thedrifter
10-11-05, 07:46 PM
October 17, 2005
Not ‘above the law’
Civilian district attorney successfully prosecutes assault case after Corps took no action
By Gidget Fuentes
Times staff writer
San Diego — The lieutenant gave it little thought when the Marine captain brought her a whiskey and Coke while they spoke at a hotel bar. It was Nov. 19, and 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing’s Marine Corps birthday ball in downtown San Diego was in full swing.
But it wasn’t long before she found herself groggy and feeling like a rag doll in his hotel room, where Capt. Douglas A. Dowson, 30, an F/A-18 Hornet weapons system officer, brutally sexually assaulted her. The Marine lieutenant had known that feeling of loss of control once before, several years prior, when she believed she drank a beverage tainted with a “date rape” drug.
The day following the late-night assault, she told a member of the captain’s squadron about the crime. The squadron member told his commander, who in turn contacted the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, and an agent quickly began to investigate.
But as the investigation went on, the lieutenant, who is in her mid-20s, began to think the Corps was dragging its feet. Winter passed, spring arrived, but still nothing happened. After four months, she’d had enough.
The wing, for its part, would not comment on her accusations, but said it forcefully investigates incidents of wrongdoing. Just who’s to blame for lags in the investigation is unclear. Dowson’s CO took the initial steps to notify NCIS and reassigned him, and at least one agent investigated the allegations.
In March, the lieutenant contacted civilian authorities, who quickly arrested Dowson, and he was scheduled for an October trial. Dowson pleaded not guilty, telling investigators the sex was consensual.
Then, on the afternoon of Oct. 6, in an agreement reached before the trial began in San Diego Superior Court, Dowson pleaded guilty to one count of sodomy of an intoxicated person.
And just like that, after months of hearing from Corps officials that there wasn’t enough evidence, the man who the lieutenant knew had assaulted her in that hotel room — the man she believes the Corps protected at the expense of her health and well-being — admitted his crime.
A promising start
With officials throughout the Corps eager to show they take sexual-assault claims seriously, her command’s response had seemed promising at first.
Just seven weeks before the November assault, Marine Commandant Gen. Mike Hagee had signed a new policy requiring commanders to report and “thoroughly” investigate all sexual-assault allegations. It was part of a broader effort directed by Congress to get the Pentagon to aggressively investigate and prosecute sexual assault cases and to deal with victims sensitively.
The next day, Dowson was transferred out of his squadron, Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 101 at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in San Diego, and pulled off flight status the next day. The lieutenant, pressed by an NCIS agent, went to a local hospital later that afternoon to undergo a standard rape examination. That examination is crucial to sexual-assault investigations because it provides evidence for possible prosecution.
She’d been hesitant to even report the assault.
While attending The Basic School at Quantico, Va., she had seen how a date-rape victim was ostracized and punished after reporting the assault to the command, which kicked the victim out of the company.
“The attitude was, ‘This girl, she’s just making this up, it’s a pathetic case of someone wanting to be part of the boy’s club,’” the lieutenant said. “I didn’t want that. I was really, really shaky at that point. I knew in my head that I couldn’t maintain not saying anything to anyone, because I was really screwed up.”
Seeing what that other young woman had gone through made the lieutenant think her own report wouldn’t be taken seriously and thoroughly investigated.
“My initial fear, my initial thought, was the military was not going to do anything about this,” she said Oct. 1. Marine Corps Times does not publish names of sexual-assault victims.
Early on, when Dowson’s squadron commander pulled him from flying status and reassigned him, it seemed the investigation would proceed normally. The NCIS agent did a limited search of the captain’s home, at a condominium complex in upscale La Jolla on Nov. 22 to get the clothes Dowson wore the night of the party so they could be tested for any forensic evidence. It’s unclear from court testimony why Dowson’s apartment wasn’t thoroughly searched. The NCIS agent could not be reached for comment.
A day earlier, Dowson had agreed to an examination by a sexual-assault response team nurse at a local hospital, where some bruising was noted.
But after that promising start, three months passed and the captain hadn’t been charged three months after the investigation began.
The lieutenant said she was told by the air wing’s top lawyer, Col. Curt Woods, “there is not enough evidence.” Requests by Marine Corps Times to interview Woods and wing officials were denied. “[Woods is] not going to be available,” Capt. Al Eskalis, a 3rd MAW spokesman, said Oct. 6.
The handwriting, the lieutenant believed, was on the wall, and she feared that the case would go no further. “They thought it would go away,” she said.
The lieutenant sought medical help to deal with the physical bruising from the assault — and the emotional roller coaster that was fueled by frustration at the pace of the investigation and the wing’s refusal to reassign her away from Miramar.
Dowson, even when he was reassigned, worked only a few buildings away at the air station, where commands and squadrons are concentrated along the flight line. The lieutenant’s repeated requests were turned down, even after she made them again after she saw Dowson on base one day in January. She wouldn’t move until late February, after her father’s attorney, Cliff Shoemaker, a former military lawyer, pressed the command. Only then did she get immediate orders to Camp Pendleton.
But it wasn’t all over. Once there, the lieutenant said, she learned that her top-secret security clearance had been revoked because, she was told, she had a foreign-born parent. Revoking the clearance prohibited her from access to a key work area.
She had received the clearance months earlier, however. When she called her former supervisor at Miramar, she was told that she had to turn in her security badge, which she did on March 20. It was a dicey day, the lieutenant said, one in which she tried to dodge a gantlet of questioning and harassment from wing officials.
But about two weeks later, with the help of her command at Camp Pendleton, she got her clearance back.
Along the way, she said, she believes that Dowson’s commander, Lt. Col. David Robinson, “is the only person who had the right idea about how you handle this.” In her view, “he was very much ... in favor of protecting my rights, of victims’ rights. But he had no control of the situation.”
continued....
Not ‘above the law’
Civilian district attorney successfully prosecutes assault case after Corps took no action
By Gidget Fuentes
Times staff writer
San Diego — The lieutenant gave it little thought when the Marine captain brought her a whiskey and Coke while they spoke at a hotel bar. It was Nov. 19, and 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing’s Marine Corps birthday ball in downtown San Diego was in full swing.
But it wasn’t long before she found herself groggy and feeling like a rag doll in his hotel room, where Capt. Douglas A. Dowson, 30, an F/A-18 Hornet weapons system officer, brutally sexually assaulted her. The Marine lieutenant had known that feeling of loss of control once before, several years prior, when she believed she drank a beverage tainted with a “date rape” drug.
The day following the late-night assault, she told a member of the captain’s squadron about the crime. The squadron member told his commander, who in turn contacted the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, and an agent quickly began to investigate.
But as the investigation went on, the lieutenant, who is in her mid-20s, began to think the Corps was dragging its feet. Winter passed, spring arrived, but still nothing happened. After four months, she’d had enough.
The wing, for its part, would not comment on her accusations, but said it forcefully investigates incidents of wrongdoing. Just who’s to blame for lags in the investigation is unclear. Dowson’s CO took the initial steps to notify NCIS and reassigned him, and at least one agent investigated the allegations.
In March, the lieutenant contacted civilian authorities, who quickly arrested Dowson, and he was scheduled for an October trial. Dowson pleaded not guilty, telling investigators the sex was consensual.
Then, on the afternoon of Oct. 6, in an agreement reached before the trial began in San Diego Superior Court, Dowson pleaded guilty to one count of sodomy of an intoxicated person.
And just like that, after months of hearing from Corps officials that there wasn’t enough evidence, the man who the lieutenant knew had assaulted her in that hotel room — the man she believes the Corps protected at the expense of her health and well-being — admitted his crime.
A promising start
With officials throughout the Corps eager to show they take sexual-assault claims seriously, her command’s response had seemed promising at first.
Just seven weeks before the November assault, Marine Commandant Gen. Mike Hagee had signed a new policy requiring commanders to report and “thoroughly” investigate all sexual-assault allegations. It was part of a broader effort directed by Congress to get the Pentagon to aggressively investigate and prosecute sexual assault cases and to deal with victims sensitively.
The next day, Dowson was transferred out of his squadron, Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 101 at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in San Diego, and pulled off flight status the next day. The lieutenant, pressed by an NCIS agent, went to a local hospital later that afternoon to undergo a standard rape examination. That examination is crucial to sexual-assault investigations because it provides evidence for possible prosecution.
She’d been hesitant to even report the assault.
While attending The Basic School at Quantico, Va., she had seen how a date-rape victim was ostracized and punished after reporting the assault to the command, which kicked the victim out of the company.
“The attitude was, ‘This girl, she’s just making this up, it’s a pathetic case of someone wanting to be part of the boy’s club,’” the lieutenant said. “I didn’t want that. I was really, really shaky at that point. I knew in my head that I couldn’t maintain not saying anything to anyone, because I was really screwed up.”
Seeing what that other young woman had gone through made the lieutenant think her own report wouldn’t be taken seriously and thoroughly investigated.
“My initial fear, my initial thought, was the military was not going to do anything about this,” she said Oct. 1. Marine Corps Times does not publish names of sexual-assault victims.
Early on, when Dowson’s squadron commander pulled him from flying status and reassigned him, it seemed the investigation would proceed normally. The NCIS agent did a limited search of the captain’s home, at a condominium complex in upscale La Jolla on Nov. 22 to get the clothes Dowson wore the night of the party so they could be tested for any forensic evidence. It’s unclear from court testimony why Dowson’s apartment wasn’t thoroughly searched. The NCIS agent could not be reached for comment.
A day earlier, Dowson had agreed to an examination by a sexual-assault response team nurse at a local hospital, where some bruising was noted.
But after that promising start, three months passed and the captain hadn’t been charged three months after the investigation began.
The lieutenant said she was told by the air wing’s top lawyer, Col. Curt Woods, “there is not enough evidence.” Requests by Marine Corps Times to interview Woods and wing officials were denied. “[Woods is] not going to be available,” Capt. Al Eskalis, a 3rd MAW spokesman, said Oct. 6.
The handwriting, the lieutenant believed, was on the wall, and she feared that the case would go no further. “They thought it would go away,” she said.
The lieutenant sought medical help to deal with the physical bruising from the assault — and the emotional roller coaster that was fueled by frustration at the pace of the investigation and the wing’s refusal to reassign her away from Miramar.
Dowson, even when he was reassigned, worked only a few buildings away at the air station, where commands and squadrons are concentrated along the flight line. The lieutenant’s repeated requests were turned down, even after she made them again after she saw Dowson on base one day in January. She wouldn’t move until late February, after her father’s attorney, Cliff Shoemaker, a former military lawyer, pressed the command. Only then did she get immediate orders to Camp Pendleton.
But it wasn’t all over. Once there, the lieutenant said, she learned that her top-secret security clearance had been revoked because, she was told, she had a foreign-born parent. Revoking the clearance prohibited her from access to a key work area.
She had received the clearance months earlier, however. When she called her former supervisor at Miramar, she was told that she had to turn in her security badge, which she did on March 20. It was a dicey day, the lieutenant said, one in which she tried to dodge a gantlet of questioning and harassment from wing officials.
But about two weeks later, with the help of her command at Camp Pendleton, she got her clearance back.
Along the way, she said, she believes that Dowson’s commander, Lt. Col. David Robinson, “is the only person who had the right idea about how you handle this.” In her view, “he was very much ... in favor of protecting my rights, of victims’ rights. But he had no control of the situation.”
continued....