An Army Specialist stationed at Yongsan, Korea, was under criminal investigation after his wife made an allegation that he assaulted her. The command immediately FLAG’d the Corporal and presumed him guilty until proven innocent. They removed him from his position, suspended his clearance and essentially had him handing out towels at the gym while restricted to post. The investigation was turned over to CID and the case was going nowhere with the Soldier essentially sitting in Korea under IFSTE waiting for some movement on his case.
Tired of waiting around and leaving his fate in the hands of CID and the command, he retained attorney Tim Bilecki to defend him. We quickly learned that the allegations of abuse came the day after our client’s wife found out that he had a side girl in Korea that she didn’t know about. She was obviously upset when she found out he was hooking up with a Korea girl on the weekends when he was “out with the guys.” It turns out she demanded that he leave the Korean girl, or she would “ruin his life.” Fortunately, she put that in a text message, along with some choice other texts, that were never turned over to CID. We were able to obtain those messages and knew we could disprove the false allegations of domestic violence. Later, our client’s spouse signed an affidavit stating that that allegations were false and that she made them because she was upset with her husband for cheating on her.
We were aware that doing so may subject our client to some liability for the Korean girlfriend he had while married. It was a strategic decision, but we turned over the text messages and affidavit and were able to show that the spouse was lying, and the allegations were made up. After doing so, the case was closed out by CID and no court martial charges were preferred. The command handled the extramarital sexual conduct with a negative counseling, removed the FLAG and the Soldier moved on with his career.
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