In a case that truly exemplifies how far the Army has gone in its war against sexual assault, an outstanding Army Staff Sergeant was accused of abusive sexual contact after chewed out a junior enlisted Soldier for falling out on a ruck march. This Soldier had continuous disciplinary problems, a bad attitude and was not putting forth much effort in Physical Training (PT). After an old-school counseling session during PT, the Staff Sergeant slapped the Soldier’s butt and told him to get back to the ruck march and put in some effort. With his feelings hurt, the Soldier made a patently false allegation of abuse of sexual contact for the butt slap.
It is almost mind-boggling how the slap on the butt during a ruck march to motivate a Soldier could possibly have some sexual intent. But that didn’t stop the Army CID, nor did it stop the JAG prosecution team. That one incident caused the Staff Sergeant to be FLAG’d and placed under a full criminal investigation for Article 120, UCMJ.
Military sexual assault defense attorney Tim Bilecki was quickly retained and investigated the case. It became obvious that this was not only a false accusation made by a disgruntled Soldier but also there was not an iota of sexual intent in our client’s actions. Yet because this was a SHARP Case, even after the full investigation, the command felt they needed to take “some action.” The case was taken to Article 15and the command expected our client to just roll over and take it. We continued to fight this injustice at Article 15, and ultimately, our client was found not guilty of any of the bogus sexual assault allegations.
This is certainly not the first or the only case where we have seen completely bogus allegations of sexual assault even taken to court or result in some other form of adverse administrative action. This could have potentially been career-ending for an otherwise outstanding NCO. You must take any obligation of SHARP, no matter how ridiculous it may seem, seriously.
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