An Army general said to be the highest ranking officer ever to be court-martialed plead guilty on Thursday to having inappropriate relationships with several junior female officers, thereby avoiding charges of sexual assault.
United States Army Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sinclair was docked $20,000 in pay but avoided jail time for carrying on a three-year relationship with one captain and having "inappropriate" relationships with two other junior female officers.
Prosecutors didn't ask to send Sinclair to jail (the maximum amount of time he faced was more than 20 years). Instead, they argued he should be thrown out of the Army, which would negate his retirement benefits. But that didn't happen either, once the defense argued that a lack of retirement benefits would negatively impact his family.
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Sinclair also pled guilty to adultery, which is a crime in the military, as well as using a government credit card to finance trips to see his supposed mistress. The judge also ordered him to pay back $4,157 in travel fees.
The general, a former deputy commander of the legendary 82nd Airborne Division, was accused of threatening lower-ranking women, and the captain accused him of forcing her to perform oral sex twice during the three-year affair.
During her testimony on March 7, the captain also alleged that the general threatened to kill her and her family.
She was scheduled to testify again on March 10, but Judge Col. James Pohl sent the jury home after a trove of unearthed emails pointed to Pentagon interference in the case. Some of those emails showed that a high-ranking Pentagon official felt the captain had credibility issues.
The case closed not long after sexual assault in the military had gained attention in the civilian world. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) tried to get a bill passed earlier in March that would have put civilians in charge of whether or not to prosecute military cases of sexual assault, but the legislation didn't get the 60 votes it needed to continue.
A subsequent bill that would prevent soldiers from submitting evidence of good character as a way to lower sentences in sexual assault cases unanimously passed the Senate and will be sent to the House.
Both the bills and Sinclair's case follow a 2013 Pentagon report that estimated around 26,000 episodes of sexual assault and unwanted sexual contact occurred in the military during 2012. It also mentioned that only 10% of those incidents were reported.
Sinclair, whose wife did not attend the trial, plans to retire from the Army.
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