Military Wives Battle Harassment on Home Front : Deployment: Operation Desert Shield families are finding that signs of support for troops--yellow ribbons, American flags--are sending the wrong message to some.

A South Bay woman has had to change her phone number because of an obscene caller who kept asking if she was lonely. A San Diego woman says male family friends are becoming a little too friendly.

In the most serious case, a 19-year-old Carlsbad woman was recently raped by a man who told her he knew she was alone because of the yellow ribbon she hung on the side mirror of her pickup truck to honor her deployed Marine Corps husband.

As Operation Desert Shield reaches its 70th day, some wives awaiting deployed spouses are finding themselves under siege. Such harassment is apparently a fact of life for some military wives when their husbands ship out, but military officials say it may be more widespread during the current Middle East crisis.

Not only are more Marines and Navy men away from home, but many more people know they have departed.

Complaints from wives about unwanted attention or harassment during Operation Desert Shield have more than doubled from previous deployments, said Kaye Hunter, ombudsman for the destroyer tender Acadia, which left San Diego for Operation Desert Shield last month.

“To me, those men have a colossal set of nerves,” Hunter said. “It is the last thing you need. It’s insulting to your intelligence, your emotions and your ties to your spouse.”

Since his father shipped out to the Middle East to assist in Operation Desert Shield last month, one South Bay 6-year-old awakens during the night, climbs into his mother’s bed and asks if she has remembered to lock the windows and doors.

“Are you sure you locked them?” he says. And in the morning, he comes to her and asks: “Did that bad man call again?”

His 30-year-old mother, who asked that her family’s names not be used, has received almost a dozen obscene calls. She now leaves the lights and television on at night when she goes out, and she is scared to come home.

“After the first call, I got frantic. I was afraid to be in my own house--which made me angry,” said the woman, a mother of two. “I felt like I had been invaded.”

In recent weeks, the abuse has been physical, emotional and psychological, spouses say. One San Diego woman had to move to different Navy housing after a man broke into her home to fondle undergarments in her bureau. Another’s car tires were slashed.

Military officials cannot track all the harassment cases because many women do not report them to the chain of command. And those who do may lodge their complaints with police, the telephone company, the Navy dependents’ assistance board, or the ship’s ombudsman.

During August in Southern California, from the Mexico border to Kern County, Pacific Bell received 400 telephone complaints which the company traced--up from the 300 monthly average. In San Diego, 90 nuisance calls were tracked during August--an increase from the usual 70. Telephone company officials say they do not know how many of those calls were placed to military homes. Warm weather or the full moon could also explain the increase, said Tom McNaghten, a Pacific Bell spokesman.

He said that the number of “traps,” or phones that are traced, is only a fraction of the actual numbers that are placed--since most people don’t report them.

Navy and Marine Corps officials now urge that women avoid drawing attention to the fact that their husbands have shipped out. Don’t fly an American flag, hang yellow ribbons, or put a countdown sign anywhere that can be seen from outside the home, advised Senior Chief Petty Officer Bob Howard, a Navy spokesman. Use a phone machine, preferably with a male voice recording, to screen calls and tell the children to say their father can’t come to the phone if a caller asks for him, he said.

“If someone is looking for an easy target, yellow ribbon marks you,” said Capt. Rose-Ann Sgrignoli, a spokeswoman for Camp Pendleton.

In most telephone harassment cases, “the caller was usually known to the victim,” said Detective Ray Pulsipher of the San Diego Police Department’s sex crimes unit. “But it could be virtually anyone. Rarely does this person have any personal or physical contact with the victim. . . . It’s just someone very insecure who may get his sexual fantasies fulfilled by doing this.”

One 30-year-old San Diego woman found the harassment came from a family friend who has begun showing up around dinner time at her home with a bucket of chicken. After an unpleasantly close encounter with the family friend, this woman now locks her door with a deadbolts and has placed sticks in the windows to prevent them from being pried open.

“He hardly comes over when my husband is home,” said the San Diego woman, who now screens her calls. “He has gotten so demanding and pushy that I am uncomfortable. And I was more upset that he made me uncomfortable in my own home. I want nothing to do with him.”

The South Bay woman now struggles to calm herself and her son after the spate of obscene calls. Although she changed her phone number, her son is still worried.

“Wives and husbands are already going through the trauma of being ripped apart--it’s terrible that a person would further try to traumatize a family,” she said. “It really makes me angry that someone is getting their kicks by doing this.”