Frankly, I can’t believe Sinclair got off so easy — I mean, the judge even ruled he could remain in the military if he wanted to! – based solely on what he copped to. He admitted to harming his mistress, saying, “I failed her as a leader and as a mentor and caused harm to her emotional state.” He admitted to having improper relationships with multiple other female officers. Again, in his own words: “It was my responsibility to ensure that these officers were protected and promoted and I failed them as a leader.”
And he clearly created a hostile environment. During testimony, a lieutenant recounted a party where soldiers in Sinclair’s unit mocked the affair in a raunchy skit where a character who was clearly supposed to be his mistress offered Sinclair’s character oral sex. There’s a reason that having a relationship with a subordinate is considered to be a grave abuse of power in the military — though you wouldn’t really know it from this outcome. As the captain’s lawyer said, Sinclair not only hurt her and her career but “did great harm to his unit’s good order and discipline, morale, and cohesion.”
You’ll recall that a couple weeks ago, Senator Gillibrand’s legislation that would have moved the decision to prosecute cases of sexual assault from the chain of command to an independent prosecutor was fillibustered. Senators claimed that they’d done enough on this whole military rape epidemic and the Pentagon could handle it. This case was seen as a litmus test for that — and frankly I’m unconvinced.
via Breaking: Army General accused of sexual assault gets reprimanded.
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