Mainly, be petrified.
What would you want her to do about?
Genuine question - go outside in her nightwear, start shouting and suddenly hope a clear Command voice and a hand chop will get a bunch of pissed up, lairy lads who've just come in from a night on the piss to click their heels together and do one? If you do think that, I suggest that after lockdown you go and reacquaint yourself with the "great british high street at chucking out time on a friday night" to see how drunk packs of men behave. There are enough dits on here about rumbles and rucks in NAAFI bars various at chucking out time - I bet you can probably spin some yourself.
So perhaps the bigger point is - why are you questioning what she did, not why a bunch of pissed up lads were behaving in an unacceptable manner?
last couple of years.
It was when she was an OC (i.e. not yet a full Officer) so my understanding is that they are in whatever the replacement for Britannia Block is.
Yes, clearly such behaviour from anyone is unacceptable. But equally yes, being unwilling or unable to deal with such behaviour from subordinates is also unacceptable for an officer. It means you are not commanding or leading anyone. That's allowable as development up to the point someone commissions as an officer (or non-commissions as an NCO), but not afterwards, and it doesn't change the point being made by others about your defence.
The reasoning error here that the current bureaucracy pursues is the assumption that she can be both things - both a victim and a leader. It's not true. You cannot fail to respond to threats to your person (which is what they are) from subordinates and still expect to hold respect - if you can't or won't defend yourself, why should others expect you will defend them? This is, in fact, one of the few things that is still actually ensconced in QRs, and is the foundation of severe penalties against striking superiors as well as saluting and other mandated displays of respect.
It's certainly not fair on the individual. She's expected to be both the victim and the prosecutor in this case, but that is how the military discipline system is deliberately structured, and it has, over the past decade, regularly argued that structure remains necessary in the face of external criticism. Therefore, while unfair, it is both what history and the present military teach and legislate about leadership and discipline. The plain fact is that not everyone who wants to be a leader becomes one. It never helps the military when it empowers or allows weak officers who are incapable of commanding the respect of their subordinates. It does that in a hundred and one ways with both men and women, this just happens to be an example which applies to women. We could equally point to a male officer who willfully ignored criminal activity among his subordinates: the crime is not his fault; the willful ignorance is.
I completely accept your points about female service personnel feeling under threat, and can confirm to those who are sceptical that I've seperately heard many similar stories. It happens. It's a culture that needs to stop for all the various reasons stated, most obviously that it fatally undermines any concept of teamwork based on merit rather than mere tribalism. That's not quite the point that is being made, however.
I find this diversion of views particularly ironic seeing as how you seem to think I'm chronically predisposed to see only the effect on individuals and dismiss the effect on the whole, and have stated that your guiding principle is what is best for the team. Letting harrassment of any kind pass is never going to be 'what is best for the team', which, in the case you've stated, is also why it's not clear she did the right thing either.
PS The second quote changes matters. Certainly I've seen training establishments in the Army create a paradox where it expects 2Lts and, to a lesser extent, OCdts in Phase 1-3 training to both "be officers" and "be recruits", without admitting that the two are incompatible. I don't know what the command relationships would have been in this case, but clearly it's possible that the understanding of who was responsible for what would have changed things. But the general point stands.
