- There's been a groundbreaking transformation underway in the U.S. military as combat roles have opened to women.

Women now drive tanks, fire mortars and command Army units in war zones, jobs previously open only to men and if they can pass rigorous tests women can join elite forces like the Green Berets or the Navy Seals.

- But the first steps towards rethinking woman's role in the military can be traced to the aftermath of a disturbing episode that shook up military culture.

It was a sexual assault scandal in the early 1990s known as Tailhook.

The shocking revelations by one female Navy officer showed how hostile to women the military could be and put the Pentagon on notice.

(adventurous music) - [Narrator] 1991, the U.S. launches a ground and air war in the Persian Gulf.

Among the troops are 40,000 American women and not all the men liked the idea.

- I don't know exactly how these women are gonna handle this.

I think this should be a, you know, a man's war here.

- [Narrator] By law, women were not allowed in ground combat or fighter jets or combat ships, but many coveted those jobs, including Navy Lieutenant Paula Coughlin.

- I grew up in a Navy family where we all understood you could do whatever you wanted to do in life, you just had to be hard working and set your mind to it.

- [Narrator] Coughlin wanted to be an aviator, like her father, but as a woman she was allowed to fly only support aircraft, like helicopters.

She excelled and landed a plum job as an Admiral's aide.

- I was really confident that I would have a pretty long and successful career.

- [Narrator] It was in the company of her boss that Coughlin attended the Tailhook convention in September 1991.

She remembers this panel discussion where a question came up that was front and center for Navy women at the time, whether women would ever be allowed to fly fighter jets like the men.

- [Woman In Audience] I was wondering, sir, when you plan to implement that and if it's gonna be soon.

(chatter from the audience) - [Narrator] The male pilots in the audience started jeering even before they heard the answer.

By not condemning the outburst, Coughlin believes the Admiral sent an ominous message.

- Women are second-class citizens and whether they can fly a jet or not, let's party and have at it, and that's really how it all kind of played out.

- [Narrator] It all played out on the hotel's third floor where convention after party's turned ugly.

Drunken aviators roamed the halls exposing their genitals and attacking unsuspecting Navy and civilian women.

When Lieutenant Coughlin entered this corridor packed with partiers, a crowd of male aviators surrounded her and pounced.

- People were actually closing in and trying to pull my clothes off, I got knocked to the floor and I kicked and I punched and I actually bit somebody who was reaching down my blouse.

- [Narrator] She eventually escaped and later told her boss, Admiral John Snyder, about the incident.

He promised to report it.

Coughlin remembers him saying something else, something Snyder denies.

- He told me that's what you get when you go down a hallway full of drunk aviators.

That's what you get.

- I chose to meet with her 'cause I was appalled that nobody on behalf of the Navy had apologized, you know, to Paula and said, "I am sorry this occurred."

This is not over-- - [Narrator] Barbara Pope was then, the Navy's first female Assistant Secretary.

She says, from the start of the Tailhook investigation, the Navy's top men weren't taking what happened seriously.

- They thought it was misbehavior, you know, some behaviors that got out of hand and they missed assault.

You know, my point was that assault is criminal, you know, there's no acceptable assault.

If you are manhandled against your will, it's assault.

- Charges of sexual harassment by woman who say they were manhandled at a gathering of Navy flyers.

- [Narrator #2] Behind the specific assault lies a macho culture, which belittles women.

- [Narrator] Seven months after Tailhook, the Navy issued it's report.

Fifteen hundred officers were questioned, but only two were named as suspects because most of the Navy men involved refused to cooperate.

The investigation was led by Admiral Duvall "Mac" Williams.

- I said to Mac, I'm not buying that nobody's talking and Admiral Williams had said, "Well, you know, some of these women "Were kinda bringing it on themselves," and that started my outrage, my indignation and I said, "Nobody brings assault on themselves," and he said, "Men and women cannot work together, "It all comes down to sex."

This is the man who was in charge of the investigation.

- [Narrator] In the wake of an apparent whitewash Paula Coughlin took a radical step.

- Until one woman came forward and said, "Enough," there was a very good chance it was going to be covered up.

- [Narrator] Dressed in her uniform, Coughlin went on National television to demand that the men who had attacked her at Tailhook be brought to justice.

- Not every man in the Navy behaves like that, but those who did shouldn't remain in the Navy or the Marine Corps.

- [Narrator] Coughlin's media appearances transformed Tailhook from a Navy embarrassment to a National scandal.

The Secretary of the Navy was forced to resign and Congress temporarily froze 4,500 Navy promotions.

- Sexual harassment will not be tolerated and those who don't get the message will be driven from our ranks.

- [Narrator] The new Navy Secretary, Sean O'Keefe, instituted gender sensitivity classes, closed officer's drinking clubs and set-up a commission to study whether women should be allowed to serve on combat ships and planes.

The changes made Paula Coughlin a hero to many women, but a pariah in the Navy.

- I had to walk into a room full of Naval aviators that felt like I had betrayed their tribe.

I had to listen to a live talk show about how I had ruined the Navy and what a slut I was.

I just was treading water and trying not to kill myself.

- [Narrator] What really happened at the Tailhook convention finally emerged in a blistering Pentagon report.

Ninety victims in all, 140 officers facing possible punishment, but in the end, while dozens of military careers were damaged no one was criminally prosecuted and with that, Paula Coughlin quit the Navy.

- It's been more than four years since the infamous Tailhook incident-- - [Narrator] Tailhook exposed the sexual assault problem in the military, but the reforms did not end it.

Navy Petty Officer Jenny McClendon was shocked at what she faced in 1999, just a few years after Tailhook.

- I presumed that I was going to join a group of people who were my comrades.

When I got to the ship, it was a while before, it was probably a couple of months before we went from harassment to the groping and the groping eventually culminated in several physical assaults and a few rapes.

- [Narrator] She wasn't alone.

In 2008-- - Women serving in the U.S. military today are more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire in Iraq.

- Largest sexual-- - [Narrator] And in 2012 came news that 62 female recruits were sexually assaulted by their Air Force instructors.

Paula Coughlin, who had married, started a business and put Tailhook behind her felt compelled to step forward again.

- We represent over 500,000 veterans-- - [Narrator] Working with the group, Protect Our Defenders, she helped pressure Congress to hold hearings on the issue.

- We have been trying a number of programs, a number of training activities, a number of educational initiatives, while-- - [Narrator] Since then, there has been some progress.

Service members are reporting sexual assaults more often.

Over 6,000 in 2018, but that's still a fraction of the 20,000 assaults that the Pentagon estimates took place that year.

- We know that this is an under reported crime.

- [Narrator] Buried in the data is another striking fact, of those 20,000 assaults, 7,500 of the victims were men.

- Rape is a crime about power and control.

The military is very much about power and control.

- [Narrator] Navy Petty Officer, Brian Lewis, says he was raped by a superior officer at knife point on a submarine base in 2000.

He says he told his command about the rape, but men rarely do.

- A lot of it has to do with gender norms, that men cannot be victims, that you're serving in the military and you're able to defend yourself against this aggression, and a lot of it is just, a lot of it is shame at having had this happen.

- [Narrator] Lewis says his case was never investigated.

- I was given a general discharge for personality-- - [Narrator] He told Congress that he was retaliated against and discharged with a diagnosis of personality disorder.

- The petitioned to change my-- - [Narrator] Something he says happens to many sexual assault victims.

- I'm here today because I am not alone, my story is all too common.

- It's like seeing America's youth and the way that I used to be, so completely, virtuously enamored with the idea of serving your country and then being so desperately betrayed.

- [Narrator] Earlier this year, military officers were called back to Capital Hill after revelations that sexual assaults at the service academies had nearly doubled since 2016.

And at one hearing-- - Like you, I am also a military sexual assault survivor.

- [Narrator] Senator Martha McSally, a retired Air Force Colonel, and the first female pilot to fly in combat, told her story.

- I was preyed upon and then raped by a superior officer.

I was horrified at how my attempt to share generally my experiences were handled.

I almost separated from the Air Force at 18 years over my despair.

- [Narrator] The Department of Defense insist it prosecutes every case where sufficient evidence exists, but less than three percent of the incidents investigated last year resulted in a conviction.

- I think that prosecuting rapists in the military is pretty vital to eradicating rapists in the military and I know that sounds almost remedial, but it's what's not happening.

Someone who commits a criminal offense in the military, like driving drunk or doing drugs or stealing hand grenades, boom, they go to jail, they get kicked out really quickly, but if you rape a woman or you assault a man you, oh wait a minute, you're okay.

- [Narrator] Tailhook forced the military to begin addressing it's sexual assault problem, but it had another unexpected legacy.

The Pentagon commission formed in the wake of the scandal recommended lifting the age old restrictions on the kinds of jobs women could hold and within two years, the Navy and Air Force opened combat jobs to women.

Since then, the Army and Marines have done the same.

- [Narrator #3] Today 40 women Marines checked into the Marine Combat Training Battalion at Camp Pendleton in San Diego County.

- [Narrator] With all occupations now open to women, the military is seeing healthy increases in female enlistment.

Former Navy Official, Barbara Pope, says credit for most of that progress goes to Paula Coughlin and Tailhook.

- It forced the Department of Defense to look at, could women fly, could women be commanding officers of warships, and so the Navy will forever be indebted to her for, you know, forcing those changes.

I mean, sometimes you have to have a crisis to speed up change, and Tailhook was that.

- For a long time I said, I was in the hallway, I was in the wrong place at the wrong time and I thought that for, I don't know, ten years at least, and then I started considering that maybe I was in the right place at the right time.

Somebody had to be there.

Somebody had to be the one to start the ball rolling.