Officials with Army Criminal Investigation Command agreed with most of the findings in a Pentagon report that outlined faults in CID's investigation of a sexual assault claim lodged by a civilian against an Army Reserve member.
But they disagreed with the only recommendation that may affect the outcome of the case itself: Whether the matter should be reopened in light of what the Nov. 10 report
calls "significant deficiencies" in CID's tactics.
The Defense Department Inspector General's Office report includes few details on the case. It names neither the alleged victim nor the accused and no time frame for the incident is provided, though the soldier was honorably discharged in August 2014, the report states. The soldier's rank is not provided, though the charge of conduct unbecoming an officer is referenced.
Among the deficiencies pointed out by the report:
- The CID agent who interviewed the alleged victim "did not thoroughly probe the potential factors that could have affected the victim's ability or inability to resist or what may have caused her to not physically or verbally resist the subject from starting and completing the alleged sexual assault." The report brought up tonic immobility, a type of muscular paralysis that causes an individual to freeze in response to trauma.
- The agent had not completed the Army's Special Victim Unit Investigation Course and was not supervised by an agent who had, a setup that violated CID requirements.
- Agents did not interview individuals with whom the victim discussed the incident.
- Agents did not "report the nonsexual assault offensives of adultery and conduct unbecoming an officer to the commander for appropriate action, as required by policy."
- The agent who interviewed the alleged victim was "derisive and dismissive," a claim backed up by a CID investigation into the matter, at the behest of the IG, which that stated the individual "did not display the professionalism expected of a CID agent."
- Agents did not update the victim on the investigation's status, skipping the required monthly updates over the last three months of the case and not telling the victim the results of the investigation before closing it.
DoD IG officials also found CID did not follow procedure and brief the first colonel in the accused individual's command chain regarding the investigation. Agents did inform a general officer and the unit's staff judge advocate of the matter, according to a response to the report from CID commander Maj. Gen. Mark Inch.
That response agreed with the report's recommendations to address many of the concerns brought forward and to ensure proper agent training and supervision. However, Inch did not endorse the recommendation to restart the investigation "and undertake corrective action to properly and thoroughly investigate the victim's complaint."
Lacking 'elements of proof'
The case should stay shut, Inch said in his response, because a civilian law enforcement agency in Virginia, as well as three attorneys who reviewed the CID investigation, all said "the events as described by the complainant did not meet the elements of proof for an offense" either under the Uniform Code of Military Justice or state law.
Grey also cited a March DoD IG report that looked at 181 randomly selected CID sexual assault cases from 2013 and found only two with "significant deficiencies."
DoD investigators said in the report that Inch's response did not "address the specifics of our recommendation" and that "[t]he fact that two separate law enforcement agencies came to a similar conclusion based on a less than full investigation is not dispositive."
The IG report came about in response to a January request from Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., on behalf of the alleged victim, a constituent who'd reached out to his office for assistance. Warner contacted CID and received information that contradicted the victim's account of the investigation, leading to DoD IG's involvement, the report says.
"The report validated many of the concerns this constituent raised to Senator Warner," Rachel Cohen, a spokesman for the senator, said in an email. "While we appreciate that CID has concurred with some of the IG's recommendations, we intend to follow up with the IG, the Army and CID to find out what actions they intend to take to address the findings."
Requests made via Warner's office to speak to the constituent were not successful.
Kevin Lilley is the features editor of Military Times.
