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| This photo taken Jan. 31, 2104 shows Tina Wilson, who was a victim of sexual assault while serving in the Navy, outside of her brothers home in Del City, OK. Wilson left the Navy in 2009 and is now pursuing a degree in Sports Science at Rose State College. An Associated Press investigation into the military’s handling of sexual assaults in Japan has found a pattern of random and inconsistent judgments in which most offenders are not incarcerated. Instead, commanders have ordered “nonjudicial punishments” that ranged from docked pay to a letter of reprimand. |
TOKYO (AP) --
After a night of heavy drinking at the Globe and Anchor, a watering
hole for enlisted Marines in Okinawa, Japan, a female service member
awoke in her barracks room as a man was raping her, she reported. She
tried repeatedly to push him off. But wavering in and out of
consciousness, she couldn't fight back.
A rape
investigation, backed up by DNA evidence, ended with the accused
pleading guilty to a lesser charge, wrongfully engaging in sexual
activity in the barracks. He was reduced in rank and confined to his
base for 30 days, but received no prison time.
Fast
forward a year. An intoxicated service member was helped into bed by a
male Marine with whom he had spent the day. The Marine then performed
oral sex on the victim "for approximately 20 minutes against his will,"
records show. The accused insisted the sex was consensual, but he was
court-martialed, sentenced to six years in prison, busted to E-1, the
military's lowest rank, and dishonorably discharged.
The
two cases, both adjudicated by the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing, are among
more than 1,000 reports of sex crimes involving U.S. military personnel
based in Japan between 2005 and early 2013. Obtained through the Freedom
of Information Act, the records open a rare window into the world of
military justice and show a pattern of random and inconsistent
judgments.
The Associated Press originally
sought the records for U.S. military personnel stationed in Japan after
attacks against Japanese women raised political tensions there. They
might now give weight to members of Congress who want to strip senior
officers of their authority to decide whether serious crimes, including
sexual assault cases, go to trial.
The AP
analysis found the handling of allegations verged on the chaotic, with
seemingly strong cases often reduced to lesser charges. In two rape
cases, commanders overruled recommendations to court-martial and dropped
the charges instead.
Even when military authorities agreed a crime had been committed, the suspect was unlikely to serve time.
Nearly
two-thirds of 244 service members whose punishments were detailed in
the records were not incarcerated. Instead they were fined, demoted,
restricted to their bases or removed from the military. In more than 30
cases, a letter of reprimand was the only punishment.
Among the other findings:
-The
Marines were far more likely than other branches to send offenders to
prison, with 53 prison sentences out of 270 cases. By contrast, of the
Navy's 203 cases, more than 70 were court-martialed or punished in some
way. Only 15 were sentenced to time behind bars.
-The Air Force was the most lenient. Of 124 sex crimes, the only punishment for 21 offenders was a letter of reprimand.
-Victims
increasingly declined to cooperate with investigators or recanted, a
sign they may have been losing confidence in the system. In 2006, the
Naval Criminal Investigative Service, which handles the Navy and Marine
Corps, reported 13 such cases; in 2012, it was 28.
Taken
together, the sex crime cases from Japan, home to the largest number of
U.S. military personnel based overseas, illustrate how far military
leaders have to go to reverse a spiraling number of sexual assault
reports.
In one case, a woman alleged that a
sailor raped her. Later, she confronted him in a recorded conversation.
She accused him of pushing her down "for sex purposes," after which he
apologized for hurting her "in that way."
An
Article 32 hearing, the military's version of a grand jury, recommended a
court-martial on rape charges, but the commanding officer said no. The
charges were dropped.
U.S. Sen. Kirsten
Gillibrand, who leads the Senate Armed Services' personnel subcommittee,
said the records are "disturbing evidence" that there are commanders
who refuse to prosecute sexual assault cases.
The
AP story "shows the direct evidence of the stories we hear every day,"
said Gillibrand, who leads a group of lawmakers from both political
parties pressing for further changes in the military's legal system.
"The
men and women of our military deserve better," said Gillibrand, D-N.Y.
"They deserve to have unbiased, trained military prosecutors reviewing
their cases, and making decisions based solely on the merits of the
evidence in a transparent way."
Air Force Col. Alan Metzler said the Department of Defense has been open in acknowledging that it has a problem.
"We have owned that," he said. "We have been public about it."
Metzler,
deputy director of the Defense Department's Sexual Assault Prevention
and Response Office, said the changes in military law and policy made by
Congress and the Pentagon are creating a culture where victims trust
that their allegations will be taken seriously and perpetrators will be
punished. The cases in Japan preceded reforms the Pentagon implemented
in May, according to defense officials.
The
military, Metzler noted, is making progress. The number of sexual
assault cases taken to courts-martial military-wide has grown steadily,
from 42 percent in 2009 to 68 percent in 2012, according to department
figures. In 2012, of the 238 service members convicted, 74 percent
served time.
That trend is not reflected in
the Japan cases. Out of 473 sexual assault allegations against sailors
and Marines between 2005 and 2013, just 116, or 24 percent, ended up in
courts-martial.
Further, the 238 convictions
are a small number compared with the estimated 26,000 sex crimes that
may have occurred that year across the military, according to the
department's anonymous survey of military personnel. Sex crimes are
vastly underreported in both military and civilian life.
The
top U.S. officer in Japan, Lt. Gen. Salvatore Angelella, said the
military takes the issue of sexual assault "very seriously."
"Sexual assault is a crime and a contradiction to everything we stand for," he said.
The
NCIS provided more than 600 case files - seven years of detailed but
heavily redacted executive summaries of sex-crime reports. The four
military branches provided another 400 files covering narrower time
frames.
The Pentagon has said its commanders
have been using nonjudicial punishment less frequently in recent years.
But the documents show that in Japan at least, U.S. commanders are using
that authority more often. This is especially true in the Navy, where
in 2012 only one case led to court-martial. In the 13 others, commanders
used nonjudicial penalties rather than ordering trials.
The
authority to decide how to prosecute serious criminal allegations would
be taken away from senior officers under a bill crafted by Gillibrand
and expected to come before the Senate as early as this coming week. The
legislation would place that judgment with trial counsels who have
prosecutorial experience and hold the rank of colonel or above.
Senior
U.S. military leaders oppose the plan, saying it would undermine the
ability of commanders to ensure
discipline within their ranks.
"Taking
the commander out of the loop never solved any problem," said U.S. Sen.
Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a former Air Force lawyer who is the
personnel subcommittee's top Republican. "It would dismantle the
military justice system beyond sexual assaults. It would take commanders
off the hook for their responsibility to fix this problem."
Graham,
a member of the Air Force Reserves who is an instructor at the
service's judge advocate general school, said victims of sexual assault
have a far better chance of getting justice than do victims whose cases
are handled by civilian courts.
But research
by Cassia Spohn, a professor of criminology and criminal justice at
Arizona State University, found that civilian courts prosecute sexual
assault cases at a higher rate than the military - 50 percent compared
with 37 percent.
Spohn cautioned that comparing the two sectors is a dicey exercise.
State
and local prosecutors typically only file charges in cases they have a
solid chance of winning. Conversely, the military may be able to secure
at least mild punishment, such as a reduction in rank or loss of pay, in
a weaker case because they have more options to penalize.
The
military leadership's time to solve the crisis on its own has run out,
according to Pentagon critics. A string of episodes in which senior
officers were caught behaving badly is further proof that serious crimes
should be dealt with outside the chain of command, they say.
"There
is a perception out there right now that the military is out of
control," said K. Denise Rucker Krepp, a former Coast Guard officer and
attorney. "You are not going to attract the best and the brightest if
people believe that if you go into the military you are going to be
sexually assaulted."
Mark Russell, a
psychologist and former Navy commander who was stationed in Japan, said
putting commanders in charge of deciding how to proceed with sex abuse
allegations can conflict with the unit's mission.
"The
mission trumps every other aspect of military life, including
sometimes, legal justice and moral standing," wrote Russell, now a
professor at Antioch University in Seattle, in an email. "A climate
emerges, whereby individuals may feel they can act with impunity,
especially in the case ... where it may be `he said, she said,' with
`good workers' often given the benefit of the doubt."
Many
of the Japan cases involved an accuser who said he or she was sexually
abused while too drunk to consent, or even unconscious. That makes it
all the more difficult to determine whether a crime occurred.
"Weakness
is a great fear in the military and something to be avoided," Russell
wrote. "Therefore, women (or men) who go out drinking and are raped are
often viewed as culpable for having been `weak and vulnerable.'"
The
documents analyzed by the AP do not reveal whether certain commanders
had a tendency to punish outside the courts-martial process. Names of
the accusers, the accused and commanders are all deleted - for privacy,
the military said.
When compared with broader
statistics released annually by the Pentagon, the documents suggest that
U.S. military personnel based in Japan are accused of sex crimes at
roughly the same rate as their comrades around the world.
But
bad behavior here by American sailors, Marines, airmen and soldiers can
have intense repercussions in this conservative, insular country, an
important U.S. ally. This is especially true on the island of Okinawa,
home to barely 1 percent of Japan's population but about half of the
roughly 50,000 U.S. forces based in the country.
Sex
crimes against Okinawans have become major news stories, and added fury
to protests against the U.S. military's presence on the island.
But
the documents show that, as it is at U.S. bases everywhere, U.S.
service members who commit sexual assaults are most likely to abuse
their own comrades.
More than three dozen NCIS
case summaries describe investigations that appeared to indicate a sex
crime, but were resolved using lesser charges or simply dropped with
little or no explanation.
Such is the case for
an investigation that began in January 2008 against a Navy doctor who
would go on to sexually abuse women in the military until his clinical
privileges were suspended in 2009.
Airman Tina
Wilson's name is redacted from the report, but she spoke up a day after
she went to the health clinic at Naval Air Facility Atsugi, a U.S. base
southwest of Tokyo, to have a dressing changed following surgery on her
tailbone.
In Wilson's sworn statement to NCIS
and other records, the doctor, Lt. Cmdr. Anthony L. Velasquez, walked
over to look at the wound as a corpsman took care of the dressing. Then
Velasquez announced that the results were in from a staph-infection
test, and that he was going to check Wilson's lymph nodes.
He
checked her neck, then went under her shirt and ran his hands up the
sides of her torso. Then he asked Wilson, whose pants were unzipped
because of the dressing change, to lie on her side. He felt her left hip
bone, then slid his hand down the front of her pants and under her
panties.
Wilson pulled up her pants, and confused and shaken, headed for the door.
"I
saw Dr. Velasquez smile and wink at me on the way out," her sworn
statement reads. "He was by the computer getting hand sanitizer. The
whole exam, he didn't wear gloves."
The NCIS
document summarizing the investigation prompted by Wilson's complaint
shows that three other women subsequently came forward, saying Velasquez
had touched them inappropriately.
Nevertheless,
after 10 months the investigation was closed with no action. According
to the document, Yokosuka Naval Hospital declined to take any action
against the doctor, and the Navy legal services office in Yokosuka
determined the case would not be forwarded to Navy officials in San
Diego who oversee medical operations in Japan.
Finally
in 2010, after accusations from more than two dozen women, the Navy
filed multiple counts of sexual misconduct and other charges against
Velasquez.
Most of the charges were dropped
under a plea deal. Velasquez served a week in the brig, was dismissed
from the Navy, lost his license to practice medicine, and was required
to register as a sex offender.
Retired Rear
Adm. Richard B. Wren, the former commander of Navy forces in Japan who
oversaw Velasquez's court-martial, did not return telephone calls
seeking comment.
Wilson, 27, left the Navy, distraught over how her case had been handled.
The U.S. military has come under fire even when it did not have legal jurisdiction in a sexual assault case.
Catherine
Fisher, an Australian and longtime Japan resident, accused the Japanese
and U.S. governments of "harboring the suspect" after she was raped,
allegedly by an American sailor, in 2002.
Japanese
prosecutors refused to pursue criminal charges for undisclosed reasons,
but in 2004 the Tokyo District Court ruled in a civil case that Fisher
had indeed been sexually assaulted, and awarded her 3 million yen
($30,000) in damages.
By then the accused,
Bloke T. Deans, had left the country. Fisher and her attorneys said the
Navy was aware of the Japanese court case against Deans, but gave him an
honorable discharge and allowed him to leave the country without
informing the court or her.
U.S. military
officials refused to disclose his whereabouts, citing privacy reasons,
she said. A spokesman for U.S. Forces Japan declined comment on Fisher's
case and said the command does not track the whereabouts of former
service members.
Fisher tracked Deans down in
Milwaukee, and sued in Wisconsin Circuit Court in 2012 to claim the
damages awarded in Japan. Last year, she won, but settled for $1 - to
make a point.
Deans denied he assaulted Fisher
but acknowledged in the U.S. settlement "the evidence may prove
otherwise," according to documents provided by his attorney, Alex Flynn.
"Mr. Deans has paid that dollar and the matter is now concluded," Flynn
said.
Not for Fisher, who became an advocate
for rape victims in Japan. "Governments get out there and say, `We are
against rape, and we are doing everything we can,' but in fact they are
not," she said. "And by not allowing rape victims to receive justice,
it's just going on in the same pattern."
After
a long and contentious debate, Congress late last year passed numerous
changes to the military's legal system in an effort to combat the
epidemic of sexual assaults.
The defense
policy bill scaled back but did not eliminate the role senior commanders
play in sexual assault cases. Officers who have the power to convene
courts-martial were stripped of their authority to overturn guilty
verdicts reached by juries, and should they decline to prosecute a case,
a review of the decision must be conducted by the service's civilian
secretary.
The argument for keeping commanders
involved in sexual assault cases received a boost from a panel of
experts, which said last month that there is no evidence that removing
commanders from the process will reduce sex crimes or increase the
reporting of them.
"I don't know how we can
trust our commanders to train our sons and daughters to fight and win
our nation's war and yet not trust them to provide and establish a
command climate that provides each and every soldier a safe working
environment," said retired Gen. Ann Dunwoody, the Army's first female
four-star.
Gillibrand and her supporters argue
that the cultural shift needed to lower the incidence of sexual assault
in the military won't happen if commanders retain their current role in
the legal system.
"Skippers have had this
authority since the days of John Paul Jones and sexual assaults still
occur," said Lory Manning, a retired Navy captain and senior fellow at
the Women in the Military Project. "And this is where we are."
