After the command-climate results came out, about three weeks before I was relieved, she had told me the Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps called her and asked what the heck was going on at Fourth Battalion. She said that her response to him was that the command-climate results were not accurate. But, after reviewing her statement from the investigation, I think he was already talking to her about what she needed to do to continue her career in the Marine Corps. And, clearly, that meant distancing herself from me, or she might not make it through her tour successfully.
One of her comments hurt me deeply. In her statement about my leadership, she claimed that because I was out with the Marines three quarters of every day, they couldn't trust me. In other words, I micromanaged them by spending so much time with them, thereby creating a sense of distrust. In her statement, Sergeant Major said that our relationship was “not personal,” even though she acknowledged that she was the person I was closest to at Parris Island. She said we didn't go to many events together, because she felt like “our Marines won't trust us if we are always around.” Sergeant major said I “was always ‘so there’ that even the good ones feel they are not trusted.”
This contrasts sharply with our shared experiences. My sergeant major and I went everywhere together, both to set the example of what a command relationship should look like and to ensure that the Marines knew there was no daylight between us. We were a united front. I cared about her deeply as a human being, and she and I had the deepest conversations about everything from family and kids to slavery and racism. She would send me thank-you notes, thanking me for everything I was doing for the Marines, for the battalion, and even got a container of Goldfish crackers personalized with our photo because she knew I was crazy about snacking on them. When she worried about not being able to participate in morning physical-fitness events with the recruits and Marines because she had morning “kid duty” or was injured, I allayed her concerns. After she had surgery, I visited her and her kids at home and brought her all kinds of “get well” goodies. I even went to her daughter's birthday party.
Reading her statements and then reflecting back on the relationship I thought I had with her was like having an out-of-body experience. The weirdest part? It was as if her statement to the equal-opportunity investigating officer had been written by someone else. It was much more upbeat about my leadership, and it laid out the challenges I had experienced with the regiment.
In the equal-opportunity investigation, the tone of her statement is akin to, “Hey, we're trying to make all this progress here. We've had some problems, but we've made progress. Yeah, she's out there a lot. She sees what's going on. She's had run-ins with her boss. It's bad for the battalion because it creates a tension that doesn't need to be there.” But that was the worst thing that was in her statement.
Her statement in the investigation about my leadership, on the other hand, was completely damning. It seems as if you have one person giving two different statements to different people who have two different agendas, and they're both writing their statements to reflect their specific agenda. Yet no one looked at that and said, “Hey, wait a minute. Why is the sergeant major saying in one report that there were problems, but progress was being made, but in another report that everything is terrible”?
Ironically, after reading the two investigations online, it became more clear to me than ever before that the Marine Corps has serious cultural problems related to gender. Segregated boot camp for men and women and decades of substandard performance by female recruits? They were just the tip of the iceberg.
And while the Marine Corps might have thought that by trying to humiliate me in the media, I would crawl away from Parris Island with my tail between my legs and my mouth shut, they were sorely mistaken.
To me, gender equality in the military is a matter of principle, and I had just found my voice.
I was not going to go away quietly.
Kate-
You don't know me, but we met a couple of times in the Pentagon- I saw you in the gym here almost every day.
I think what has happened to you is a miscarriage of the Marine Corps system, and that you are being held to a ridiculous double standard. You are precisely the kind of officer and leader we need over the next ten years, and the Marine Corps has made a big mistake in how they handled your situation.
Hang in there. A similar thing happened to me, and I have recovered. You will, too. Keep your chin up- a lot of people are behind you.
Semper Fidelis-
Stan Coerr
GS-15
Marine Aviation
When I got home, I was so depressed that there were days when I didn't want to get out of bed. I was exhausted mentally and physically. I didn't want to eat and was so skinny that Joe later said I looked like a scarecrow. But he forced me to focus on our action plan. Joe would not let me quit, and every day before he would head to work, he would brief me on my “to do” list.
We knew I had to have a clear plan for engaging with the media. But I insisted that I didn't want the stories to focus on me. Even in my haze of depression and utter humiliation, I knew that my firing was never about how I had treated
