Former IG NCO of the Year faces arraignment
Justice
Back in 2019, Master Sergeant Christopher Dehn became the NCO of the Year for I Corps’ Inspector General Corps. What a difference a few years make:
Master Sgt. Christopher Dehn, 37, is set to be arraigned June 5 at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state on four counts of sexual assault, two counts of sexual harassment, and other charges related to obstructing justice and failure to obey orders and regulations.
IG offices are spread throughout the federal government and are broadly intended to help detect fraud, waste and abuse and legal violations, and to help promote bureaucratic efficiency.
They do not generally handle allegations of unwanted sexual contact, a job that falls to the military’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response offices and law enforcement. However, there are certain exceptions under which an IG office may investigate sexual assault or harassment.
MSG Dehn seems to have in-depth knowledge of sexual harassment.
His page also notes that he formerly served as an Army Sexual Harassment/Assault Response and Prevention, or SHARP, victim’s advocate for the 1st Infantry Division between 2012 and 2014, while stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas.
Seems to have passed all of the classes teaching him how, hmm?
In an email to Military.com, the I Corps public affairs office noted that Dehn is a chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear specialist with I Corps; has been stationed at Joint Base Lewis-McChord since January 2018; and has served for almost 20 years.
According to the statement, his personal awards include two Meritorious Service Medals, six Army Commendation Medals, 11 Army Achievement Medals, 13 Certificates of Achievement and one Meritorious Unit Commendation.
Upon receiving the 2019 I Corps inspector general NCO of the year award, Dehn noted that the essay component of the competition was a key part of being selected as the winner.
“The point of my essay was to show the importance of the inspector general and how they can improve readiness throughout the corps,” Dehn said at the time. “My piece is looking out for soldiers.” Military.com
Think I have found the problem…looking OUT for soldiers, not looking UP them (apologies to Woody Allen).
Not sure he’s gonna finish that 20. Sarcasm aside, sure hope this turns out OK if he’s innocent. If not…well, Kansas is nice this time of year, especially at Leavenworth.
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Kansas may be nice this time of year…..but wait until full on summer! Heat and humidity combined, oh my!
And then there’s winter. The cold and humidity will bite through every layer of clothing, sweaters, and coats that you can put on.
My reserve unit went to Riley for summer camp one year. Before we even finished offloading at the railhead , the battalion had something like 20+ heat casualties. Nothing fatal, but most all of them chilled in a barracks while the rest of us went to the field. I did two winters at Carson, and all the tails I heard about Rileys winters make me glad I was at Carson.
This old Sergeant Major had a trusty rule he judged Sr NCOs for his watch list–any Sr NCO with more than 4 or 5 AAMs is suspect.
I was almost always right.
Indeed, when I stumbled into being a E6 I already had 5-6 ARCOMs, about half were PCS awards going all the way back to when I was a PFC, and 3 AAMs, and after I had made my E5 I pretty much understood I should never receive another AAM unless I pissed off someone and they gave me a AAM as a fuck you PCS award.
Also, I realize sometimes as part of career progression you have to do some odd ball non MOS job for a year or two, but some of the senior NCOs I met who had, at some point just slid on over to SHARP/EO/IG/retention and just sort of stayed there, in their tiny out of the way office in the brigade/DIV HQ building keeping bankers hours, they all made my spider sense tingle.
Always trust your gut I guess.
Spot on, in my opinion and experience. I got a whopping three AAMs: one as a PV2 (awarded just after I pinned PFC) for JRTC, one as a SPC for getting an HHC Arms Room in order, and one as a PCS award when I left recruiting (at my request–well deserved given my lack of contracts). Well, I was presented a fourth AAM for planning and coordinating a training event for PEO Soldier, but never received a certificate or DA638. ARCOMs were my PCS/EOT awards until my final few years in, when I got a couple for impact awards.
There are plenty of NCOs who end up getting dwell time in non-MOS specific jobs, and I agree that they can be questionable. I was a Brigade Victim Advocate for a year or so. It was supposed to be a full-time position according to the 2012 NDAA, but I was very much still an S3 lackey and working multiple other jobs, so no 9-5 reporting directly to the COL for me. SHARP, EO, and IG are the three jobs that I question anyone who spends more than a single assignment in. All report to higher commanders and have little oversight, and there’s a certain type that seeks to move from, say, VA SARC to EOA to IG, as opposed to doing a year to two in one or the other and going back to their Soldiers. Retention is a bit of a different beast, as those are MOS-qualified (79S) NCOs who may seem to have a similar role at BDE/DIV as their temporary duty (SHARP/EO/IG) counterparts, but who are doing a job they’ve been permanently assigned to do.
An HHC arms room? I had a hard enough time getting a Infantry line company arms in order for III Corp physical security to come down and do an inspection, that I might add only dinged me on two minors, no copy of the last Corp inspection, and the telephone response sheet in the key can was out of date, but we had the pin pad entry for the arms room, so I never even looked at that. The previous two armorers had left the arms room a mess, with one going AWOL because of his wife, and the next one going to jail for violating a BS restraining order from his wife. I had that place running tight till my ETS. My replacement got turned in to the chain of command by his wife for stealing SARP and selling it. Huh….I see a pattern.
I got the “joy” of being company armorer more times than I care to admit. That first HHC was for a battalion that had deployed to Afghanistan in 2002 and Iraq in 2003. The 92Y running it had inherited a crap show himself and was ETS’ing, so he didn’t care. We had battlefield damaged PVS-7s on the books, M16s from division, M4s on loan to brigade, an M4 with CID (self-deletion), and all sorts of other fun things to account for during monthly inventories.
When my company in TOG found itself without any armorers the following week, I was given that job. Alpha company at least had a lot of cool historical weapons and a nice quiet area with a beer fridge, so I convinced my leadership to keep me as collateral duty NCOIC until I PCS’ed, having unaccompanied access even as a Squad Leader.
My brief stint in 3-15 was the only time I avoided an Arms Room… they made me CBRN Defense NCO instead and I got a cage. When I went back to brigade, I ended up being alternate for brigade HHC.
Even on the Trail, my reputation for passing inspections and knowing what I was doing preceded me, and I doubled as Senior Drill and Armorer.
He said/she said…or is he going from “NCO of The Year” to “Dumbass of The Year”? Making gravel out of boulders will keep one warm during those Kansas winters, so there is that.
Will this allegation jeopardize that pending job offer from All Points Logistics?
In this day and age, I must ask if he’s a clever sh*tbag or just pissed someone worse off.
The “have dirt on your boss to get ahead” sh*ttiness out there can make for cynicism.
I wouldn’t deign to say Dehn feigned his compassion for the troops. Maybe he mistook compassion for passion. I also won’t hold his picture against him, despite his Bundy-esque jawline.
Time and again, I saw young NCOs fall victim to their own success and feelings of infallibility. This guy was a SFC before he was 32, a Corps level NCO of the Year, and an MSG well before he hit 20 years. Given his MOS (CBRN) and his mixed accolades (two MSMs to be expected of a MSG, one was probably for winning the board, the other for PCS; ARCOMs likely PCS and EOT; combined 24 AAMs and COA for who knows what the hell over less than 20 years; MUC denoting he probably deployed once since those are handouts in today’s Army), he was a fast-tracking fool using multiple definitions.
Ideally, he’ll have his day in court and the charges will be found to be unsubstantiated. Something tells me he learned all the wrong things from his SHARP and IG assignments and became a bit too friendly with Joe or Jane (gotta be open minded these days).
Well, at least it looks like he was honest enough to only wear a marksman rifle badge instead of expert.
My first 1SG made SGM in 16 years and, after seeking sex for assistance from female junior enlisted in Korea (who got together and turned him in) as CSM, he twiddled his thumbs at various “administrative assitistant” duties relieved folk do at Ft Hood until 20 and retirement.
My BN commander (3/7 inf) during the invasion of Iraq was relieved under a cloud. I got sent back ahead of everyone else after stop loss was lifted and ran into him while out processing. He told me he was PCSing to the Pentagon. No doubt to a windowless office to count days till his retirement.
And, there’s this… LTC Steele (the CPT Steele of Black Hawk Down fame).
In Iraq, his Bde CDR underwrote some lying one of his Bn CDRs did, so the Bde CDR and all the Bn CDRs (to include LTC Steele, who didn’t do or know about sh*t). He got sent back to FORSCOM to do such a thumb-twiddling job until 20.
His cubby was lousy with trash and half-eaten food. He didn’t give a f*ck and probably burned every Army thing he had once he got DD Form 214. Man was seriously unhappy with the Army. Don’t blame him. He put up with “This is my safety!” for years and then he got shafted for sh*t he didn’t even do.
I knew better than to ask him to autograph a copy of Black Hawk Down there, but that was just wrong.
He was COL Steele when I left the Rakkasans in ’04, before he got in trouble in Iraq. Obviously, we grunts knew of him before he arrived, and he was a big dude who played up the “don’t stand behind me” vibe. The most I can say about him is that he supposedly got reprimanded after a brigade run turned pit match. He was on profile, so the BDE XO led the run at a 7 min/mi. pace, after which the CSM started smoking the dogpiss out of us. Then we got broken down by platoon to face off against other elements. As HHC Armorer, I jumped in with the 3/187 Scouts to go against our Direct Support counterparts. We got all of them to submit or tossed them out of the circle, winning our little slice of the tournament before going home for the weekend.
The reprimand was supposedly due to injuries sustained during the BDE wide pit patches. We tend to get a bit aggressive, and the Rakkasan 11Bs weren’t going to lose against a bunch of support troops.
Da phuq? Seriously, I need to read Wikipedia more often:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Steele
That sh*t I heard was at a school, from a class, after he’d retired. (He was upstairs from us in G3/5/7 at McPherson and his box of f*cks to give was definitely empty.) We got told, with published readings and everything, that a Bn CDR covered for his guys throwing an Iraqi dude w/ an attitude in a river to hassle him (sh*t went bad, guy drowned) and the Bde CDR bought off on it; i.e., don’t do sh*t like that because professional ethics and it turns locals in a COIN fight against us, etc. Then-LTC Steele was one of the other two Bn CDRs under that Bde CDR and– at least, as we were told– everybody got relieved. Could be intentional BS, but probably the folk who wrote the materials and developed the course did it after he’d been reprimanded and put out to pasture at FORSCOM for his actions in Iraq anyway so they just ran stuff together and left it at that.
Go figure.
I left in August 2004, when he was the 3/101 CDR. The Wikipedia entry shows that he was allowed to finish his BDE command but essentially ended his career after the reprimand.
Incidentally, while looking for primary sources on COL Steele’s issues, I found this: Fort Moore gate renaming honors Iraq War hero (yahoo.com). SFC Alwyn Cashe was someone Jonn really wanted to see receive his well-deserved MOH. Unfortunately, Jonn passed before the honor was finally bestowed.
I spent many a night on Staff Duty in 2/54 looking at the plaque containing the names of fallen Drill Sergeants from the battalion. SFC Cashe was among them. He was also a fellow 15th Infantry Soldier (he was 1-15 IN, I spent under a year in 3-15 IN). I drove through that gate countless times over two years and can’t think of a better hero to name it after. “Can Do”,
“I will cast my shoe over it”.
Glad to hear Cashe got the MoH, sorry that it was posthumous and 15 years later.
Disappointed Steele didn’t end up at FORSCOM for better. I’d always figured he’d been a hard-charging d*ckhead who meant well as a young CPT, but got his ass handed to him in Somalia and due to the notoriety (“This is my safety!” [wiggle finger]) never got to live it down. Now, I know he’s just a d*ckhead. Re-do the ‘Nam bodycount business w/o a reporting reason to do so even though the historical lesson in COIN fight is that straight killing people as a measure of success is morally doo-doo, and then not man-up to say for what reason one felt that appropriate at the time with subordinates’ asses on the line for doing it… d*ckhead.