A child-molesting lieutenant is still keeping his Navy career unhindered after four years.
The Naval Criminal Investigative Service has opened a 4-year-old case to investigate why a child-abusing lieutenant is still keeping his Navy career.
A Virginia Navy officer was accused of sexually molesting two of his children in 2009 and was placed on the State Child and Neglect Registry list by social workers who investigated and validated the abuse claims by the children, according to The Virginian-Pilot
A court order forbade him from going within 2 miles of the home, school or workplace of any of his four children until they turn 18.
But the Navy examined the allegations and came up with an opposite verdict. The officer was cleared with no criminal prosecution. He has been even promoted ever since.
NCIS spokesman Ed Buice said Friday that the agency is trying to find whether there is enough evidence to bring criminal charges against the lieutenant as well as the reasons why no investigations were undertaken over the allegations that surfaced four years ago.
The Virginia Beach Department of Human Services is already under scrutiny for two fatalities in child abuse cases.
The lieutenant�™s daughter told a social worker that her father took her in a bedroom, locked the door, pinned her down by her wrists and raped her, city records obtained by The Pilot show. She said the assault was followed by two years of inappropriate touching by her father.
“He kept saying that if I told anyone, he would hurt me,” the daughter said in a written account. “I screamed but no one could hear me…. I was too scared to tell anyone.”
Two years after the alleged rape, a psychologist who counseled the girl found she was experiencing high levels of depression and post-traumatic stress with anxiety, insomnia and flashbacks, and had developed an ulcer. She also reported fleeting thoughts of suicide.
“This thing has ruined me forever,” she told a social worker. “I take three or four showers a day to feel clean.”
The girl’s allegations were “detailed, consistent and she has no obvious motivation to fabricate,” a social worker noted on a log sheet.
�œThe military is reluctant to make findings in any kind of sexual abuse cases,” said Betty Wade Coyle, executive director emeritus of Prevent Child Abuse Hampton Roads. “Especially if it’s an officer, it practically takes an act of Congress.”
According to Navy regulations, a substantiated case of child sexual abuse carries a mandatory penalty of administrative separation from the service.
“Sometimes they identify with the perpetrator instead of the victim,” Coyle said. “They think: Why is this a charge? Why is this going to wreck the guy’s career?”
AN/HJ
Source: Press TV