Bilecki Reconstructs Fort Bliss Encounter and Wins GOMOR Rescission for Reserve Staff Sergeant

Bilecki Reconstructs Fort Bliss Encounter and Wins GOMOR Rescission for Reserve Staff Sergeant

May 2022

Fort Meade, Maryland / Fort Bliss, Texas / El Paso, Texas

Army Reserve Staff Sergeant – E-6

Allegations: General Officer Memorandum of Reprimand for alleged sexual assault of a subordinate while incapable of consenting due to alcohol impairment

Facts

The Army issued our client a GOMOR accusing him of sexually assaulting a subordinate during pre-mobilization training at Fort Bliss. On paper, the packet looked bad. It accused him of using rank and authority to separate a junior Soldier from her teammates, take her to a hotel, and have sex with her while she was too impaired to consent.

But the packet did not tell the full story. It told her story.

By the time Bilecki Law Group was retained, the allegation was already more than two years old. The night in question happened in 2018. The report came in 2020. By then, the evidence that would have mattered most was gone or missing. No strip club video. No hotel video. No preserved text thread showing the full lead-up. No SAFE kit. No immediate report. No recorded CID interview provided with the GOMOR packet.

So we reconstructed the night ourselves.

Our client and the accuser already knew each other. They had a prior sexual relationship. She was texting him from Jaguar's, a strip club near Fort Bliss, and wanted him to come meet her. When he arrived, she was not unconscious. She was not passed out on a couch. She was not some unknown woman being carried out of a bar by a stranger. She was socializing, interacting with people, drinking water, and choosing to leave with a man she already knew and had already been intimate with.

Her friends were initially concerned because they did not understand the relationship. That is not the same as our client using rank to drag a subordinate away from her teammates.

We proved he was not her team leader. He was not her supervisor. He did not have positional authority over her that night. We obtained and used unit timeline evidence showing she was not assigned under him. That directly undercut one of the central claims in the GOMOR.

We also showed what happened after the alleged assault. The accuser did not immediately separate from him and report. She stayed with him. The next morning, they woke up together, showered, went to get her bag, went to Walgreens for Plan B, went to Denny's, ran errands, went to the UPS store, handled nails and a haircut, and then returned to the same hotel room to lie down, talk, cuddle, and make out before checking out.

Those facts were not minor details. They were the case.

The Government packet also leaned on a witness who was not even at Jaguar's that night. He later became the accuser's boyfriend, had been her supervisor, and was living with her when the allegation moved forward. He added details about events he did not personally witness. He also had obvious reasons to dislike our client and protect his own relationship with the accuser.

We exposed that.

We also identified the witnesses CID missed. One of the most important was the accuser's former roommate, a Miami-Dade Police Officer who lived with her during the relevant period and deployed with her afterward. She knew the accuser, knew the relationship history, knew what was said after the night at Jaguar's, and knew the later relationship with the supervisor. CID did not get that statement. We did.

Then we built the packet the Army should have built before issuing a career-ending reprimand.

The rebuttal included a detailed defense memorandum, timeline evidence, financial records from the relevant dates, social media evidence, witness information, and a substantial character packet from senior military leaders, CID personnel, law enforcement professionals, USSOUTHCOM security leaders, and Soldiers who had served with our client for years.

This was not a generic "he is a good Soldier" rebuttal. We went fact by fact. We showed the missing timeline. We showed the false rank-authority theory. We showed the next-day conduct. We showed the credibility problems. We showed the investigative gaps. We showed the command that the packet looked one way because the Army had only surfaced one side of the story.

After reviewing the rebuttal, the Commanding General rescinded the GOMOR.

He then personally called our office to thank us for the work we did, for exonerating his Soldier, and for the work we do for Soldiers facing allegations like this.

That does not happen often.

It happened here because the facts were there. They just had to be found, organized, and put in front of the decision-maker in a way that could not be ignored.

Result: GOMOR rescinded. Commanding General personally called Bilecki Law Group to thank the firm for exonerating the Soldier.

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FAQ

Q: How did Bilecki reconstruct events after several years?
We used the surviving timeline, financial and social-media records, and witness accounts. The defense also obtained a statement from the accuser’s former roommate, a Miami-Dade Police Officer whom CID had not interviewed. That work allowed us to address the allegation with more than the account presented in the GOMOR packet.

Q: Why did the assignment evidence matter?
The GOMOR specifically alleged misuse of supervisory authority. The unit timeline showed that our client was not the complainant’s team leader or supervisor that night. Bilecki used that evidence to challenge the particular authority relationship alleged, alongside the witnesses and the full sequence of events.

Q: What happened after the rebuttal?
The Commanding General rescinded the GOMOR and personally called our office to thank us for the work and for exonerating the Soldier.