Accusers on Trial: Spinning Justice in the Army's Biggest Sex Scandal

This is the first book to tell the full story of the U.S. Army's biggest sex scandal. In 1996 Brenda Hoster, a Gulf War veteran with 20 years' experience and a sterling record, learned that her former boss, Sergeant Gene McKinney, a Vietnam combat veteran with 29 years' experience and an equally sterling military record and at that time the top enlisted man in the U.S. Army, had been appointed to a Pentagon commission to ferret out sexual harassment. Upon hearing this news, Hoster, who had retired just months earlier after the Army took no action in response to her complaints through channels that McKinney had harassed her, leaked (through her attorney) the story to "The New York Times". Several other military women came forward, resulting in 18 charges of sexual misconduct. The ensuing court martial ended with the careers of the women ruined, while McKinney, convicted on only one count of obstruction of justice, retired with full pension. Throughout the trial, the press played a prominent role, themselves becoming a factor in whether the case went to trial in the first place, how that court martial unfolded, and the end result.
This is also the story of journalism and the mass media as, collectively, a seriously flawed, enormously powerful institution that shapes events even as it tries to remain detached, and destroys individuals without meaning to. First, the women used the media to their advantage, gaining public sympathy; then, the tables were turned and their reputations dragged through the mud, publicly and irreparably. "Accusers on Trial" thus becomes a prism through which the country views itself and the issues of power, gender roles, and sexual mores.