Army News, opinions, editorials, news from Iraq, photos, reports - Army Times

Navy chaplain faces rape, fraternization charges

NORFOLK, Va. — One sailor said she accepted his support after the death of a shipmate. Another said she accepted his mentorship to apply for a nurse commissioning program. Both young female sailors said their relationship with Lt. Shane R. Dillman quickly led to sex with him in late 2007.

Both appeared in a courtroom Thursday testifying — and at times, crying — about their alleged encounters with the command chaplain of the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson.

Dillman, 35, faces multiple counts of sexual misconduct during an Article 32 hearing that lasted all day and is expected to last through Friday.

Dillman faces five charges with multiple specifications on offenses including rape, harassment, adultery, fraternization, making threats and “calling a female enlisted service member to his office while wearing only his underwear.”

According to the charging documents, Dillman is married. The alleged victims, of which there are at least two, are junior enlisted and female. He’s also charged with possessing “visual images depicting human casualties.”

Although it’s not reflected in his Navy biographical data — or any of the ship’s literature lauding his good works — the alleged victims said Dillman told them he had been to Iraq and taken part in ground combat as a chaplain.

“He talked about war a lot,” one sailor told the court, noting that he’d shown her photos of carnage. “The first picture he opened up was an Iraqi person and his head was gone.”

One said Dillman told her he’d been shot, that he was part of a special operations team and had taken part in secret missions. Because he was a chaplain, she said, he claimed he would not be forced to “testify.”

Both alleged victims are E-3s, and as young sailors, said they had trouble interpreting Dillman’s alleged advances, given his role as a religious leader.

“He started asking me weird questions about my past,” one said. “I trusted him. He was the chaplain.”

He’s also accused of making threats. One of the alleged victims testified that Dillman said he would have the parents of his former lover — also an enlisted female — audited by the IRS. The alleged victim went on to testify that she had a boyfriend at the time, also a sailor, superior in rank.

“He [Dillman] said all he had to do was make one phone call and he could have my boyfriend taken care of,” she told the investigating officer, Cmdr. Stephen Jamrozy.

The charging documents state Dillman allegedly told a witness “...that he was one of the ‘most powerful men on the ship next to the Captain’ and could ‘ruin anyone’s life if he wanted to,’ or words to that effect.”

During cross-examination, high-profile defense attorney Charles Gittins painted the accusers as willing sex partners, keeping in regular cell phone contact after the events they described. As one alleged victim put it, “he forced me to have sex with him.”

The lower-ranking alleged victim said she was having immigration trouble at the time and was worried she would be deported. She said she believed if she remained friendly with Dillman, “He wouldn’t do anything against me.” She just got her U.S. citizenship this summer, she said.

Gittins pounced on differences between one accuser’s statements to investigators and her testimony, getting her to admit she had gone to a movie with Dillman, had dinner with him, had sex with him in a hotel on one occasion and twice in an apartment he allegedly shared with a Navy “judge.”

The allegations date back to September 2005, when Dillman was at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait, and continue up to January of this year. There are also allegations of events in the Wilmington and Jacksonville areas of North Carolina, Hampton Roads, Va., and Bethesda, Md.

Two witnesses are expected to testify via telephone from Iraq on Friday.

Assigned to the Vinson until the end of January, Dillman was recognized in May 2007 for distinguished service by the U.S. Military Chaplains’ Association. He was commissioned in 2000.

The Vinson has been undergoing a refueling complex overhaul at the Newport News Naval Shipyard since 2005.