U.S. Army general charged with sex crimes
This undated photo provided by the U.S. Army shows Brig. Gen. Jeffrey A. Sinclair. / AP Photo/U.S. Army
(AP) FORT BRAGG, N.C. - An Army brigadier general who served five combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan has been charged with forcible sodomy, multiple counts of adultery and having inappropriate relationships with several female subordinates, two U.S. defense officials said Wednesday.
The defense officials spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to provide details on the case.
Brig. Gen. Jeffrey A. Sinclair faces possible courts martial on charges that include forced sex, wrongful sexual conduct, violating an order, possessing pornography and alcohol while deployed, and misusing a government travel charge card and filing fraudulent claims.
Sinclair, who served as deputy commander in charge of logistics and support for the 82nd Airborne Division in Afghanistan, was sent home in May because of the allegations, the officials said.
The charges were announced at a brief press conference Wednesday at Fort Bragg, the sprawling U.S. Army base in North Carolina that is home to the 82nd Airborne. After reading a prepared statement, base spokesman Col. Kevin Arata refused to take any questions. Reporters were told all questions would have to be made in writing and that no response was likely to come until the following day.
Sinclair was informed of the charges on Monday but has not been placed under arrest. The next step will be an Article 32 investigation, including a preliminary hearing to determine if the matter should go to trial. No date has been set for the hearing, which Arata said would be open to the public.
Sinclair had arrived in Afghanistan for his deployment in September 2011, but had been serving as the division's deputy commander since July 2010.
Sinclair, a trained paratrooper who has been in the Army for 27 years, was serving his third deployment to Afghanistan. He had also served two tours in Iraq, as well as a tour in the first Gulf war.
It's rare for an Army general to face court martial. There have been only two cases in recent years.
Earlier this year, Army Brig. Gen. Roger Duff pleaded guilty to charges of conduct unbecoming an officer, wearing unauthorized awards or ribbons and making a false official statement. He was sentenced to two months confinement and dismissal from the military. Under a pre-trial agreement, only the dismissal may be imposed. The case is still pending, said Army spokesman George Wright.
Prior to that, Maj. Gen. David Hale pleaded guilty to seven counts of conduct unbecoming an officer and one count of making a false statement, also in connection with adultery. He was fined $10,000 and was ordered to retire at the reduced rank of brigadier general, Wright said.
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Based on the kind of decisions you made, I have no idea how you even made it through basic training. You state the general started buying drink(S)...as in plural? Maybe you should have STOPPED going to the bar.
After a few week(s) he invited you to his house...invite as in ask you to come...and you WENT?
The bar owner IGNORED the rules of the military(?).....Sounds like you had some knowledge of what they were in the first place.
You know if I had the time, I could go on. I will end it by saying that women like you who seek out the opportunities using means other than hard work and sacrifice like the majority of honorable military women, make it extremely difficult for women who have genuine complaints to be taken seriously.
You have no one to blame other than yourself. Your life is what it is because it is what you have made it. You sought to exploit but fell victim to your own exploitation.
Further, most people will NOT believe you, because you had many options available to you. You deliberately chose not to exercise them for your own personal gain.
If you want to be successful in any career, military or not, practice integrity, learn self-discipline and which requires various degrees of personal-restraint.
Free this General Officer and have him medically examined. When you do, evaluate him and try and determine, on behalf of all of our active duty military personnel, the impact that prolonged exposure to combat has on an individual. This answer is critical because it affects thousands of our soldiers after they return home.
When my spouse was on active duty, over a period of 30 years, it was not the usual practice to send soldiers to the battlefield over and over again. Unfortunately, due to personnel shortages and desperate needs coupled with multiple wars, many men and their families fell victim to prolonged exposure to combat.
Many reading about this General, will rant and rave about the alledged crimes. Few will focus on his service, the sacrifices he and his family has made, and the real fact that some of our best soldiers have been known to return home and actually commit suicide.
Most of us have never set foot on a battlefield. The closest we have ever been is 4-6ft from our TVs and that was with remote control in-hand. We can't begin to speak about the horrors, personal fears, and stress of being held accountable for the lives of many you feel are your own sons and daughters or worse, actually losing them to death. This has to be a God awful experience, if there is such a word, but most give little or no consideration to that.
In my previous experiences as an army wife, when the spouses were simply away for a month conducting field exercises, we had to conduct sessions informing us how to have a smoothe return from the field transition. Clearly, this is a far cry from a battle field, but this does suggest that the battle field experience must come, certainly, with more baggage that can't readily be dismissed.
I am not suggesting in any way, that the victims are to be dismissed, but I am suggesting that the totality of the circumstances be given the utmost analysis because we have thousands of soldiers struggling everyday with post traumatic stress syndrome.
Posters, stop hurling stones at this man and realize that he is one of thousands. If he gets help, thousands of other soldiers as well as their family members, especially children, will be helped as well.
Many of you didn't even serve. Is it too much to ask for you to reserve your harsh judgement and criticism?
if the top of the hierarchy has such conduct, what about the subordinates ? this also explain why sexual abuse is silent in other military institutions.
"au revoir"
How many of his men did he see get blown up in front of his eyes?
How many men did he see lying in pools of blood suffering unbearable pain because no relief was on hand or there was nothing that could be done for them?
How many innocent women and children, irrespective of their nationalities, did he see blown up by the enemy?
Could combat have changed this man's psyche? Could the very mindset required for him to be able to kill and order other men to kill, have resulted in a callousness that we can't relate to? Who knows?
I don't think the majority of posters here know either. Many, myself included, have never had to survive on a battlefield where real men are being blown to bits.
In consideration of the good that this man has done, and in consideration of his service to his nation, he deserves no less than a fair trial, and until such a trial, be deemed innocent until proven guilty. Some of the posting here is reflective of the mentality of a mob, and I find it despicable.
He may have seen many be blown up, but bottom line, he and they should not have been there in the first place.
It is likely that he saw more people killed and otherwise grievously harmed by his own units than by the enemy.
No, one has to have a certain sociopathic nature to willingly go into combat for no real reason. He was calloused before he joined the military.
He also did not have to survive, before Bush issued the edict nullifying it, soldiers were not required to follow illegal orders, Bush changed that law because he knew his orders were in fact illegal.
Sure he deserves a fair trial, but it should be fair on both sides, considering the possibility that he may be guilty on an equal basis as the possibility that he may be innocent, though I confess to having doubts, given the number of complaints.
What good has the man done? I don't see genocide for the purpose of greed as anything good, nor do I see those who order, aid in, or commit such crimes as having done any good, and I find those who suggest that it somehow is good to be despicable.
You cannot convict a man based on your opinions, likes, dislikes, or hypotheticals. You continue to speak with conviction as if you know all of the facts and all of the circumstances.
What is it about "Innocent Until Proven Guilty," that you continue to find so difficult to understand??
You obviously seem to have some intelligence, but apparently not enough to understand how the United States Judicial Process works.
This man, and any man, accused of a crime is entitled to a TRIAL,
not by your opinions, likes or dislikes. Can you try and comprehend that?
As eloquently as you may state the most brutal of crimes allegedly committed by this man as may have been expressed by dozens, this man is still innocent until proven guilty.
You, apparently, have lost sight of this critical fact which serves as the basic foundation of the American System of Justice.
For me, being a soldier in an episode of genocide does not qualify anyone to be spoken of as a hero, even less so when the genocide is based on the lies and greed of those who sent the soldier to do their bidding.
Such people who reply "He is a hero" bring to mind the funerals of slave owners. To his friends and family he may have been considered a pillar of the community and a loving family man, but the reality as far as the slave victims were concerned, he could not leave this world soon enough.
I can just imagine you when OJ was on trial.
Nor does a hero commit acts of genocide.
Your assessment of him being such a hero is also based on hearsay, you have no idea of what he did that was so heroic that it nullifies several complaints of rape.
Apparently you are not aware that more than one adult made such complaints, nor are you aware that the article 32 would not be begun if the people complaining were shown to be untrustworthy.
As the Geneva convention, and several other conventions we signed onto establish, carrying out orders to commit genocide based on known lies does not qualify anyone for hero status, in fact it qualifies them to be sanctioned for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Your boy going "silently to the cross" is also hearsay, based on conflicting accounts written 100 years after the alleged person was executed.
If such a person existed, he was no different from all those who underwent the prescribed capital punishment of the day.
Whose side am I on? My own, and certainly not the side of such as you ilk, who apparently feels that rape is OK if done by a commanding officer.