the JROTC fold. Hardin, who became Ms. Bauer’s instructor, started his predation quickly by sending his student explicit and inappropriate messages on SnapChat. “Then one night in 2015 as he drove her home from rifle practice, she told investigators, Mr. Hardin pushed his hand into her pants and penetrated her with his fingers -- the start of what she said was months of sexual assaults.” Hardin would continue to abuse his student for months after this initial event. Ms. Bauer, who was just 15 years old at the time, “feared that resisting him would jeopardize her shot at advancement through the JROTC ranks or a military career.”
Bauer’s fear of retaliation for reporting her abuse is not unusual given the power dynamics enforced by JROTC. In these classrooms, instructors aren’t just teachers, “they are superior officers, and students are taught to follow the chain of command.” In JROTC, obedience is law. Cadets are trained to believe that obeying the orders of their superiors is fundamental to their every action. This core tenet is so deeply indoctrinated that it makes it extremely difficult for victims to resist against the abuse inflicted on them. Beyond this, veteran instructors have frequently used deeply violent threats to keep their victims silent. A recent cadet in Tennessee reported that “her JROTC instructor warned that he had the skills to kill her without a trace if she told anyone about their sexual encounters.” A student in Missouri detailed that she was forced to “kneel at her instructor’s bedside, blindfolded, with a gun to her head” in her abuser's attempt to keep her from reporting his assaults. Jordan Leloup, another student, suffered ongoing abuse at the hands of her JROTC instructor Michael Bass (44). When Leloup told Bass she was going to report him to the police, Bass told her that “his time in the military had given him the skills that would allow him to kill her without anyone knowing.” Leloup did eventually report him and Bass ended up pleading “guilty to two counts of aggravated statutory rape in 2019 and was sentenced to four years in prison.”
As a teacher, it disgusts me to hear stories of adults in influential positions using their power to abuse youth. A “trusted adult figure” intentionally exploiting their role as a mentor to gain the trust of their future victims is nothing short of sinister. JROTC largely presents itself as a service for disenfranchised students to make something of themselves, “directly targeting schools with high populations of low-income” and minoritized students. It is this demographic of students that is most vulnerable to experiencing abuse brought to them by their places of learning. Information revealed by this report should press all communities to call into question the access the military has to our youth. In July, U.S. lawmakers began a review into the JROTC program as a result of the dozens of sexual assaults reported by the Times. Before the article was published, military program leaders were contacted for comment but declined requests for interviews. They did, however, note that there exists “research indicating that the program had a positive effect on school attendance and graduation rates.”
This article is from Draft NOtices, the newsletter of the Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft (http://www.comdsd.org/).
