It Never Really Goes Away
From Stars and Stripes:
USS Ronald Reagan sailor gets two-year sentence after assaulting fellow sailor, strangling civilian
By CAITLIN DOORNBOS | STARS AND STRIPESPublished: November 16, 2018
YOKOSUKA NAVAL BASE, Japan — A USS Ronald Reagan aviation ordnanceman has been sentenced to two years in prison after being accused of sexually assaulting a fellow sailor, lying to Naval Criminal Investigative Services and strangling a civilian woman.
Petty Officer 3rd Class Steven Garcia, 27, pleaded guilty Wednesday to assault consummated by battery, making a false official statement and aggravated assault. He was originally charged with two counts of abusive sexual contact causing bodily harm but pleaded down to the assault charges in a pre-trial agreement with prosecutors.
The first assault happened Oct. 22, 2017, during a Ronald Reagan port visit in Busan, South Korea, Garcia admitted in court Wednesday. After a night of drinking with friends, Garcia’s first victim said she lost consciousness and woke up in her hotel room to Garcia forcefully penetrating her with his hand and mouth, causing her pain.
The remainder of the story, including his assault on a civilian woman and strangling her, is at this link. https://www.stripes.com/news/pacific/uss-ronald-reagan-sailor-gets-two-year-sentence-after-assaulting-fellow-sailor-strangling-civilian-1.556838
He does not have to register as a sex offender yet, but a BCD is on his plate. He gets to explain to future employers why he spent two years in jail instead of leaving the Navy with a clean plate. I doubt that this is the first or last time he’s done something like this, because he lied to the NCIS people when the assault on the first victim was reported.
This article https://www.stripes.com/new-military-sexual-assault-report-finds-highest-risks-on-navy-ships-certain-larger-bases-1.548654 addresses a Rand Corporation study that found sexual assault is a higher risk on ships than on land, and that some bases pose a higher risk than others, but there is no explanation for that.
From the article: [Each servicemember’s estimated risk of being sexually assaulted during the one-year period of study depended in large part on their assignment to a particular unit, command and installation.
“In one military service, for instance, women could see their risk doubled or halved, depending on the installation or ship to which they are assigned,” the report found.
The study found in the Army, Fort Hood in Texas had the most estimated incidents of sexual assault: 885, with 473 male victims and 412 female victims. Fort Bragg, N.C., had the second-most: 837, with 476 male and 361 female victims.]
What is plain is that more men were on the receiving end of sexual assaults than women. Perhaps the women were more aware and more cautious than the men who were assaulted. It seems to show that things haven’t actually changed in the last 60 years, but have essentially stayed the same. It does not mean that the military employs more sexual predators than civilian companies. It simply means that, because this is a closed environment in all services, the assaults are more likely to be reported than in a civilian environment.
It does not have anything to do with putting women on ships. It has everything to do with people who are predatory in nature looking for victims in a closed environment.
This summary of statistics on sexual violence https://endsexualviolencect.org/resources/get-the-facts/national-stats/ includes an unfortunate and simple fact: Victims of rape and attempted rape who did not report to the police did not report for a number of reasons. 43% of victims did not report because they thought that nothing could be done, 27% thought it was a private matter, 12% were afraid of the police response, and 12% felt it was not important enough to report.
At the same time, 2% of sexual assaults reported to police are false.
Telling people gross jokes and hitting on people at work in the civilian world is something should, and frequently will, get the joker fired. It means that Harvey Weinstein could only get away with being a predator as long as women were willing to put up with his crap.
However, we all have seen people of both genders using sex as a way to get to the top of the ‘look at me’ pile, e.g., Petraeus’s biographer a few years ago.
The loss of good manners and common sense in the general population seems to be on the rise. Bad manners and ‘look at me!’ behavior is taking precedence.
If there is a solution, it’s emphasizing awareness, especially in children, and that should always be ongoing.
Category: "Your Tax Dollars At Work"
I used to present a seminar abut “The effects of alcohol on your body” targeting colleges and military installations. The goal was to educate about different adult beverages, their proofs, how much alcohol the body processes in an hour and small things like sparkling wine passes alcohol into the blood stream through the stomach wall quicker than still wine. The presentation was designed more for woman, particularly those not familiar with booze. I covered binge drinking and mentioned how that or getting incapacitated could lead to making poor choices and contracting HIV or another disease or even an unwanted pregnancy. One 19th Medical Group nurse captain shot down the seminar for Little Rock AFB because she did not agree binge drinking could lead to contracting HIV, etc. I could not say, “Well lady, you get drunk, pass out and get fucked by some stranger without your consent, what can go wrong there. That leads to the sailor this slug had in the hotel room. Alcohol prevention should be more along the lines of what I offered rather than putting on goggles and simulate drunk driving or passing out pretty trinkets saying “don’t drink and drive”. I remind the ladies, candy is dandy but liquor is quicker.
Amen.
” Garcia’s first victim said she lost consciousness and woke up in her hotel room to…”
Quelle surpris! So, another “he said, she said” which could have been avoided if only the female had heeded what mommy and daddy had told her.
There is a legal concept, “contributory negligence”, which applies here. I don’t have a whole lot of sympathy for the female involved here, particularly since he evidently stopped when she said no which makes me wonder if she encouraged him up until the moment she changed her mind.
What we call “Don’t make yourself a target”, the liberal left calls “Victim shaming”. ‘Tis a brave new world, indeed.
It all goes back to home training. Mama taught all of us at a very young age to keep your hands to yourself. She also taught her sons to act as gentlemen should and her daughters to recognize the same. Our sisters were taught by us brothers how to hurt guys that didn’t act like gentlemen. Life taught us to be aware of our surroundings and to avoid compromising situations.
Society has removed swift and sure punishment from the mix which in turn has allowed the gene pool to get worse and worse.
Wow. Reagan is not having a good cruise. LSD ring, two birds in the drink, and now this. I predict an upper management shake-up in the not so distant future.
Nope, a couple of CPO’s and JO’s will get the lash for failures to manage the blue-back scum. Move along, nothing more to see here.
Disagree, but that fine. I have no idea how close you are to today’s Navy, but it seems every other day senior folks are relieved for ‘loss of confidence to command’ or the like. CO, XO, perhaps senior enlisted are all reassigned.
Seen it up close, too, when the skipper of my squadron was allowed to retire, instead of getting the Flag he thought he so deserved. Now that was an interesting Change of Command ceremony.
Back in the old fashioned services where the sexes were separated completely in most units and there were no females on ships, I suspect that the number of sexual assaults was markedly lower. I don’t recall there being any of them in the two all male infantry divisions in which I served in the Viet of the Nam. Ditto for my time in two all-male special forces groups.
Not in the Air Farce, at least certain AFSC’s. I remember waiting in line at the McGuire AFB food truck in 62′ overhearing a conversation between two WAF’s. One told the other, “I gave my boss his annual screw and got my outstanding APR.” or words pretty damn close. That was an eye opener for a young troop who only served in all male Air Police units. Now I see lots of females in whatever they call the air cops at Little Rock AFB and wonder what those midnight flight line patrols would have been like if we had WAF’s assigned.
While I think most of us understand the whole no means no, and women shouldn’t have to worry I think sensible people realize that is the ideal and we live in a world that is quite far removed from the ideal.
In an ideal world I could walk the streets of Springfield Mass near the casino with $100 bills sticking out of my pockets unmolested at 1am…the in the real world I’d be lucky to make it to the parking garage in that situation.
In the real world women get raped by shitty predators who understand a compromised potential victim is an easier target than an un-compromised potential victim. Failing to understand and prepare for life in the real world often ends poorly when the victims encounter shitbags like this fucker…