This is a long article to ours sleepless weekend PDPs showing that there
may be situations in ones life that are worst than PD...and helping
folks to forget it for some moments.Judge yourself,

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(An article in today's Washington Post: on the front page no less.)

U.S. Military Takes Aim at Adultery - In the Wake of Sex Scandals,
Services Mete Out Harsh Penalties for Illicit Romance

On the morning of her court-martial, Lt. Col. Karen Tew pinned the
ribbons to her dress uniform and packed a suitcase for jail. She knew
she could be facing up to 10 years behind bars.

In the courtroom that day, she wept as she entered her guilty plea,
wondering aloud what would happen to her two teenage daughters and
elderly parents. She apologized for bringing disgrace to the Air Force.
"No words can describe the shame and humiliation I feel as a result of
my actions," declared the 41-year-old career officer.

The jury sentenced Tew to dismissal. Barely a year short of retirement,
she would lose everything -- her job, her pension, her benefits and the
only way of life she had known as an adult.

Tew's crime was uniquely military: She had had an affair with an
enlisted man. Estranged from her husband, she had committed adultery.

Five days after the March 11 trial at Scott Air Force Base in
Belleville, Ill., Karen Tew waited for her parents to leave for
church, then put a shotgun between her eyes and pulled the trigger.
Her suicide raises questions about the private lives of America's
servicemen and women, and their accountability in a military culture
that considers order, discipline and integrity key to its survival.

Like Tew, a growing number of soldiers are facing felony criminal
charges for love affairs that, in civilian life, would break no law. But
with renewed emphasis on a more family-oriented service and the
embarrassing legacy of scandals such as Tailhook, the Pentagon appears
to be cracking down on adultery and related offenses. But it is not just
allegations of pandemic sexual misconduct, such as those at the Aberdeen
Proving Ground, attracting prosecutors' attention. Private affairs
between consenting heterosexual adults are also ending up before the
jury.

In the Air Force alone, the number of people put on trial for adultery
more than quadrupled in the last decade, from 16 in 1987 to 67 last
year, and the overwhelming majority have been found guilty. An even
larger number of people were punished administratively. Such cases also
frequently include charges of sodomy if the lovers are suspected of
engaging in oral sex, and fraternization if the romance involves an
officer and enlisted person -- a crime considered more serious than
simple adultery for its implied abuse of power and authority. The Air
Force was the only branch of service willing or able to provide figures
for such crimes.

And while imprisonment for these so-called crimes of the heart is rare,
the price of forbidden love in the military can nonetheless be high --
careers are ruined, reputations destroyed, families traumatized.

At Minot AFB in North Dakota, the country's first female bomber pilot
will be court-martialed for adultery May 20 over her affair with a
civilian who has stated under oath that he lied to her when he claimed
to be legally separated from his wife.

"Oh, I'll admit I made mistakes in judgment," said Lt. Kelly Flinn, 26
and single, "but I don't think they were federal crimes, nor should
there be the potential that I spend the rest of my life as a convicted
felon."

Flinn also is charged with fraternization for having sex with an
unmarried enlisted man. The man, who was not in her chain of command,
was given immunity to testify against her.

"The Air Force is going back to the Dark Ages," said Flinn's attorney,
Frank J. Spinner, a retired lieutenant colonel and former law professor
at the U.S. Air Force Academy who has defended several other officers
recently on similar charges. "To a great degree, this is vindictiveness
taking place."

Adultery, sodomy and fraternization have been forbidden under the
Uniform Code of Military Justice for more than 200 years, but experts,
official documents and attorneys suggest violators are being pursued now
with particular zeal.

In the Air Force, detectives from the Office of Special Investigations
are known to file official reports detailing a defendant's sexual
performance, type of foreplay, preferred positions and method of birth
control.

Friends, acquaintances and unsuspecting family members are questioned
about the sexual habits of the suspect. OSI agents knocked on the door
of Karen Tew's 78-year-old mother to ask about her daughter's sex life.

"I told them I didn't know, and why didn't they just ask her," said
the mother.

Tod Ensign, director of the nonprofit advocacy group Citizen Soldier,
said a 23-year-old lieutenant recently tried in Biloxi, Miss., was
interrogated for five hours about a one-night stand with an enlisted
man. Both were single, and he was not in her chain of command.

"They were teasing out every single detail," Ensign said, "asking things
like what kind of music was playing, how were you lying on the bed, did
you talk about your sexual fantasies. . . . I believe it's a form of
sexual harassment."

At Tew's court-martial, the Air Force prosecutor, Capt. Kirk Obear,
attacked the defendant's integrity in his closing argument.  "Lieutenant
Colonel Tew traded the integrity of the military professional for sexual
desire," Obear argued. "She traded the honor of wearing the military
uniform for lust, and she traded her ability to act as an effective
leader in a position of authority for sexual intercourse."

Military officials say sexual misconduct is prosecuted vigorously
because illicit romances can damage troop morale and destroy cohesion of
a unit. They also say it is imperative to protect soldiers from being
victimized by superiors who wield considerable influence over their
daily lives. Critics suggest there are other reasons as well.

Jon Tomes, a Kansas City defense attorney who is a retired Air Force
prosecutor and author of "The Servicemember's Guidebook," believes the
crackdown is as much a matter of economics as principle.

"First of all, there's less crime in the military overall than in the
past," he said, suggesting that prosecutors now have more time to
pursue crimes like adultery and fraternization.

Increasing numbers of women in the military also have recast
fraternization into a carnal crime, where before it was more likely to
be "the general playing poker or drinking with some enlisted man,"
Tomes said.

Finally, according to Tomes, "in this age of downsizing, the military
is kind of looking for any way it can to get rid of someone where years
ago, they would've just winked."

Although she declined repeated requests for an interview, Air Force
Secretary Sheila Widnall did discuss "core values" in a statement
prepared for the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier this year.

"We expect our people, throughout the ranks, to live up to the highest
standards of integrity," Widnall said. "These values provide a unifying
element, bringing us together in the service of our nation."  Air Force
Chief of Staff Gen. Ronald R. Fogleman told the Air Force Times he is
not "off on some moral kick," but "I truly believe we have to have a
higher set of standards than the society we serve."

One military lawyer, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of
official reprisal, acknowledges that officers in particular "know they
are held to a higher standard. But do we have to crush them with a
sledgehammer? . . . Does an Air Force officer committing adultery
affect my opinion of him or her or their ability to do their job any
more than it would if it were my doctor in civilian life?"

The chief military justice in the Air Force, Col. Robert Reed, maintains
that "the military doesn't go out undercover and seek out adulterous
relationships," but cannot ignore those that come to light.  "The
ultimate goal is maintaining good order and discipline," Reed said in an
interview. "I don't find it an anachronism."

Paternalism also plays a role. Commanding officers are expected to try
to help hold families together under such stresses of military life as
frequent moves and long separations.

A "very high percentage" of adultery charges are the result of a
complaint from an estranged spouse, Reed said. "Once information is
brought to a commander's attention, he is obligated to address the
situation."

But commanders have discretion in how the matter is handled, which means
that some offenders are merely counseled or given a warning, while
others receive official reprimands and still others are criminally
charged. Around the time that Kelly Flinn was under investigation at
Minot, for example, a married lieutenant colonel who had an affair with
his secretary was reprimanded and allowed to retire early. What military
attorneys privately refer to as "different spanks for different ranks"
contradicts the definition of justice in a new book of core values
published by the Air Force: "A person of integrity practices justice.
Those who do similar things must get similar rewards or similar
punishments."

Commanders usually try to put an end to improper relationships "without
permanent harm to that person's career," said Air Force spokesman Capt.
Byron James. But "disobeying a lawful order has wide-ranging
ramifications on a military unit. An individual can't pick and choose
which orders to follow."

To obey the Uniform Code of Military Justice and abide by the customs of
military culture, soldiers surrender many liberties taken for granted in
civilian life beyond the free choice of a romantic partner.

Kerry Buckey, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and former military
judge who now practices law in Woodbridge, says civilians often don't
fully appreciate the higher standards of behavior demanded by the
military.

If a civilian doesn't show up for work, he may be fired, but he won't be
arrested, said Buckey. "A service member can be jailed for not showing
up. Disrespecting the boss -- same thing. I just had a soldier call me
today who is going to be charged with wrongful cohabitation."

But the climate has changed considerably since he served in Korea in the
early '70s, Buckey said. "To be brutally frank, I think there were two
people I could point to in my squadron of 500 to 600 men who did not
engage in sexual relations with local women. And I was one of them. Most
of those men were married." No one, he recalled, was prosecuted for
adultery.

Even if an aggrieved spouse forgives the adulterer and makes no formal
complaint, the matter may still come to court-martial. That was the case
for a 27-year-old Air Force intelligence officer based at Fort Meade.

The officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, acknowledged having "a
fling" with a married junior officer not in her chain of command while
they were both on temporary duty overseas. The officer offered to resign
rather than face a court-martial, but Widnall refused to accept the
resignation.

Despite pleading guilty to sodomy and adultery, the officer was required
to provide the details in open court before being sentenced.

"It was humiliating," she said. "They asked me questions like how many
times did you perform fellatio. I've never done anything wrong before.
I've been a model officer." She was given a letter of reprimand and a
$2,000 fine. Dissatisfied with the jury's sentence, the Air Force
discharged her anyway.

The custom of punishing only the senior officer in fraternization cases
also raises among attorneys and defendants questions of fairness because
it presumes that the subordinate was not a willing partner. The
subordinate in fraternization investigations is routinely referred to as
the "victim" regardless of the circumstances.

"I lost my job. I lost my benefits," says a captain court-martialed over
an adulterous affair with the No. 2 man in her office. "He was retired
quietly, as a senior noncommissioned officer -- just a slap on the
wrist, go your merry way, we'll see you at the base commissary. It's not
fair.

"You can't tell me a guy who's been in the military 22 years doesn't
know any better. He failed as much as I did." The captain asked that her
name not be used to protect the privacy of her daughter.

In 1995, the Navy fined a two-star admiral and forced him to retire
early at a lower rank over his adulterous affair with a junior enlisted
woman. Rear Adm. Ralph Tindal was a top NATO commander at the time, and
ended up forfeiting about $650 a month in pension.

But officers not in a potential combat-leadership role can be punished
for fraternization and adultery, too. The Air Force court-martialed a
respected heart surgeon over his adulterous affair with a nurse.

In Karen Tew's case, the fraternization charge involved an affair that
had been over for eight months before the Air Force launched an
investigation. Tew was a comptroller on the elite inspector general's
team and had moved to Illinois alone so her daughters wouldn't have to
change schools again.

Her husband, Randy, said he was unaware of Karen's relationship with a
co-worker until the prosecutor's office called him and told him about
it.

"They tried to persuade me to come testify, but I wouldn't," he said.

Tew's mother still has unanswered questions about the suicide. "I
think the court-martial had a lot to do with it," she said.

In her statement at the trial, Karen Tew said she feared losing her
benefits because of a lump she had just discovered in her breast, and
because one of her daughters was being treated for a brain tumor. She
admitted that her affair was wrong. "I was lonely," she testified,
"vulnerable."

Aware of her depression, the Air Force provided extensive counseling to
Tew before, during and after her court-martial, officials said.

"There was a great deal of concern she might commit suicide by all
parties concerned," said Capt. Bill Barksdale, spokesman at Scott AFB.

Tew's mother said she learned later that a counselor had spent nearly
two hours talking to her daughter two days before she killed herself.
"He told her that she had more to live for than the Air Force, and she
agreed."

In a suicide note, Karen Tew expressed hope that "now the healing
process can begin." By dying before her dismissal had been processed,
she preserved her Air Force benefits for the family she left behind.

At her funeral, the Air Force provided an honor guard and gave
her a 21-gun salute.
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Nice weekend to all,

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