Navy Times: A top Navy recruiter touched a colleague’s breast without her consent. He wasn’t charged.

9/1/2021

Geoff Ziezulewicz, A top Navy recruiter touched a colleague’s breast without her consent. He wasn’t charged, Navy Times:

"Not charging such a case is “an absolute knife in the back to good order and discipline,” said Don Christensen, a retired Air Force colonel and one-time chief prosecutor for the service who now leads Protect Our Defenders, a nonprofit that advocates for change in how the military handles sexual assault.

“The more senior you are, the higher standards you are held to,” Christensen told Navy Times after reviewing the NCIS investigation. “If you have a crisis of sexual assault and sexual harassment in your institution, and you have someone of a senior rank committing sexual harassment and assault and you have the evidence to prove that … that’s a pretty easy call.”

“It fuels the belief that is too often a reality, that there are different punishments for junior enlisted,” he said."

Lone Bear

9/1/2021 03:46:31 pm

That's an appropriate outcome and the Command took it seriously, a court-martial would have been insane in that case.

Concerned Citizen

9/1/2021 05:28:08 pm

The idea that that guy needs to be a registered sex offender for that is just cruel. Also, don't know the Navy, but that isn't a court-martial for an enlisted Soldier in the Army, so not sure where the "senior-leaders are treated differently" meme is coming from here. Article 15 and separation seems about right.

9/1/2021 06:08:25 pm

According to the article, He was reduced a grade for retirement, equivalent of a substantial fine, probably cost him 100,000 or more.

9/1/2021 08:33:56 pm

Seems appropriate, was thinking of what would happen to a more junior person.

Anonymous

9/1/2021 11:16:32 pm

This happens it’s called abusive sexual contact and they are required to register as a SO. Sick, sad, cruel and unjust.

Philip D. Cave link

9/7/2021 06:17:51 am

Registration is unlikely in this situation. The various State laws, as well as federal require a qualifying CONVICTION. No court-martial, no conviction.

Isaac Kennen

9/2/2021 12:31:57 pm

There was always the opportunity to seek federal convictions at a trial by court-martial for assault consummated by a battery and maltreatment.

It is not as if the only option available to the government was to pursue conviction of an offense requiring registration as a sex offender.

To allow him to walk away with no criminal record at all after such an intentional offense is inappropriate.

If he were a civilian, he’d have a record now. Probably a misdemeanor conviction, but a conviction nonetheless. There’s no reason to spare him that consequence, which every other citizen would have suffered, merely because he committed his offense on a federal installation.

Nathan Freeburg

9/2/2021 01:13:42 pm

Or he would have been acquitted. The defense gets a vote too.

9/2/2021 05:19:17 pm

Concur in that sentiment, with one caveat… it’s always seemed to me that prosecutors and defense counsel often overestimate the value of their input to the folks in the courtroom who actually have a vote as to guilt or innocence: the jurors/court-martial members or judges in judge-alone cases.

There’s not likely much a defense counsel is going to be able to do in a case like this, where there is an assault/battery allegation supported by a senior-ranking third-party eyewitness who knows both the accused and the victim and can attest to the non-consensual nature of the contact.

9/2/2021 07:10:44 pm

I see a pretty straightforward defense.

Brenner

9/2/2021 07:14:19 pm

Surely Zeke is not suggesting that witness credibility fluctuates based on military rank …

Tami a/k/a Princess Leia

9/2/2021 07:28:28 pm

In the civilian sector, he probably would've gotten a deferred adjudication. Or an acquittal or hung jury, because there would probably be someone on the jury thinking the whole thing was blown out of proportion.

"Yellow-light" and “stupidly inappropriate but benign” is appropriately handled the way it was.

9/2/2021 07:33:40 pm

Agree with Tami, might not be able to prove offensive touching.

9/2/2021 07:29:16 pm

There is no civilian court in the country that would prosecute on these facts. There was more accountability in this case than the victim would have gotten in any other system. There is no crime of maltreatmement in other jurisdictions.

9/2/2021 09:06:35 pm

Well, there was this case;

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/air-forces-sexual-assault-prevention-officer-charged-sexual/story?id=19120383

He was acquitted by a civilian jury of course (who saw it as blown out of proportion).

9/2/2021 10:42:46 pm

Yep, during a time when people thought the civilian sector handled "sexual assault" way better than the military.

9/2/2021 11:31:38 pm

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/jeffrey-krusinski-air-force-colonel-accused-of-assault-goes-on-trial-in-arlington/2013/11/13/04aa0dfa-4c9f-11e3-ac54-aa84301ced81_story.html

Donald G Rehkopf, Jr.

9/3/2021 11:01:37 am

Interesting and timely study: "Inside the Black Box of Prosecutor Discretion,"

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3893820

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Navy Times: A top Navy recruiter touched a colleague’s breast without her consent. He wasn’t charged.

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