News » October 15, 2007

Harassment Unchecked at Army Hotel

Sexual abuse and rape in military culture—and a lack of action by military authorities—are long-standing problems, brought to light with the Tailhook scandal in 1991

By Kari Lydersen

The military has ignored sexual harrasment charges at the Hale Koa Hotel in Honolulu.

For active and retired military members and their families, the U.S. Army-owned Hale Koa Hotel in Honolulu is a place to relax in a tropical paradise at affordable rates.

For hotel parking manager and veteran John “Jack” Lloyd, it appears to be a place to touch and proposition female workers, mostly Filipina—according to complaints filed with the military’s Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) office and testimony from several workers.

When Ernestine Gonda worked for Lloyd in the garage in 2004 and 2005, she says he constantly harassed her—rubbing her back, offering to take care of her financially and even giving her an Easter card depicting a man with an erection.

Gonda, 39, complained to a human resources manager, but to no avail.

“They said, ‘Are you sure you didn’t go out with him?’ I said, ‘Do you really think I would go out with an old man like that?’ They said I didn’t have enough proof. But I had a perverted card with his signature on it. That’s not proof?”

She later complained to EEO officials at the Army’s Fort Shafter in Honolulu. They told her it was too late to take action—even though she told them the harassment was ongoing. The Army Morale, Welfare and Recreation Command, which owns at least four military hotels worldwide, did not respond to questions.

Remarkably, if Gonda had followed the hotel’s stated policy, she would have had to report her grievances to Lloyd himself, formerly the EEO counselor at the hotel. (A Hale Koa spokesman confirmed that Lloyd was formerly the EEO counselor but declined to comment further.)

When nothing was done, Gonda took a pay cut to become a cashier so she wouldn’t have to work directly with Lloyd. But she says he still managed to harass her, and she later left the hotel altogether.

“It was so stressful, it took a toll on my physical health,” she says.

Joyce Alcover, a Filipina immigrant who has worked at the hotel since 2002, says she endured similar harassment.

“Jack would make lewd jokes and lewd comments, he would kiss my hand and grab me, things that weren’t conducive to a work environment,” says Alcover, 30.

According to documents filed with the EEO, Lloyd told Alcover he loved her and badgered her to take a vacation with him. He also mocked her for “wiggl[ing] too much” with her husband, and said she was tired at work from “too much action with your husband last night.”

Despite repeated complaints to the hotel’s general assistant manager and human resources department, Lloyd remained at his job in the garage, and—according to Alcover and Gonda—retaliated against them for reporting him. They say that after they came forward, he would reprimand them for being minutes late, while letting other employees slide.

Alcover was pregnant at the time and suffering severe morning sickness, but she says Lloyd wouldn’t let her switch shifts or reduce her workload.

“Every time I worked the graveyard [shift] I was throwing up, so because I couldn’t function well, he was telling me I was a bad supervisor,” she says.

Lloyd was eventually reassigned, but Alcover says he continued to visit the garage and taunt her and other workers.

At an event organized by the interfaith group Faith Action for Community Equity (FACE), which works on a variety of justice and labor issues in the state, Alcover met the Rev. Stanley Bain and told him about the problems with Lloyd.

“She was afraid at first to do anything. She didn’t want to lose her job and she was worried what her husband would think,” Bain says of Alcover. “But then when she did come forward, it helped others come forward too.”

Meanwhile, organizers with the union UNITE-HERE!, which has represented more than 800 hotel workers at Hale Koa since 2006, were also hearing multiple complaints against Lloyd.

In the last six months, seven female workers have filed complaints with Fort Shafter’s EEO office about Lloyd’s alleged harassment and the hotel administration’s failure to adequately respond.

Four workers have filed a class-action complaint, the precursor to a class-action lawsuit, alleging sex and race discrimination. (One of the women is Vietnamese and the others are either Filipina immigrants or of Filipina ancestry.)

“It’s very hard for these women to speak out,” says Amy Agbayani, former chair of the Hawaii Civil Rights Commission, who has become a vocal advocate for the workers. “The majority of them are not native English speakers, and because of the special military status, dealing with a very powerful institution and not being familiar with how it works, they are especially intimidated and vulnerable.”

Sexual abuse and rape in military culture—and a lack of action by military authorities—are long-standing problems, brought to light with the Tailhook scandal in 1991, when 83 women and seven men reported being sexually assaulted during a bacchanalian conference of naval officers at the Las Vegas Hilton.

The organization Stop Military Rape reports that 66 percent of women in the military report sexual assault and 27 percent report being raped, with only 2 percent to 3 percent of alleged perpetrators ever court-martialed.

“Cases of sexual harassment that are difficult to bring anywhere are even more difficult within a military structure,” says Linda Fischer, author of Ultimate Power: Enemy Within the Ranks, a book about her rape at Fort Shafter while she was in the military.

In early September, Army officials held a sexual harassment awareness workshop for hotel employees. Community interfaith leaders asked to have a role in shaping the agenda, but the military refused, organizers say. So instead, FACE held a vigil outside the hotel.

“The specialists giggled through most of the training,” says Kim Harman, an organizer with UNITE-HERE! “They did their best to make it sound like the people who make complaints are just strange people having a bad day.”

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• Reader Comments

  This crap of treating Filipinas as everyone’s easy-tap, tail-for-sale bimbos is so offensive and so relentless as to boggle the mind. It happens so often, in-country and out, by the most boorish foreigners imaginable. They’d never be caught dead treating women from their own countries like that, and would freak out if anyone else did, but they come in here and act like local women are all just inflatable sex-dolls (there is a thriving sex trade here, which distorts the local economy out of all sensible shape… a bargirl can earn more than a Ph.D.). And an OFW (overseas Filipino worker) who is trying to assist her family by remitting her earnings back to the Philippines is already under the burden of being separated from the family, which is a sore emotional cost for so many of them. For many, their overseas job is the primary source of income for what could be a huge extended family, so making too much noise about harassment and risking being let go by the boss, is sometimes considered untenable, so they’ll often put up with it.

  Pretty damn sick. Makes you want to bust a guy’s lip.

  Posted by Kuya on Oct 16, 2007 at 1:27 AM

  Hi Kuya - I think that many of the guys who act the way you describe do so around *any* woman if they think they can get away with it. Generally that simply means that the women are in a defenseless position. The classic strong victimizing the weak paradigm. Ugh.

  I also think the sex trade is thriving pretty much everywhere. For a wide variety of reasons. Is it regulated in the Philippines? I think that is the best one can hope for.

  Posted by wolf on Oct 16, 2007 at 1:58 PM

  Hi wolf,
  The sex trade here is sort of what you’d call unofficially tolerated (and profited from by a number of those same officials) while strictly speaking it is not legal, although as with a number of law-related issues here, there’s a lot of grey area and inconsistent enforcement, enough so that a bar owner can avoid a charge of pandering even while everyone knows what’s really up. The “dancers” will go with a customer for hired sex, but it’s discussed as though she chose of her own free will.

  Which I guess is “true” in a twisted way, but again, everyone knows what’s really happening. She’d die of starvation on the dancer’s wage, and she isn’t really dancing as much as just up there on stage to be shopped.

  As for the kind of regulation that would actually protect a sex worker from abuse, its non-existent. They’re on their own.

  The shittiest aspect of that grey area is that pedophiles come here, and there’s little chance that they’ll get busted. Happens every day.

  However, I saw on the tube last night that one of those sick fucks, who had actually posted 200 pics of himself on the web abusing kids sexually but who had digitally distorted his face, had his image reverse-engineered and clarified and now the countries in the region are out to get him (they think he’s in Thailand, but other nearby states are searching too). I guess he wasn’t as smart as he thought he was.

  There are some NGOs that try to help the women and kids stuck in “the life” or who recently got out of it. That’s about all there is by way of support.

  Posted by Kuya on Oct 17, 2007 at 9:08 AM

  Which, by the way, is not to confuse the massive majority of OFWs with sex workers. They actually do an incredible variety of jobs, from domestic helpers to entertainers, teachers to casino employees, cargo ship workers to soldiers in the US military.

  I’ll wager the women in the article above sure aint sex workers!

  Posted by Kuya on Oct 17, 2007 at 9:10 AM

  Hi Kuya - Glad to say they caught the pedophile.

  Still, as sick as he is, he is in fact sick. I pity him as well as his victims (and hope he is put somewhere where he can never ever harm a child again).

  I have ambiguous feelings about the sex trade. I think everyone should have the right to do as they wish, including trading sex (or “exotic” dancing) for money. However it is also clear that economic coercion (or much worse in some cases) is behind the “choice” to become a sex worker.

  Posted by wolf on Oct 17, 2007 at 2:14 PM

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