The United States armed forces allowed hundreds of accused sex offenders toescape criminal prosecution or go free despite convictions. Then it sent many of them back to civilian life with no criminal record.
Thousands of previously unreleased military records show that many accused of sexual assault and child molestation since 1988 found a leniency unheard ofin the civilian justice system.
Hundreds of accused offenders went to administrative hearings offering no possibility of prison or to the military's version of misdemeanor court, wherethe maximum punishment is six months in jail - half what some Ohioans face fordrunken driving.
Air Force Lt. Col. Gary Carter was charged in 1993 with improperly touching12 women, but he was never tried. The service let him resign without trial, and he returned to a civilian medical practice.
A 14-year-old girl accused Norman Michael Fletcher of sexual assault in 1985, but instead of being tried, Fletcher was discharged from the Navy after an administrative hearing. Yet the word ``honorable'' describes his military service on his official record, which he used to help get elected commissionerof the nation's sixth-largest container port. He also helps oversee a home forunwed teen-age mothers.
A witness heard the screams of the 16-year-old girl Cortney A. Riley was accused of raping in 1994, but a panel of Riley's co-workers from the Memphis Naval Air Station concluded she wanted sex. Six months later, Riley choked andraped a 15-year-old girl at gunpoint. The Memphis base had one of the lowest conviction rates in the service for sexual assaults.
TheDayton Daily News spent eight months examining sexual assaults and child molestations investigated by the military since 1988. Among the findingsto be detailed this week:
* Hundreds of criminal records on military members never reached the FBI's computer system, which is critical to civilian law officers in identifying repeat criminal offenders and child molesters. In many cases, the military violated its own regulation by not sending the records.
* Military women faced criminal charges for petty offenses that came to light when they reported sexual assaults. Civilian authorities said they ignore such offenses.
* There are no mandatory sentences for convicted sex offenders in the military. Of the five rapists convicted by the Coast Guard since 1991, two gotsentences of two years each, one got six months, one 60 days and a fifth no jail time. In Ohio, a first-offense rape conviction carries a mandatory five-year sentence.
``It's like the military tries to keep it hush-hush and keep it in their own family,'' said Detective Sammy Peavy of the Escambia County, Fla., sheriff's office, who has investigated numerous sexual assaults involving Navypersonnel in his state.
``I would hate for my wife or daughter to be in the military and be sexually assaulted and have them investigate. They don't have the expertise, the training, and sometimes, they don't have the heart.''
Military officials from the various services defended their record for prosecuting sexual offenders. For the most part, offenders were vigorously investigated, prosecuted and punished for their crimes, they said.
``One can always find anecdotes which suggest a system is not working...,''said Loren S. Perlstein, acting chief of the Air Force's military justice division.
The assistant judge advocate general for the Navy and Marine Corps, Marine Col. Richard Ouellette, said civilian prosecutors often make the same types ofdecisions as military commanders do when deciding how to handle sex crimes. Sending a military case to an administrative hearing, he said, is similar to having the same type of case reduced to a lesser offense in the civilian justice system.
Escaping prosecution
Sexual assault cases are among the most difficult to prosecute because often there are few witnesses and traumatized victims fear coming forward. Butsuch cases face even more obstacles in the military.
The military's criminal justice system has jurisdiction over 3.4 million part-time and full-time personnel worldwide - more than the population of Colorado, the nation's 26th most populous state.
In addition, the military justice system is responsible for protecting civilians victimized by members of the military.
Unlike the civilian justice system, the military combines its criminal justice system with job-related discipline. In the military, a job-related infraction, such as disobeying a supervisor, can be sent to a criminal courtroom, but a serious criminal offense, such as rape, can be sent to an administrative hearing, which offers fines and loss of rank but no possibilityof jail.
In some cases, criminal defendants are allowed to resign from the service and avoid being prosecuted for a criminal charge, even when there's evidence to convict.
A Dayton Daily News computer analysis showed that the Air Force allowed more than one of every nine people charged with sexual assaults or child molestation to resign and avoid being tried. Dayton's Wright-Patterson Air Force Base allowed more than three times that ratio - five of 13 - to resign without being tried.
One Air Force defendant allowed to resign was Lt. Col. Gary Carter, a flight surgeon.
Carter showed up uninvited at a woman's barracks in England in 1989, insisting he had to see his 20-year-old assistant who had traveled with him from Pope Air Force Base, N.C.
Kelly Ann Peters still cries when she recalls what happened next, when Carter attacked her.
``I was up against the headboard. There was no place I could go,'' she said. ``He put one hand on my breast and the other on my crotch. I was begginghim, crying.''
After the attack, Peters said, she developed bulimia.
``I thought if I got super skinny nobody would look at my figure. I thoughtit was my fault because I made him look at me.''
At one point during an interview in her home in the Northwest, Peters covered her eyes and went into another room. Her husband, who had been sittingbeside her, shook his head.
``I can't believe he got away with it,'' said Bill Peters, who also was in the Air Force.
The Air Force was skeptical of her claim of sexual assault. She said the service forced her to undergo counseling, threatened to kick her out and gave her a polygraph test, which they said was inconclusive.
``They covered it up and tried to say it never happened,'' she said, addingthat she eventually left the service. ``After this was over, my career was over.''
Carter eventually got a transfer to McChord Air Force Base, Wash., one of the most popular bases because of its location.
Months after Carter arrived at McChord, which is just south of Seattle, more women complained. One said she went to Carter with back pain from playingsports and got a breast examination.
The complaints prompted the Air Force Office of Special Investigations to review 180 of Carter's appointments with female patients. A total of 17 women complained.
Military prosecutors charged Carter with improperly touching 12 of them.
But Carter escaped punishment again.
In 1993, he was allowed to resign in lieu of trial.
Several officials at the base thought the case should have been prosecuted.
``He got away with it,'' said a former Air Force investigator familiar withthe case. ``All 17 gave sworn statements, and the legal office decided to dump it.''
Military doctors like Carter are allowed to be licensed by any state, and Carter held a Texas license. But without a more severe action by the military,the Texas State Board of Medical Examiners could not revoke his license without conducting its own investigation.
Such an investigation would have been virtually impossible.
``Our jurisdiction stops at the state line,'' said Tim Weitz, chief counselfor the Texas agency.
Carter kept his medical license, which enabled him to practice with Presbyterian Healthcare System of Dallas . Texas was preparing to renew that license in June, when Carter died suddenly at the age of 51.
Perlstein, the Air Force justice official, said many of the cases in which the service accepted resignations lacked sufficient evidence, involved victimsreluctant to testify of posed other problems that made them difficult to prosecute.
Secret hearings
Resignation is not the only way members of the military can avoid trial fora sexual assault. Commanders, who are not required to have formal legal training, can choose to handle any felony criminal complaint through a number of non-criminal, administrative proceedings, many of them held behind closed doors and none offering prison time.
``Only the commanding officer has the power to bring charges. He's got thatincredible amount of power,'' said Navy Lt. Adam Feller of the service's Long Beach, Calif., office. ``Frankly, I think they (commanders) are dead wrong sometimes.''
Even rape cases can go to non-criminal hearings.
Of the three Marines at the Marine Corps Logistics Base in Albany, Ga., charged with rape since 1988, one got an administrative hearing for allegedly sodomizing and ``licking and fondling'' his daughter.
A second man accused of rape, Cpl. John A. Penrod, resigned and avoided trial. Eighteen months earlier, Penrod had been accused of trying to rape a 17-year-old girl in Okinawa, Japan, and he, too, got an administrative hearinginstead of a trial.
The Dayton Daily News found that the Air Force held more than 52,000 administrative hearings since 1988, at least 1,168 involving sex charges. Wright-Patterson had 399, at least six involving sex offenses.
At one Army base, more accused sex offenders got administrative hearings than felony trials. Of 39 soldiers accused since 1988, eight got administrative hearings, and only two got the equivalent of felony trials. Among the rest were three tried in the military's version of misdemeanor court.
The newspaper obtained information from the Army base's investigative fileson sexual assaults. The files contained witness statements, polygraph results and information about the criminal history of the accused soldiers. The newspaper agreed not to disclose the source of the information.
Among those never prosecuted for a felony was a soldier with an arrest record from a previous rape case. Four others weren't prosecuted despite having failed polygraph tests.
In one file is a letter from the commander of a soldier accused of sexual assault, written two weeks after the soldier failed a polygraph and gave a partial confession.
``This is a soldier serving in the United States military, and he should betreated as such, rather than being treated like a common criminal,'' the commander wrote, adding that the soldier's leadership potential was ``enormous.''
The soldier was accused of holding down an 18-year-old civilian women in his barracks, grabbing her breasts and forcing her to fondle him. A witness inan adjacent room reported hearing the woman say ``No'' twice and ``I can't.'' Even before the soldier failed his polygraph, a prosecutor found sufficient evidence to prosecute.
But the military did nothing. The only explanation in the file is a record that lists action taken as ``none.'' The commander's letter was one of the last entries in the file.
A politician's secret
Handling a case through an administrative hearing leaves little public record of what happened.
On the surface, Norman Michael Fletcher's military record is fit for a hero: ``Honorable'' service. Good Conduct Award. National Defense Service Medal. Vietnam Campaign Ribbon. Navy Unit Citation.
In 1993, Fletcher used his military record to help win election to the five-member Port Commission in Tacoma, Wash. He also helps run a home for unwed teen-age mothers, whose privacy is considered so important that the address of their shelter is secret.
But his official record doesn't tell everything about his Navy service.
While a Navy recruiter in Tacoma in 1985, Fletcher was accused of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl, Tina Froebel, who was in a Navy youth program called the Sea Cadets. Froebel said Fletcher pushed her up against a wall and kissed her on the lips and neck.
Froebel, now a 24-year-old Coast Guard petty officer in Alaska, said, ``I had to push him off of me... I was more disgusted than shocked.''
During an interview, Fletcher said he was only trying to kiss Froebel's cheek when he accidentally caught the ``corner of her lip.'' Fletcher said he also was accused of kissing an 18-year-old woman he was recruiting and of making an inappropriate remark to another potential recruit about her breasts.
Following an administrative hearing, Fletcher said, he was forced out of active duty but allowed to stay in the Navy Reserves.
For every military court-martial trial in 1993, there were nine non-criminal administrative hearings similar to the one Fletcher attended. TheArmy alone held 44,207 of them that year.
Treated as misdemeanors
Even when the military holds a trial, members accused of sexual assault canfind leniency. The military allows many to be tried at ``special courts-martial martial,'' misdemeanor trials, where the maximum jail sentence is six months.
One third of the 1,406 Marines and Navy sailors tried for sexual assault went to special court-martial. The Marines sent one in every 11 rape cases to the misdemeanor court since 1988. A single Marine base sent four rape cases tomisdemeanor court - one more than sent by the entire Air Force during the sameperiod.
Nearly half of all sexual assault cases at Philadelphia Naval Base went to special court-martial.
Last summer, when a cleaning woman found girls ages 14 and 15 who had sleptin the men's barracks.
Though the crime is punishable by up to 15 years in prison, the ship's commander sent the cases to special court-martial.
Although willingness to have sex is usually not a legal defense in such cases, most of a Navy investigative report focused on the girls' willingness.
The report noted the girls' ``cavalier attitude.'' The Navy investigator wrote that he observed the victims ``laughing and joking and displaying a somewhat immature attitude.''
The victims, the investigator said, ``indicated they had a good time with the United States Navy members and also expressed a desire to see the United States Navy members again.''
The sailors were found guilty of carnal knowledge, the military's version of statutory rape. Although they were given a variety of administrative punishments, none was sentenced to jail or discharged from the service.
The stepfather of one of the girls, a Philadelphia attorney, thinks the girls were victimized, and the Navy wanted to cover it up. He filed documentson behalf of his 14-year-old stepdaughter and another girl in federal court, seeking $4 million from the Navy.
``It's just a whitewash,'' he said during an interview.
A Matter of geography
Just how seriously the military dealt with sexual assaults varied greatly base to base.
Overall, half of the 1,406 Navy and Marine Corps defendants were acquitted or sentenced to 90 days or less. More than 70 of those convicted were sentenced to no jail time.
At the Charleston, S.C., Naval Base, however, 50 of the 59 people prosecuted for sexual assaults were convicted, with only four getting sentences of 90 days or less.
And at the Memphis Naval Air Station, four of the 15 people tried for rape or other sexual assaults were convicted of sexual assault, with two getting sentenced to more than 90 days. The base held five rape trials, but convicted only one person: A sailor the base acquitted eight months earlier in another rape.
Navy officials refused to discuss the base's record. The Navy refused to identify defendants, witnesses or others who testified at public courts-martial, and the Navy kept many of the trial records secret.
One of the defendants whose identity the Navy tried to protect was Cortney A. Riley.
In May 1994, Riley was court-martialed for raping a 16-year-old girl from Millington, Tenn., a small town just beyond the gates of the base. The girl had been drinking and agreed to sleep at the barracks, but she denied consenting to sex.
``He's a lot stronger than I am.... I was trying to push him off, and I wasbegging him, you know, `Please, just get off of me,' '' she testified at the court-martial.
A witness heard her scream and saw her cry, but the jury of Navy personnel concluded she was a willing partner. They convicted Riley of the military crime of consensual sodomy, fined him $750, gave him a reprimand and set him free.
Six months later, on Dec. 22, Riley brought another teen-age girl to the base, this one a 15-year-old Millington high school student. This time the girl testified she was choked and raped at gunpoint.
``Someone walked in and she was screaming out the door,'' said Lt. Suzanne Dutcher, who prosecuted Riley for both cases. Dutcher refused to discuss this case or any other after an initial interview.
The girl testified that the rape left her with uncontrollable bouts of sobbing. She stayed home from school, unable to face questions from her friends. When she did go to school, she sought the help of counselors.
``What he's done has left a permanent mark on that little girl,'' the prosecutor said during closing arguments. ``He's changed her life forever.''
Riley got 45 years.
Another defendant whose identity the Navy tried to protect was Christopher R. Matthews.
Like Riley, Matthews was tried for rape at the Memphis air station. Like Riley, he was accused by more than one woman. And like Riley, his acquittal left people wondering. Even his attorney.
In June 1991, Matthews was accused of raping a woman who married his neighbor only eight days earlier. Two months later, as the Navy continued to investigate that case, a 19-year-old woman in the Navy claimed Matthews raped her, too, only days after she arrived at the base.
Matthews was charged with both rapes, but by the time his trial started in 1992, the Navy claimed it couldn't find the first victim, according to Matthews' attorney, Bill Anderson Jr. of Memphis.
That left Anderson to defend Matthews against only one charge, brought by 19-year-old Sarah Baker.
Anderson, a veteran criminal defense attorney, picked apart Baker's story during the trial. The jury never knew about the other rape report, and Anderson won the case. The Navy's inability to locate the other woman, Anderson said, may have saved his client.
``If he (military prosecutor) would have found her, we would have been sunk, just by sheer numbers,'' Anderson said. ``I guarantee our local DA wouldhave found her.''
The Dayton Daily News ran the Social Security number of the missing woman'shusband through a publicly available computer database, which supplied an address in Hattiesburg, Miss. A telephone operator had a number. Locating her took 15 minutes.
The missing woman's husband answered the phone.
He said that after his wife testified at a preliminary hearing months earlier, the Navy never asked her to appear in court-martial.
``They told me that (preliminary hearing) was the end of it,'' he said. ``...Nobody wanted to do anything. Nobody cared. When my wife first filed charges, they weren't going to do anything... What they tried to do was keep it hush-hush.''
Editor's note
All the women identified in this series as sexual assault victims agreed tothe use of their names and, in some cases, photographs. Where victims did not agree to this, their names were withheld to protect their privacy.
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