The New Hampshire National Guard has been investigated for “rampant sexual harassment,” according to CNN. This revelation is unsurprising yet thoroughly disappointing.
I can easily imagine a purple state’s standing military chapter being a hypermasculine misogynist cesspool. Conversely, I fear generalizing the environment of any organization as such, because I think there is a real risk of “boys will be boys” overtaking any narrative relating to sexual violence and providing perpetrators with an easy excuse.
Lieutenant Colonel Mark Patterson has been the face of misconduct in the N.H. Guard after a swathe of allegations came out against him. The CNN investigation into the case yielded evidence of Patterson’s harassment of women under his command but also intimidation of his subordinates regardless of gender. One of the most damning aspects of this case, though, is Patterson has been investigated for similar behavior on previous occasions and bragged to service members about having “beaten” those investigations.
Patterson’s bragging seems foolish, and it is, but it also speaks to the vicious insularity of the environment in which he operates. Numerous complaints about his behavior were presented to N.H. Guard leadership between 2022 and 2023 while Patterson was deployed at the southern United States border, with seemingly no meaningful action taken until the active-duty chain of command at the border took control of the situation.
The Guard has proven it has wholly insufficient investigation procedures for cases like this by allowing such serial abuse to occur for so long. Although Patterson is one of the most prominent names associated with these cases, he is far from the only officer to take advantage of his position of power in the Guard.
Senator Jeanne Shaheen has pushed for some legislative changes that provide a response to the situation, namely a provision that would mandate a review of all National Guard chapters’ policies regarding assault and harassment as well as aiming to strengthen the Guard’s Office of Complex Investigations to better prepare it to handle such cases, according to the CNN article.
Although I am glad to see any response at all to this problem from those with the power to try and fix it, I am dubious of how effective these moves will be as a solution. The nature of the National Guard as a state-based force inherently lends itself to a libertarian-leaning, low-regulation style of leadership. While abuse is certainly far from impossible in the federal military, the greater level of supervision is valuable when trying to hold abusers accountable.
This is demonstrated in Patterson’s case, where his misconduct went mostly unaddressed with at least one case of retaliation aimed at those who spoke out against him until he was placed under the command of a federal organization with a more rigidly enforced disciplinary process.
Unfortunately, I think the N.H. population tends to skew towards those state-focused policies that favor the poorly regulated method of operation on which the Guard has been functioning, at least compared to other New England states. Still, it remains shocking to know that our state’s chapter of the Guard has, by some margin, the highest rate of sexual assault cases, not just in the region but in the entire nation, according to a New Hampshire Public Radio (NHPR) interview with Haley Britzky, who led the CNN investigation.
As much as I would love to see Shaheen’s policies lead to progress in protecting both current victims as well as potential future victims in the Guard, I worry a more thorough overhaul of the organization’s investigative and disciplinary abilities may be in order to ensure everyone gets their due.
Charlotte King can be contacted at
cking@kscequinox.com
