Marine pleads not guilty to rape
By Cindy Fisher Stars and Stripes,
Pacific edition, Thursday, September 13, 2007

CAMP FOSTER, Okinawa — A 3rd Marine Division sergeant pleaded not guilty at a Tuesday court-martial to charges of raping a lance corporal in his Camp Courtney barracks room a week after she ended their eight-month relationship.

Sgt. Bill Napier III, who pleaded guilty Monday to related charges of adultery and violating general orders governing fraternization and sexual activity in the barracks, also is accused of harassing the lance corporal and threatening to expose explicit photos of her.

During opening remarks, prosecutor Capt. Timothy Aoyagi said Napier’s “obsessive emotional instability” led him to commit the crimes.

Aoyagi said his client, now a corporal, “wanted to escape the relationship,” but “the more she tried to get away, the tighter the accused tried to hold her.”

Defense attorney Capt. Jennifer Herrmann said the case “is not about rape, not about forcible sodomy, not about harassment. It’s about a bad breakup.”

Added Herrmann: “He pled guilty to what he did. What he’s been charged with is not what occurred.”

During her testimony, the corporal said she finally broke up with Napier Nov. 12, 2006, after an increasingly turbulent relationship because “he said he owned me and could have sex with me whenever he wanted.”

She testified that for the next week, he hounded her at work and at the barracks in which they both lived. She said she told her chain of command, but that didn’t solve the problem.

The corporal told the jury that Napier had sex with her against her will Nov. 18 and then gave her a note the next morning stating he had raped her the day before and that he was going to do it again that morning. She said he then did what was written in the note.

When asked why she didn’t struggle or cry out, she said, “I was scared of him. I didn’t know what he would do to me.”

Friends of both testified that the couple had a “typical boyfriend- girlfriend relationship” but that it wasn’t a typical breakup.

The court-martial was scheduled to resume Wednesday morning.

Ellie