She attended the Tailhook conference in September 1991, organized by former navy aviators at the Las Vegas Hilton (now the Westgate Las Vegas). Many of the attendees got raucously drunk. Coughlin was one of the first female attendees who reported being indecently assaulted by male attendees. Coughlin testified she feared being gang-raped when she was forced to "run the gauntlet".[4] She had reported the incident to senior officers, but after a lack of progress due to "closing ranks and obfuscation," she went public in June 1992.[6] The President, George H. W. Bush, met with Coughlin and expressed sympathy with her and promised a full investigation.[7] Coughlin met with Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney—who told her he had just fired the Secretary of the Navy, implying it was her fault.[2] She resigned from the Navy in February 1994, after being subject to abuse in retaliation for her allegations.[8][9] She settled out of court with the Tailhook Association in October 1994, and was awarded $5.3 million in damages from the hotel after a jury concluded that the Las Vegas Hilton hotel had been negligent in not providing adequate security at the Tailhook convention.[8]
A May 1995 made-for-television movie broadcast on ABC was based on Coughlin's story, She Stood Alone: The Tailhook Scandal (with Gail O'Grady as Coughlin), though she was not involved in making it.[3][10][11]
USA Today on December 5, 2017, in the midst of the 2017 Harvey Weinstein and Weinstein effect sexual abuse allegations, reported that women who reported past sexual harassment have suffered purgatory. The first instance in the article was Paula Coughlin who testified against Tailhook, and had not been able to find work in the private sector since.[13] She now owns and operates a yoga studio in Atlantic Beach, Florida.
References
^Los Angeles Times (1993-04-23). "For Tailhook scandal whistle-blower, wait ends today with release of report". Baltimore Sun. Archived from the original on 2012-06-07. Retrieved 2010-08-23. For Lt. Paula Coughlin, the naval aviator who blew the whistle on sexual assaults at the 1991 Tailhook Association, the waiting ends today, when the Defense Department publicly releases its investigation of the now-infamous party in Las Vegas.
^ ab
Mink, Eric (1995-05-22). "Stars brighten 'tailhook'". New York Daily News. Retrieved 2010-08-23. Neither the first woman assaulted at the annual gatherings known as Tailhook conventions, nor the only one assaulted that year, Coughlin was the first to press the issue afterwards and keep pressing until action was taken.[permanent dead link]
^ abNoble, Kenneth B. (1994-10-04). "Tailhook Whistle-Blower Recalls Attack". New York Times. Archived from the original on 2014-10-31. Retrieved 2017-02-18. 'I felt that if I didn't make it off the floor, I was sure I was going to be gang raped,' said the former officer, Paula A. Coughlin, describing the scene at the convention in 1991 of the Tailhook Association, an independent group of retired and active naval aviators. Ms. Coughlin was among several dozen women who Navy investigators determined were groped or fondled by drunken male aviators in a crowded third-floor "gantlet" on the final day of the convention.
