The Team House - How Military Justice Screws People Over | Bethany McDonough | Ep. 392

Episode Date: January 17, 2026

In this candid conversation, Bethany McDonough shares her harrowing experience as a former military officer who faced sexual assault and the subsequent challenges within the military justice system. She discusses her journey from enlisting in the military to reporting the assault, navigating the complexities of the SHARP program, and the political pressures that influenced the investigation and prosecution of her case. Bethany emphasizes the importance of advocacy for victims and offers advice to young women considering military service, highlighting the need for systemic change within the military culture.Today's Sponsors:GhostBed⬇️https://www.ghostbed.com/houseFOR 10% off! PIA VPN ⬇️https://piavpn.com/TeamHouseFor 83% off plus 4 months free!-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------For ad free video and audio and access to live streams and Eyes On Geopolitics...JOIN OUR PATREON! https://www.patreon.com/c/TheTeamHouseTo help support the show and for all bonus content including:-live shows and asking guest questions -ad free audio and video-early access to shows-Access to ALL bonus segments with our guestsSubscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseSupport the show here:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse___________________________________________________Subscribe to the new EYES ON podcast here:⬇️https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnGeopoliticsPod/featured__________________________________Jack Murphy's new book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" ⬇️https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/——————————————————————Or make a one time donation at: ⬇️https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouseSocial Media: ⬇️The Team House Instagram:https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_linkThe Team House Twitter:https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePodJack’s Instagram:https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_linkJack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21Team House Discord: ⬇️https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6SubReddit: ⬇️https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️ https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample"Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio"00:00 Start03:09 Bethany's Military Journey05:49 The Incident: A Date Gone Wrong08:28 Reporting the Assault11:33 Navigating the Military Justice System14:45 The Role of the SHARP Program17:27 The Preliminary Hearing20:16 The Aftermath and Dismissal of Charges26:24 The Open Door Meeting29:20 Confronting the System32:19 The Search for Other Victims47:47 The Struggle for Justice: Filing Complaints50:34 Investigative Challenges: The IG Complaint Process54:49 The Court Martial Journey: Pursuing Accountability01:05:03 Dismissed Cases: The System's Failures01:11:04 The Role of Advocacy: Seeking Change01:26:15 Advice for Future Service Members: A Cautionary TaleBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Hey, what's up guys. I want to thank our sponsor PIA VPN. That's private internet access. Have you guys ever been at a coffee shop connected to their Wi-Fi and just wonder how secure it really is? Turns out not secure at all. It's like sending a private text message to a group chat. Everyone can see all your personal data from your passwords to your browser history. It's all out in the open.

And I don't need my browser history out in the open for people. That's a problem. But the solution is private internet access. PIA. It's super easy to use and the app protects all your devices. it hides your IP addresses and it creates an encrypted tunnel from your internet connection so no one can snoop on your data. And unlike a lot of the services out there, PIA is completely transparent.

They have a proven no logs policy, which means they never record or store your data. But really the thing that I love about PIA the most is I can watch the office here in the U.S. and just pop over to like the UK or the Canadian servers and boom, right? You have the office right on Netflix. Also, another show that just came out, Smallville just came out. on Netflix in the UK, Canada, France, all over Europe. So you could just pop over to one of their servers and watch that, no sweat. You can actually change your location to 91 countries and unlock new content,

whatever you want to watch. So you can check that out. It's pretty cool. And you can protect your entire family with one subscription. So if you want to protect your digital life and get 83% off plus four months free, head to PIA VPN.com slash team house and sign up today. They have a 30-day money-back guarantee. So there's no risk to you.

that's PIA VPN slash team house for 83% off plus four months free. That's actually just $2.3.3 a month. So it's totally worth it. If you're in the game for a VPN, right, and you don't want them like, you know, logs and stuff like that and worried about that, go to PIA VPN. They're the best. It's PIAVPN.com slash team apps. Get 83% off plus four months free.

Thank you, PIA, for sponsoring this show and continuing to sponsor this show. really appreciate it. Thanks, guys. This time of year, the pace doesn't slow down, but you still need to. The calendar's packed, the weather's changing, and your body's reminding you that it's time to rest and reset. That's where ghost bed can help. It's a family-run company founded by a team with over 20 years of mattress making expertise. They've spent decades perfecting how to build a bed that's durable, comfortable, and engineered to help you recover. Every ghost bed mattress is made with premium materials, proven cooling technology, and their exclusive pro-core layer, a targeted support system that reinforces the center of the mattress where your body is the heaviest.

It helps to keep your spine aligned and your back supported so you wake up ready to take on what's next. And ghostbed's cooling materials don't just keep you from overheating. They help regulate your temperature year-round. Each mattress comes with a 101 night sleep trial and a 20 to 25 year warranty plus fast, free shipping. Most orders arrive in two to five days, so better rest is just around the corner. Right now, during Ghostbeds holiday sale, you can get 25% off site wide for a limited time. Just go to ghostbed.com slash house and use the promo code house at checkout. That's ghostbed.com slash house.

Promo code, house. Upgrade your sleep with GhostBed, the makers of the coolest beds in the world. Some exclusions apply, see site for details. And thank you, GhostBed for sponsoring the show. Please check out the link down in the description and support our sponsor. All right, so this is episode, I think, 392 of the Team House. I'm Jack Murphy. Here with our guest tonight, Bethany McDonough.

Bethany is a former Army officer. And just to be completely candid and upfront with the audience has a pretty terrible story tonight. So I urge viewer discretion if you have kids running around as you're listening to this. But otherwise we're going to get into it. You know, mostly this podcast is sort of a celebration of military service almost. But there are times where we have to have some difficult conversations about things not working the way. they're supposed to. And this is going to be one of them. So, Bethany, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast tonight and doing this. I know it's not an easy thing to stand up and

say the things that you need to say. Thank you for having me. I'm, you know, really grateful that you have this platform and that we were able to connect and, you know, allow me to be able to talk about this. And again, like the reason that I was wanting to do this is, is, is not, it is because, um, is because I believe this happens to other people. It is important for, you know, other people that this, that this happens to, to know that, I mean, number one, that they're not alone. And quite frankly for people to make decisions about whether or not they're wanting to serve as a, yeah, that this can happen. Yeah. Well, take us, uh, back sort of to the beginning. Tell us about how you came to military service to begin with and

and sort of what your journey was like joining the military? Sure. Yeah. So I, let's see, I enlisted while I was just out of high school. I enlisted in the National Guard. You know,

I wanted to go to college and do all these things. And I wound up like, you know, on campus in like the ROTC program. And, you know, they said, oh, you know, you could, I met all the other students there. And I was like, oh, these are other, other college students that are also, like, serving in the military or figuring it out.

And, like, when you're, when you're, like, at that age, that's a huge thing to, like, have in common with other people. So I, you know, I wound up commissioning in 07. And then, I, you know, I've served in the National Guard and the reserves, my entire career. I was never straight active duty. And I mean, that was, you know, looking back on it, I might have done it differently. But at the time, like, I always planned on being in the reserves of National Guard. That was what was, that was what I chose to do. And so I, you know, I was a military intelligence officer. I say was because I'm, I'm now a veteran as of about

two months, three months. Congratulations. Thank you. Yeah, I've served in several different National Guard states. You know, I moved all over the country. I spent a significant time down at Fort Wachuka. And let me see. I went to Afghanistan in 2007, or 2007, 2009, 2010.

and let me see eventually I wound up in the northern Virginia area for my civilian job and then wound up being assigned on active duty for about five years and you know during during which time a lot of this kind of went on so my active duty time most recently was um uh in a like a budgeting capacity. So I have a finance background. And then as a military intelligence officer at the same time, it's kind of a very niche like thing. Not a lot of people like finance to begin with, especially in the Army. So for me, it was just a really good fit.

And so I was serving on active duty when, you know, some of these other events transpired. And in the run up to being stationed at Fort Myers, your, you know, your career up to that point as a, military intelligence officer. You describe a little bit about your job for folks and kind of what your day-to-day was like. Sure. So I was actually, so I was actually assigned for Belvoir. I worked at, you know, I worked at the military intelligence readiness command on Fort Bellwore. And I was a program manager.

So I managed a program called Foundry. and it is a military intelligence funds for military intelligence soldiers. And I just, I administered the program. So I would recommend to commanders how to utilize those funds and how to disperse them to, to units and then account for them correctly. And all of those things. So, yeah, I did that for about five years. Okay, okay.

And so your station at Fort Belvoir, Fort Myers, I mean, these are both bases in the Washington, D.C. area. Yeah. Yeah, very close to each other. So, I mean, let's begin to kind of like unpack where things start to go downhill. I mean, it starts innocuously enough, right, with, you know, just going out on a date. Yeah. So, yeah, so I was on active duty from 2019 until, I mean, so at the time this happened, it was 2022. So pretty normal active duty time up until that point. And so I, let me see, I met someone on a dating app.

And this person was an 05, a sign at the Pentagon. And to me, that was like an automatic like, okay, I can be, I can be safe around this person. I should be safe around this person. And to boot, that person isn't going to, they're not going to, going to be someone who commits crimes, lives in their parents' basement, does drugs or, you know, alcohol excessively. This should, this should be the safest type of person that I should be able to be around. And so that's why I, I knew this person for about 10 days, give or take, and why I felt comfortable going to his house, even though I didn't know him that well, because

you should be safe around someone like that. At least that was my assessment at that time. let me see i i was also like sort of fighting my own instincts so i had sort of like a creepy vibe um when i was you know interacting with this person where like um any woman who who hears this will understand what i'm saying whereas you you get this vibe that like okay this person might not be as safe as as I it's sort of like the hair stands up on the back of your neck every so often and but again but then I'm like the other part of me was like oh yeah but he has all these things to lose his security clearance he's he's he's in 05 on active duty at the pentagon I you know I don't need to I don't need to be uh concerned so I sort of brushed off those um

if I've rushed off some of those indicators If I can ask, Bethany, I mean, I would be, and I think there are other people out there who would be interested to hear in retrospect, like, what were those indicators? I mean, I understand that there's a certain amount of gut instinct here, but was there anything specific that was like, mm. Let me see. Let me see. So there are sort of like, there was sort of just generic red flags, and I say generic because these, these, They're so, it's so generic. Like, there was a lot of calling and texting and, like, immediate clinginess, I would say.

And whereas I, you know, I was like, in my mind, I was like, I barely know you, like, back off, dude. But there was also, like, some that were in my mind. I was, I brushed these off, but in retrospect, yeah, they were huge indicators. One was that he stored weapons in his bedroom, weapons and ammunition in his bedroom, and I know this because he showed them to me, not just, not just one, a case with several in them. Like, let me see, not an M4, what's the other, what's, what's like, what's the, what's the, the civilian weapon that's like the M4. Oh, like an AR-15.

Yes, an AR-15, a shotgun, a handgun in his closet. And, like, I, you know, I don't own any weapons. I don't utilize weapons outside of what I've needed to do in the military for training. But I know that a lot of service members do have that as a hobby. So I brush it off. I would say like another really strange indicator was there was a lock on his. So there was a point at which I was attempting to let this person's dog out in the middle of the night because it was whining. And I realized after like not being able to do that that there was a lock on the back door where you had to have a key to open the back door.

which was making me and so to me I was like okay well I might be locked in the house I didn't find that out until you know some other I didn't find out that out in time enough where I would have been able to react to that red flag

but yeah that was that was a it was that was definitely part of the creepy guy and and then at a certain point that night you know, there was an actual assault. I reported to the police within 24 hours that I had been sexually assaulted. And I, you know, before I left, this person had a handgun in the kitchen, kitchen island.

This is an, I mean, had I, again, this was also after the fact. So, um, I, I, this led me to all of these things. I reported within 24 hours to a police station that I've been sexually assaulted. And, uh, I, I named this person. And, um, uh, I got, you know, several restraining orders, like, right away. And I did within the week. I, I, um, you know, I did a full interview with, um, the molasses, uh, the menaces, uh, the menaceous police department about what all of the events that had occurred. And I'm trying to avoid

talking about some of the specifics because they're kind of painful and also not as relevant to kind of the broader picture of what we're going to talk about. I would just point out, you know, Bethany, for, you know, viewers, there's questions that always come up. I mean, in the documents you sent me, I mean, you told this guy no multiple times. times. Yeah. Pretty clear cut. Yeah.

Correct. Yeah. So some of the documents were, you know, the congressional inquiry that went to Senator Ernst, Senator Gillibrand. And to my understanding, what I'm told is they, you know, I ask them, please share my experiences so that when you decide whether or not you're going to take. further action in in legislation for military sexual assault, please take my experiences into consideration. Yeah. So you reported to the local police, which I'm sure you didn't, this wasn't even on your

mind at all at the time, but my experience in investigating some of these stories is a very interesting game ends up getting played between the installation. in the civilian police department. Yeah. As far as like, who has jurisdiction, who has the case? First, this guy has it. Now this guy has it. It gets bounced back and forth.

What was sort of the next step for you after making that police report? And then, you know, you informed the military, like shortly thereafter. Yeah. So I recall, like, while I was in the police station, I heard. So in the back of my mind, I didn't know if this person was still on active duty anymore. This person told me, oh, I'm retired. But what does that mean? Like, this, that doesn't, just because you say you retire doesn't mean you're not on active duty, right?

Like, so in my mind, I reported somebody that I barely knew. And I, so I didn't know. So while I was sitting in the police station, they, I heard. one of the officers say something like, so when I first went there, they were like, they were doing this, you know, flurring around, like, I didn't know what they were doing. I was sitting there for like two hours waiting for them to say something or do something. And they just said, okay, wait here and went off to do something. And like, what I, what I learned kind of later on was that they were probably checking this person's background and also learning that he had. And, like, what I learned,

had a whole criminal, criminal record. That's probably what they were realizing. Right. You didn't know any of this at the time, but they told me later that they were, they were deciding whether or not that I, that they could tell me to go home safely. That's what they told me later. Um, but at the time, I was just like sitting there and then I heard somebody say, oh, she can go home now. We called CID. And so I, so in my mind, I was like, oh, they already told the military. Holy crap. I was like, oh, damn it, because in my mind, I was like, well, the right thing to do is to report it, but, you know, maybe he's not on active duty. And I don't want my boss to know. You know, I don't want, I don't want my, the command where I was at was a one star general. Like, that was going to be the

person that was, you know, who has to know about the assault. That was going to be the person that was going to have to, hear about it. And so knowing that, I was like, oh, my God, like, no. I, I, so I just sort of pulled the Band-Aid off and did it reporting. And then, um, you know, within the week, I was like, you know, the Sark got notified and like I, so I did like a sane exam. And like, again, me, I was kind of like just kind of on autopilot the whole time, like within the first 24 hours. Um, the, um, Well, to get a sane exam, I just called the sharp Fort Belvoir number. And somebody picked up the phone. That was the criteria of how I got to get a sane exam.

And then once I was getting the sane exam, the nurse was like, well, do you want me to call the police? And in my mind, I was like, what? What? You know, I didn't, I was like, I didn't, I was making decisions on autopilot, like survival mode, kind of. The SARC is, if I recall, right, sort of like a special representative, like a victim's advocate on installations. Yeah, so the SARC is a sexual assault response coordinator. They're like, they're the SHARP program. They're the ADMISTER program. So do you recall the SHARP program? Sexual harassment, assault, response, prevention. It's, I remember the briefings.

Exactly. So it's kind of like this fluffy, nice to have program. And I, like my experience working with these people, I've worked with a lot of them over time, is that they're very caring people. It's just their program doesn't have any teeth to it. Right. They don't have the authority to do anything. That is correct.

So commanders, very. very frequently, like, disregard a lot of things associated with the SHAR program and nothing happens. So, but the people are really nice. So I was interacting initially with a SARC, a sexual assault response coordinator from my organization. And she was like, well, what kind of a report do you want to do? So service members probably recognize that you can do an unrestricted report, which basically means, well, the report exists in a database somewhere and you can get, like, I don't know, access to counseling or something like that. And an unrestricted means that it's going to be full on investigated. So the Sark was like, well, okay, now you told me and now you have to,

now you told the military. So, like, I didn't realize it at the time, but she was kind of telling me, well, you already reported. So now you were doing one or the other. you have to pick and I hadn't even thought about that. So I said, we'll find out if the guy's on active duty, then if he's still on active duty, I'll do an unrestrictor report. So within the week, she finds out he's, you know, still on active duty.

And I'm sitting down with a one-star general telling him that I got assaulted. Really bizarre. What was that law? That commander was great. Brigadier General Daczynski. I don't know where he is and what he's doing in life, but he's fantastic. He was probably the best. Him and then, like, the H.H.G. Commander at the time, they were great.

But, again, like, the reserves in the National Guard, one really big difference is they don't have sexual assaults getting reported. There's a really limited amount that the reserves actually has to. to do with it. Basically, the majority of what they do is administer the SHARP program because they don't have court marshals. So there's not really going to be like the charging and all that stuff. So it's easier for them to, it's easier for the National Guard and Reserves to be supportive. I don't know.

So my experience with that, you know, that commander, the Merck commander was fantastic. Like they were great at that time. at that time. And they did take some, like, positive action, too, as far as, like, getting you in order of protection and things like that. Yeah. So they assisted with getting a military protective order right away. And then I also, I went, you know, I went to the local town, like my town, and I got a

protective order from, like, the city of Alexandria. a couple actually. And then I kind of reached my limit of being able to do that. So if I, if I had wanted like a long-term one, it involves, it involves basically a mini trial of proving that you have reason to need to have it. Um, so I had one that was enforceable for, I think, a few months, six weeks, something like that, um, for the town. And then, then the military protective order went until, until the charges got dropped. Yeah. So, let's see. During this time that I was reporting, like, nothing was happening. So I, you know, those things happened. Like, I got the protective orders and that stuff right away.

But I was still just, like, I was waiting around. I was waiting for the, Virginia, the Manassas Police Department to say what they were going to do. I was waiting, you know, supposedly it's a joint investigation. That does not mean anything. That means that that means that the military is sitting on their heels waiting for the civilians to decide what they were going to do. So I had found out at that point that I had reported this person 90 days prior before he was about to retire. So the military also, they assign you a lawyer. That's one really good thing that has come out in like I think 2019 and on is there's a special victims council. It's basically a lawyer for the victim. That is something, that's a positive change of the SHARP program.

So, you know, interacting with this lawyer who's, you know, all the way at Fort Bragg, he was also really great. And I think he's still out there. He's still in SVC somewhere. He kept following back up with the military district of Washington saying, what are you going to do with this case? What's going on with this case? And I eventually, like, because it was getting to the point where are you just going to let him walk out the door and retire? And I was also, like, worried because what this person that I'd reported, this officer that I reported, this 05, what he had told me was that he had a job lined up as a civilian contractor on Fort Belvoir at the, what's the, what's that schoolhouse called? Force management, the School of Force Management on Fort Belvoir. He had a job lined up there,

and that was a mile away from where I worked. So, like, if, you know, you know like the thing you know I kind of told you some of like the creepy vibe factors and I was just like oh my gosh like he's going to work right down the road for me like if they let him go and they do nothing I have a problem I have an immediate problem because so I you know I kept asking and asking like what are you going to do what what are the circumstances under which you are going to delay this person's retirement pending the outcome of the investigation and what they were doing instead of instead of that was like dragging me into the military district Washington, like Fort McNair. That's where their legal office is. And they were basically having me go in for interviews with them under really strange circumstances, like basically to accommodate the fact that this person was about to retire. So like I think I drove there while my hand was, was not broken, but I had surgery on it.

I, the lawyer wasn't able to be there because he's assigned it for Bragg, like, all this stuff where, like, why don't you just delay, I kept asking, like, why aren't you, how are you, how are you, how and when are you going to just delay the person's retirement pending the outcome of the investigation? And they kept saying that they needed me to come in and basically do these additional interviews to quote unquote state whether they had problem because they had to decide whether they had probable cause, which led me to ultimately get a civilian lawyer because I was just like, why can't they, why can't they answer basic questions? And like, I mean, you've served in the military. You like, you know, if you're not getting an answer, it's because they don't like the one

that they would give you. Right. And the military has a tendency to, if they do an investigate, and they find a result that they don't like, they'll reinvestigate it and reinvestigate it again until they get the answer that they're looking for. This is a technique they'll use, you know, if you interview a soldier in an AAR and he says, I saw this, this, and that. And the community doesn't like that.

They will go back to him a second time, a third time. And it's like, are you getting the message? Are you getting the message here, buddy? This isn't what you're supposed to be telling us. The same thing with the, the inspector general, I'm sorry about this little rant I'm on, but the inspector general plays the same games in the military. They will wait two years. They have two years to do the investigation.

They will wait one week before that expiration date and then contact the witnesses. After two years, you guys know how the military works. Half of those people are more out of the military. They've been moved to other bases. There's no way they're going to respond. It's just another tactic that they use to not have. have to address things that they really should be. Oh, yeah, absolutely.

So I was like, kind of, I kept, I kept asking point blank, like, what, what are you going to do with this? Like, and they kept not giving me answers, but they were also saying stuff. Like, I think, so this person was the military justice advisor, one of the lawyers, you know, was in the room. And I recall hearing him say that we don't want to mess up somebody's life unnecessarily. which was their justification and reason for asking me all these questions. And these questions were like, oh, what did you have for, what did you have to drink at dinner?

Oh, you had wine. What type of wine did you have? Or like, did you ever willingly touch specific parts of his body? It was just really gross where I had already given a two and a half hour interview in a police station. They already had it. Yeah. I mean, yeah, what's the point? Like was it red wine or white?

How the hell does that make any fucking difference? I mean, I think they were just trying to decide if they believed me. At least that's the bottom that I got. So I wound up like I got a civilian lawyer and I would recommend anyone that goes through this, I would recommend immediately getting a civilian lawyer like 100% of the time. I would not recommend relying on a military SVC. They are great. but a military lawyer can do things they can do things that or excuse me the civilian lawyer can do things that a military lawyer cannot for instance challenge a case outcome because the person that decided the case is colonel david boling for instance um let me see so so you know tell us about that that that preliminary hearing that that happened next sure

So eventually the, yeah, eventually he, the military paused this person's retirement and then, then, you know, did a whole bunch of delay, delay, delay. And some people switched out and, you know, more delaying. And by this time I had the military lawyer, or excuse me, the civilian lawyer. And there was a preliminary hearing that took place, you know, probably, eight months, something like that after I had reported. And the, so I wasn't present. The civilian lawyer was present on my behalf.

And, you know, what they, what I heard as being the outcome was the officer, the preliminary hearing officer was inexperienced. He admitted this during, during the hearing. He, he asked, he did something very non-standard, which is he basically asked the prosecutor and then the defense attorney to outline like, okay, well, what, how do you think that there is or is not probable cause? So the defense attorney stated he did this long, like, two or three page document saying why there was no probable cause, which was basically a whole bunch of rape myths stringing, stringing rape myth after rape. myth together to basically like what did they try to say what were these myths um let me see let's see

here uh here's one example um there was like a ring woody video like the doorbell ring thing and that it said um oh well she was smiling when she walked away from the door and then the prosecutor said well yeah, because she was smiling because he was watching her walk away five minutes after he took out a gun in the kitchen island. So, like, stuff like that, they were, like, just, you know, twisting what happened and then to, like, just anything, anything that they could. There was, like, some texts that they tried to say that I was, I was mad at the guy because he didn't want to go out with me again or something. Like, and this, it was just, it was just really, like, I, it was really bizarre.

It was like any way that they could just kind of twist the situation, they were doing that to make it look like I was lying or probably lying or could be lying or, you know, and then comparatively the prosecutor was like, no, she reported this, this happened, this happened, this is what the law says. therefore there's probable cause um so um i mean and then i started to look at the statistics of probable cause hearings and i could tell like the the outcome of like um uh probable cause versus no probable cause and it gets sent to court martial or not like they were not adding up in this circumstance the whole like it was a sham hearing is my takeaway it was it was just kind of a sham hearing

hearing. So, and then we weren't allowed to see the report. So the preliminary hearing officer develops a report about what he, about why he thinks there is or isn't probable cause. Well, they don't, the military doesn't provide those. So he has a copy. The person I reported has a copy. His lawyer has a copy. But I don't have a copy to this day. And so, like, basically I was just sort of told and then I didn't even know that it and so I kept I asked the attorneys like who decided this who made the decision they come back and they say it's Colonel Bowling and I didn't know who it was at that point that was going to decide because the military district Washington has a really weird like it's supposed to be an 06 or higher

which was usually brigade commander who is the disposition authority but not the general court martial convening authority. like the military district Washington has a really weird setup of who gets to decide. So I didn't really understand that at the time. And this is, I mean, it leaves me scratching my head sort of as well how this is all set up. Because Colonel Bowling was the installation commander out there at Point Base Myers. He's a former, or he is a special forces officer. but as far as I know, he has no background as being a lawyer, a judge, or any sort of like legal background.

Why is the installation commander? Why does he have purview over a probable cause hearing? Why? I mean, why does he even have this authority? How is he qualified to make a decision like that? That's a very interesting question. Um, so like, I mean, I would say from, from my viewpoint, he doesn't. Um, and then the manual for court marshal would also say that it's not appropriate that he was in the mix at all. Um, it's pretty

clear about what they consider to be implied bias. And, um, like, for instance, with his, with his background, he could not be on, he could not be on a jury. in a sexual assault trial. He would be dismissed because he could possibly be biased, but in this instance, he was allowed to decide the whole case. And that's what, so I found this, I found the Dick Pick Six article. And this is the first time I came upon it at like, probably within, you know, 12, 24 hours after the, after I'd been notified, the charges were dismissed. And I was like, oh, hell no. And I was like, immediately. I was incensed, but I didn't really, I didn't understand UCMJ very well at the time.

So I kind of sent it to my lawyers and I was like, this jack wagon, I can't believe this. And they didn't look at the article until much later when I brought it up again. And then they looked at it again and they were like, oh, hell no. This is, this isn't, you know, it's not legal. And to your question of why was he in the mix at all? Well, most, so I've obviously since since this is a. all happen. I now know way more about the military justice system that I would ever care to hope for, hope to. And they, the military district Washington has a withholding policy. And I've since learned,

so again, I'm the reserves. Like, we don't have court marshals. This isn't something that I'd ever come across. A general court martial convening authority withholding policy, such that every senior enlisted and every officer, the disposition of those cases is the GCMCA, not the 06. So to your point, yeah, I don't, I think it's completely inappropriate that he was in the mix at all. So the, yeah, the Dick Pick Six article. I published that like seven or eight years ago, the seventh special forces group sex and blackmail network. That is a totally insane story that I interviewed people. And what's in that story is like really only the half of it. There's a lot of stuff that I didn't include. Yeah. And things that, you know, I couldn't,

anything I couldn't 100% shore up. I didn't put in there. But there were there were definitely more people involved than were mentioned in there. There was additional crimes that were committed that are not mentioned in there. It's a, it's a nasty story. Yeah. So, um, so I, I found that right away and I didn't realize it was like a legal issue for a, like, a little while. And but when so right after, right after the charges were dismissed, I was, you know, I had

found the article and I was just like pissed off. And, um, that, I think I, I, I was. in Germany at the time on TDI. And I think that was at the point where I connected with you because I was trying to figure out if there was anybody that would talk about this. Yeah. Yeah. I remember that phone call because I didn't know who you were at all. But I remember you were very upset at the time, understandably.

And I remember you tell me a little bit about what you had experienced but without specifics. And I remember telling you, because I understand how these organizations will gaslight victims. Yeah. I remember telling you, you're not crazy. Yeah. And I remember that. Because they will make you feel crazy. Yeah.

They will make you feel like you're the one that's crazy. Yeah. I definitely, that's definitely how it felt. And then like everything thereafter. and like what's crazy is like if this was the worst part of the entire story that would you know we wouldn't have another however long in this podcast is going to be but there's more but wait there's more yeah exactly so so um found that out i talked to you and i i think we were exploring the idea of writing a story about it and i chickened out at least that at the time i just yeah yeah i remember you

yeah, you kind of disappeared and I understood why, you know, you weren't, you weren't ready. I get it. But I see, I didn't know the larger context. You told me that there's an assault. Yeah. Yeah. Or, like any of the names of the people involved, like, I didn't know any of that. So, yeah.

On my end, you were sort of like an anonymous victim that came to me in the dark. And I really was like, I didn't know. And there really wasn't anything else I could do with. with that information at the time. Yeah. But we'll get to, you know, this journey that you took. Yeah. So that, I think when we spoke, it was, I think sometime in November or early December of

2022, I believe. And so what wound, what, I think within 24 hours of me having learned that the the charges were dismissed. I, like, I, um, in my mind, I was like, well, I can probably get away with doing whatever the heck I want for about 24 hours. So I called up Colonel Bowling and I asked, can I have an open door with you? And, um, he, he hemmed and hawed and eventually after me badgering him and after me emailing Major General Pepin and the secretary of the army.

What's that? Is it an open door policy or not? Exactly. That's another little game in the military plays. Yeah. I mean, I emailed, I, I think I, I don't think I emailed this. I think I, the vice chief of staff, I, I, I cannot remember exactly who, but I, I emailed people. I had no business emailing because I was like, this is your, this is your, this is the Pentagon.

Like, what, what the hell is it that you people are doing here? And I finally, I got my open door meeting. And I, let's see, it didn't take place because like COVID was still a big thing at that time. So it didn't take place until January of 2023, at which time my, excuse me, the person I reported, the lieutenant colonel I had reported, he had been retired by Colonel Bowling at that time, by that time. and so I attended this meeting with myself, my civilian attorney, and, you know, Colonel Bowling was there, and then two members of like the JAG staff, not one of one of them was the prosecutor and then one of them was like the deputy, the deputy jag. um i i i'm i'm his name i'm blanking on his name right now um but you know i didn't have any particular concerns with those people personally except that they were enforcing or they were they were

um allowing this to happen so during this meeting um i you know with my attorney president i i basically asked questions i i i asked questions of like um you know there was like an mPO protective order that they basically slow rolled and then eventually denied. So I requested like a change to a protective order. They denied it because nothing had happened, therefore it was unnecessary.

And I, you know, by this point, I looked up all the regulations and I knew the regulations. Then, like, I didn't believe that the guy was ever flagged appropriately. I believed that because because 90 days went on

and they were basically like not doing anything and he was on terminal leave this entire time. So for them to have flagged him I think

they would have had to take him off terminal leave. So I didn't, you know, I thought that maybe he wasn't flagged and the MPO and then we got to

the Dick Pick Six article which I had a copy printed out in my hands and I basically handed it to the prosecutor, to the, to the deputy. And, and I, you know, we said, like, here's, here's the last thing that we have questions about, you know, this, this article, according to what I can read in the manual for court martial indicates that you shouldn't be, you should not be anywhere near any sexual assault case because of implied bias. Like,

it, I mean, the manual for court martial is pretty clear. that he, you know, he couldn't be on a jury. So a panel member, he couldn't be a part of that. So how can he decide the whole thing? How can he decide the whole case? And they hemmed in Haude and said, oh, no, he's not biased, blah, blah, blah. And Colonel Bowling specifically, he, like, got up, stopped around the room and said that, no, he was not, in fact, biased. And I think I asked at one point, well, sort of like, how.

How did this article come to exist? Like, how did this even come? You know, I was just kind of waiting just to see what he'd say. And he just, he looked at me and he said, well, I don't think I owe you an explanation. And I was just like, oh, wow. Okay, that's, that's interesting. So you feel entitled. I'm sure all that went over like a lead balloon.

So another thing that I was asking. in this meeting was, did you look for other victims? Well, I met this person on a dating app. So I know you got information from the app company. So did you look for other victim? That's where the other victims will be. And did you look for them? And when I asked this question,

I had already, sometime like over the Christmas holidays, I had texted with this officer's ex-wife. Like I, and I, I, initially, like, I found her, like, on Facebook and I just, I, I just, like, look, I'm sorry. You're doing your own investigation because no one else will. And I kind of said, like, well, I was just kind of say, like, hey, I'm like, I'm sorry for what you went through. And she had no idea of anything. I was kind of expecting some kind of response of like, oh, yeah, it's been really tough for us, blah, blah.

I was expecting something like that, but she had no idea that. anything. I mean, she knew that something had gone on because she'd been contacted at some point, but nobody ever interviewed her. And nobody had interviewed the first ex-wife. So there were two. And this, the one that I spoke to, she kind of spilled the beans. She, um, she told me that he had, this person, this officer I reported had a history of abusing, uh, both, you know, both, um, the, you know, her and then the previous ex-wife and then his children. So she's, I think a quote is he abused all of us. And then she told me that how they had met was that, that she was assigned to him when she was a cadet for training purposes. That's how she met him. And, um, and, um,

So I, you know, I knew that the, so I knew that there were some kind of abuse allegations, but I didn't know what they were at that point. So I said, like, did you guys look for any other victims? And around the table, there was just like crickets. Nobody wouldn't answer the question. And so then, so we left. And then, you know, we were told within a couple of days, or maybe a week, that the military district of Washington felt that Colonel Bolton,

Bulling was not biased, and therefore they were not going to pursue the matter further. So my attorney wrote a letter to Major General Pepin, requesting that the case be re-reviewed by somebody who did not have, who did not have the potential or the appearance of bias. And so Major General Pepin's, you know, response to receiving this letter was to request that OSTIC, the Office of Special Trial Council, who had basically just been stood up, to review the case independently and offer their opinion. And so they did that. And this case was the first case in the United States Army

that OSTIC reviewed, like, number one. They hadn't even hired. They didn't have lawyers hired yet. It was a civilian. It was a civilian who was standing up the case or standing up the office with like the first. So the commander of the special trial counselor, I think his name was Wells. I can't remember. I cannot remember. But anyways, so she reviewed the case.

And at some point I met her. And at that point, I basically said, like, look, here's all of. here's all this other stuff. I don't know what this means, but this is this is what was told to me that, you know, there might be other abuse allegations out there. And so she, you know, she kind of takes that and runs with it. And I don't know exactly like, while all of this is going on, I'm kind of waiting for this investigation to take place. I filed an IG complaint, because Because my, you know, my opinion at that point was they've already said they don't want to do anything. They've already said they're not going to pursue the matter further, even though, like, the manual for court martial is pretty clear that this is really inappropriate.

And, you know, then there was all the other issues that I told you about, like the flagging and the MPO and just random stuff that, that I felt was a misandling of a, a sexual assault case. So I filed an IG complaint against Colonel David Bowling. And that, like, I filed it with a DoDIG hotline. Um, that kind of hit their, that hit the fan kind of quick. Like that, like, my, them receiving that, that went around and around. It took six months between, like MdW and M.com and the Department of the Army, like, nobody wanted it. They didn't want to, they did not want to investigate this. Like, they kept trying to say that it was somebody else's jurisdiction. So six months goes on where I'm just like, okay, are you going to investigate this or what?

And it wound up going to the military district of Washington, their IG. And I knew, I found this out because I called him. And I said, look, have you received this? Are you investigating it? What's the deal? And he said, oh, I've received it. And I said, well, why are you going to, why is your office receiving it? Because you're going to investigate it.

But the people that you have to investigate are the same ones that have to adjudicate your findings. This is a, they're the same people that are, that are potentially, like, part of the investigation. This is a conflict of interest. Right. So then, so then it got kicked back to, like, somebody else. eventually the investigator was somebody from the G9. So the HQDA G9, they hold like sharp suicide prevention, substance abuse, all of those like programs. It was somebody from that office.

And to this day, I like, I don't have the results of that. investigation. I have the results saying that it was unsubstantiated, but I don't have the results of it, which I will get into in a couple minutes of why that's incredible strange. The results being, they were saying that your claims were unsubstantiated or that? Okay. So the whole thing was unsubstantiated. Because it's perfectly up. They don't state a reason why. And I filed a FOIA, like immediately, you know, so the, again, still, I still don't have it.

What ultimately wound up happening with this IG complaint, I'm just going to point this out so I can like kind of close out that part of the story was it wound up getting entered into evidence. This IG complaint was entered into evidence. And so the officer I reported, the defense attorney requested it and he got it. So he's got it. The defense attorney has it. The results of the, you know, IG complaint of a mishandling of sexual assault, the person I reported as having assaulted me has the results of this complaint two years later,

you know, three years later, and I don't have it. I think that's just, it's just bizarre to me. But in any case, so waiting around, waiting around, you know, what, you know, what exactly is MDW going to do? I'm thinking they're going to do nothing. What actually, what winds up happening is the Major General Pepin, at about 1600, the day before his change of command in 2023, he sends a response letter. And, I mean, you can look at the dates of his change of command and the date on the response letter. And it's literally the day before. He sends it to my civilian attorney and saying, well, and I'm paraphrasing here, we don't really believe that Colonel Bowling has done anything improper.

But out of an abundance of caution, we're going to send the case to another GCMCA for any and all further action. When does the Army do anything out of an abundance of caution, particularly legal matters? never like so um so they send it to for belvoir and then it like sits and sits and waiting for like a prosecutor to show up and finally finally they have the people like assigned to like properly review it and and i you know i met with them and i think i get the i get the time frames a little bit mixed up, but I met with them. I want to say it was in 2023. Okay. I want to say it was in the fall of 2020,

I think. It got reviewed, and then finally it got reviewed, and like I met with the prosecutor at Port Belvoir, and, like, the first thing that they say is, well, are you still interested in pursuing the case because we want to we want to pursue a court martial. And I almost fell out of my chair because this guy's retired at this point. And again, how often does the military ever pursue any charges against retirees, particularly for sexual assault?

If I can add my two cents, I think what may have been happening at that time is the military was getting some really bad press about violence against female soldiers and sex assaults. You remember Vanessa Gwenn? Yeah. All these kinds of stories were coming out. And there was a lot of political pressure on the military to start taking these investigations seriously. Yeah. So they said they wanted to pursue, you know, a court-martial. And I said, okay, yes.

Yes, by all means. And so they, you know, they pursued a court-martial. They, you know, they charged him as a retiree. And let me see. It, I think it wound up in the stars and stripes at some point at the point of, I think at the point where it was officially charged and it like it hit the, it hit like the court martial database. And when I read that article in Stars and Stripes, that's when like all of this sort of clicked for me that I put two and two together because I read in the article. There's this assault that happened, you know, joint-based Myers, you know, Colonel Dave Bowling may have done something wrong and dismissing the case, et cetera, et cetera. And then it all came together.

I was like, oh, my gosh, that woman that called me those years ago. Yeah. Google to Dave Bowling and found me, having written that article and reached out. And that's why you were reaching out to me. I didn't put two and two together until that moment. Yeah. Um, so it, you know, it hit the stars and stripes. And then, you know, eventually they, they did a preliminary hearing shortly thereafter. And so this preliminary hearing, I, at the time I was assigned in Germany. Um, I went to Germany for about a year. Um, assisting, um, assisting, uh, Ucom European, U.S. European command. And doing like similar functions as I was doing at Fort Belvoir. but, you know, for the active component, basically.

And so I, so I was listening in to this on, like, a team's call with, like, the second special victims' counsel, so they cycled in and out, you know. And at this point, I, you know, I've had PTSD, like, pretty much right away. And by this point, it's just, it's, it's like ongoing, you know, to just kind of continue. at this point. So I'm listening in on this team's call, and they were, the charge sheet, it listed, like, there was chunks locked off because there was another victim on the charge sheets, but I didn't know who it was for sure. I had ideas of who it might be. And what, well, I learned in the team's call because they discussed the other charge, um, was. Um,

when they discussed all of, you know, all of it with the preliminary hearing officer. And so they made a point to, you know, to appoint an experienced preliminary hearing officer for this one. So that was a positive. He, you know, he asked questions about the other charge. Specifically, was he needing to be concerned about, like, what's the word? parental discipline. So I guess as a parent, you can use physical, some level of physical force to punish your child, discipline your child.

I don't know. But he was asking questions like that because the other person that was named as a victim was at the time, the minor son of the officer I reported. and the details that I heard on this team's call was that there was some sort of like altercation where he hit the sun with a bottle of something and then some altercation happened that resulted in like strangulation and then the the the then minor son fled to the neighbor's house and told somebody, and I missed this part of the,

told somebody that he felt like he was going to die. And so I was, I was just like, oh my God. And then the date of when this transpired was three years prior to when I ever met this person on a dating app. So I initially hearing this, I was kind of just like really kind of floored.

I was just like, oh my gosh. and but I was also sort of like I was right I was I was exactly right he's he's every bit of a violent like all of my instincts were right and but then like it kind of hit me several days later that this meant that number one the army could have okay I missed I missed one of the points what was also discussed was that when this altercation occurred, it went through the Virginia court system. And the officer I reported pled no contest to domestic violence in a court in the state of Virginia. And in Virginia, that's the same as a conviction.

So this person was walking around the Pentagon for three years before I ever met him with a domestic violence conviction, well, the same pleading no contest is the same as a conviction with a TSSCI, and the military did nothing with that. Like, and so what started to sink in for me was, well, number one, you could have prevented it and you didn't. And then when I reported it, even if, even if you didn't believe me for whatever reason. You still did nothing with this other, this other victim that was out there. And instead, you just, you just

slap a bow on him and retire him. And so, like, there's the, I mean, I was kind of just disgusted at that point. That I had, and, like, a year and a half of my life gone, because, and then, not only that, but, like, Colonel Bowling, who's the one that did it? Dick picks it.

is the one that signed off on all this. It was just the most, it was disgusting to me, that that can happen at the Pentagon. Because if that's happening to me, and I mean, I'm not the smartest person in the world, but I have two degrees. I had access to multiple lawyers, and I did this because this is what the Army tells us

that they want us to do. So if this is happening to me, you know, with O-Stick being involved, what's what else is happening out there for like young soldiers right they don't know to do all this they don't have like 20 years of experience where they you know a little light can go on in the back of their head and go something's not right here i'm getting i'm getting a shady deal they don't have that experience to make to recognize that when it happens and i mean i can tell you that like what you probably also experience you know talking to other like

victims of sexual violence and domestic violence is there's a lot of like there's like a shame component so if somebody tells you it's your fault or they can't do anything or blah blah blah it's sort of like you you don't want to believe it but then there's part of you that just sort of repeats that lie to yourself over and over again it's like i mean it's like the the shame part of it um So, I mean, that's a really big part of why I'm glad to be coming on your podcast today is because this, this can happen to me. Like, I cannot imagine what's happening for specialists, 20, you know, 20-year-olds going through this. So, let's see here. Okay, so after, you know, he's charged the second time, then there's like a, uh,

A series of motions. There's a, there's a trial schedule. The trial winds up getting delayed and delayed. At a certain point, there's like a plea agreement offered, and I reject it outright because they wanted to call it conduct unbecoming. They wanted to take sexual assault all the way down to conduct on becoming. And I was like, no, no. if you say that it's conduct on becoming because he's actually assaulted me, that's fine,

but otherwise no. During one of the motions, Colonel Bowling was listed as a witness to testify. And I, like, the attorney, I mean, the defense attorney, I think, was going to make, it was going to make this, I think what was going to happen is he was going to try to make this, like, side show of, like, it's not about that. It's about Colonel Bowling. I think he was going to do that. And I think Colonel Bowling was

going to testify to the effect of how awful it was for having his promotion packet delayed all this time and how awful that was for him. Yeah, I mean, taking it from, you know, the real victims here are actually all these officers who were mightily inconvenienced by

these allegations that you made. Yeah. So, And so I think also that had something to do of why the case ultimately got dismissed. So the case ultimately was dismissed a month before the trial was scheduled. So there was a trial scheduled in January of, excuse me, there was a trial scheduled for February of 2025. And it was dismissed in January. And they were citing evidentiary concerns. And they also wouldn't. say what exactly the evidentiary concerns were. And in my mind, I just, I don't believe it. I don't believe that you charge a retiree for a crime that occurred, you know, two and a half years prior and then a month before the trial,

dismiss the case because you're concerned about evidence. I think what, what, um, I think what happened is that they knew that this was going to be some sort of circus. I think it was because it was related to that. I told you, so I told you before, like, my IG complaint, naming Colonel Bowling. Colonel Bowling was all over it. I mean, it was 100% against him and nobody else.

That was in the evidence. And, like, I think the defense attorney was going to make it about that so that they could get, you know, the guy off. I think the other thing that, like, what was going on was um so i told you there was quote unquote concerns about evidence but they also weren't saying what evidence they were keeping out so the all the motions they can be like motion to dismiss because of blah motion to exclude evidence because of blah blah blah well what um you you might already know this like i i'm guessing you have some you have some experience like working with people

that in the UCMJ, like you have some experience, it sounds like, where they don't have to provide those motions. So I would say a comparison is the federal court system. Every time something happens in one of these cases that the president is involved in, or even like, you know, that the guy that, um, the guy that, um, the guy that, that shot the, or allegedly shot the health care CEO. Yes. And he's being, he's being prosecuted. You can look online and you can find out the last motion his attorney filed to exclude evidence.

You can find that. Because we don't have secret trials in this country. Like all the evidence is supposed to be public. Yes. And it is public immediately. Like that's how, like, for an attorney to file a motion, it becomes immediately public. But the military doesn't do that. And it's not because they're not supposed to.

to do it. It's not because that there's any like, there's, I mean, these aren't classified, this is not classified information. It's not, the hearings are open to the public and it should be public, like the motions should be public because a judge is explaining, he's explaining the law. He's explaining how he's implementing the law. They should be public. A little sidebar on that is that, um, Obviously, because, again, we don't have secret trials in this country, court martial transcripts are supposed to be made available to the public. Yeah. And it wasn't like an automatic thing necessarily, but you file FOIA report and you can get a court martial transcript back.

The last like maybe three years or so, the military is not even releasing court martial transcripts. They behave as if they're classified. You can go in physically to the hearing and listen into what's being said. But after the trial is complete, if you request those transcripts, they start citing the Privacy Act. They start citing that it just ended, but the case is still in appeals so we can't release it. Like, they're literally making stuff up because they don't want to release that information to the public. And as far as I can tell, that's illegal. I'm pretty sure it's an illegal act for them to withhold that information from the public.

I mean, it is. They just, I mean, you're absolutely correct. they just cite privacy Act or I mean there is a law that directs there's a law that directs the Secretary of Defense to define

institute specific policies and procedures related to making information available to the public there's also defense advisory committees which our Secretary of Defense has dismissed all the members of all these advisory committees but these

advisory committees review UCMJ on an ongoing basis, like every five years. They look at the UCMJ and they recommend, well, we should change this, we should change that. We should, you know, we should change how this hearing is structured, like little things. What they recently suggested was all of, all of these things that we're talking about is that Congress should, I mean, this is like, I want to say either December of 2024 or January of 2025, their recommendations for the changes to UCMJ included Congress should blah blah blah blah blah blah and there's information in there about victims rights. There's information in there about making court filings, all of court filings pre and post-trial available to the public in the same manner as

as they call it the pacer system, as in the same manner as all the other core cases in the country. So it's out there. It's just being ignored, which I, and, let me see here. Okay, I guess I need to wrap up some of the stuff. I got, I got off on a long tangent. Okay, so again, the got dismissed,

and I like went out of about, my way to ask questions because I can't complain about not getting something unless I, unless I ask for it and I don't receive it. So I asked, um, the office of special trial council like what's, you know, you believed in the case back then. Why aren't you, will you take it now? And so then that meeting was very interesting. Um, that meeting was pretty interesting. Um, um, that meeting was pretty interesting. Um, um, Prior to that meeting, I attended another trial because my attorney, the civilian attorney I worked with, he like was the attorney for another trial, U.S. versus John Batt. So you may or may not be familiar with that case, but that person, that officer, he was a major assigned in the military district of Washington.

And Colonel Bowling was the initial disposition authority. when some of those cases were initially reported. And that case went to trial, I think, in, like, June maybe of 2025. So it was local. It was at Fort Mead, so I went to it. My attorney suggested it. He's like, if you wanted to learn more about all of this, you know, this is what you don't get. Or this is what you didn't get, basically.

So I did out of curiosity. and what struck me immediately was, well, the defense attorney was the same attorney for my case. Like, so same guy. And then it also, like the timelines was some of the victims, what, Colonel Bowling was the initial disposition authority for those victims. victims. And then I realized there's, I mean, there's public information out there about John Bat, and he was able to, he was able to go to the, what is the command selection school? I forgot what it's called, B-CAP. He was able to go to B-CAP and also make the promotion list for 05

while he was being investigated for sexual assault. So I was just, and he was, and he was, also, like, his previous duty assignment was the 75th Regiment. So I was just, like, kind of really floored. I was like, oh, my gosh, like, number, I was absolutely right. Like, all of these things where I was like, oh, they didn't flag him right, like, blah, blah, blah. I was right about all that stuff. But was also really interesting was watching this trial where this guy, you know, what the other victims were saying was he was like a serial rapist.

and strangled people. Pretty gruesome stuff. There were 15 victims in that case. But what was bizarre to see was they met the guy the same way. They met him on a dating app. And like when I compared, so I'm not an attorney,

but I feel like I'm a pretty smart person. And when I compared what I knew as evidence in my own case, and then I compared the evidence of like each individual, you know, case, I was like, well, the evidence in my case was better. So I went, you know, when I had this meeting with Oostick, I kind of brought that up. I was like, well, the evidence in my case was, was better than any one of those individual, like, reports of rape that you just prosecuted and you won, and the guy got sentenced to 50 years. So what the heck? And they kind of said, like, well, there was only one of you, and there were 15 of them in that case, and there was only one of you.

That was the, that was like the, I'm paraphrasing, but that was the gist of the discussion. And so I, I mean, again, like, I'm grateful that I can talk about this with you because, on, you know, on a platform because, because OSTIC hasn't solved, like, there's, I mean, we've just listed off like dozens of things, right? We've just talked about dozens of things that, that OSTIC was never going, the Office of Special trial counsel was never going to be able to solve lots of these things that we've listed out. And, you know, now military sexual assault is like, it's no longer on Congress's radar. And obviously, like, I know the world has a lot of things to deal with right now.

Arguably, we, you know, need to figure out what we're doing as a country in order to deal with military sexual assault, right? But I suppose I just, you know, I'm grateful to have this platform just to be able to talk about some of the stuff. And you then, you know, kind of the case got dismissed the second time. You went through the appeals process. Kind of the last, it seems like maybe the last thing you tried to do was to go to Congress. Yeah, I asked some really specific things, such as, you know, how is a rape victim supposed to be able to report her rape, his or her, you know, or sexual assault, knowing that the person's, you know, the person they're reporting to is nicknamed Dick Pick Six. and or, you know, the Secretary of Defense is a convening authority position. I'm just throwing that out there.

It is. So I asked some really specific questions of like, you know, when are you going to appoint members to the advisory committees that recommend, you know, updates and changes to how sexual assault cases are prosecuted? When are you going to do these things? I was blown off. I think I sent you like that response.

Yeah, yeah. I was primarily blown off. So I, you know, yeah, that's, I mean, that's where it is right now. Again, like I understand that the country, has lots of things to contend with right now, but the Secretary of Defense is harming more than he is helping this issue of sexual assault. So the congressional inquiry, it did go to Senator Ernst, Senator Gillibrand, with citing your article all over the place.

And supposedly they reviewed it. It, they reviewed the contents of it with the Senate Armed Services Committee, personnel subcommittee. And Major General Pepin is still out there in some command position, I believe. So, yeah, from a personal standpoint, I'm not quite sure where I'm going after this, but definitely some kind of like advocacy of some sort of future. So you're recently separated from the military, and I know, I mean, on one hand, do you have these experiences that, you know, sway you in one direction? But, I mean, you're in a much better place to have some perspective on this than I am. What do you think is the current feelings of female service members today about this issue? you know, sort of like, what's it like being a woman working on a military installation in

2006? Let me see. So I was assigned at Walter Reed for a chunk of time. And every time I, I mean, every time I was asked how I felt in a command climate survey, I would say that I was very bothered by the fact that trans people are getting kicked out. that black and and female general officers are being fired. And, I mean, I've, I had people tell me that Secretary of Defense Heggseth's meeting at Fort Belvoir when he brought all the generals in. I mean, I have a quote from a friend who said, I don't know how anybody could take that as being basically just a dog whistle for sexual assault.

that was this person's that was the front of mind's interpretation um so i hmm uh let me see other other service members that have experiences that i've that i've talked to um i i will refer to that that bat case john bat um of the of the 15 victims that participated in the trial were civilians and this case went to trial because a group of civilians got on a Facebook page and talked about who was raping everyone. Holy shit. So there obviously like, you know, like 15 people. Well, he didn't just start doing that yesterday. He was assigned in the military district of Washington for probably two, two and a half.

years, three years before he got court-martialed, there was one. And I think somebody that was close to the case told me that she thought that maybe the only reason that that victim was included was so that it didn't look like it was a bunch of civilians and no female service members. So what I'm saying is that there were female service members. Lots of them chose not to participate. I see. Yeah. which says something in of itself. I, yeah, I think it, yeah, I agree with you. It kind of says a lot when we've supposedly got this great system set up in the Office of Special Trial Council is advertising.

They're advertising that case as being like, well, this is evidence that this will not be tolerated. We don't have, we don't tolerate this in our military. They cited this case as evidence of that. But I looked at it and I was like, okay, so you mean the case where 98% of the victims were civilians? That's the case that you're citing is no tolerance. There was so many women coming forward that they couldn't deny it. They couldn't hide from it at that point. Yeah.

Yeah. So in any case, I, hmm. I suppose, like, having gone through this, I feel like, like, like, the meme where you can take, like, the red pill or the blue pill, like, I took the pill. Like, I took the pill and now I, now I know what's behind the curtain and I can't ever, I can't ever not know. Yeah. You know how the sauce of it's made. Yeah. I think, like, I, I never would have imagined that.

all of the all of the politics that exist in the military about you know even like the i g even the way decisions are made who gets promoted who doesn't um who gets assigned to special command positions i never dreamed that the same politics exist in who gets court martial for sexual assault and who doesn't they absolutely exist i think a few other things it's it's it's how well connected that officer is. A few other things that Ossick shared with me in that meeting was, you know, they provide extra scrutiny for anyone who's 05 and above. Automatically, that charge decision is afforded extra scrutiny. They also shared with me that they didn't believe that panel members, so the jury members, would convict someone with

who is retirement eligible. And that goes into their charging decisions. So these are all like the same things that we all sort of think. And they said out loud. Yeah, things that are immaterial to a crime. Yeah. So. I think unfortunately, you know, your story is emblematic in how many of these officers

close ranks and protect one another. when push comes to shove. Yeah. It's sad. And, I mean, the way that it's done, like, I mean, what was also interesting watching the bat trial was I was watching, I was watching, like, the same thing that happened to me where, you know, I read all this stuff about, like, oh, rape myth after rape myth, just kind of tied together. And let's just fling a bunch of stuff against the wall and call it legal, you know, call it a legal. justification or a legal position. And I was watching that for, you know, 15 other people, one right after the other.

And then I think the other thing that I noticed a lot of was all of the victim's rights. So if you are a victim of a crime, you automatically get this little pamphlet and it says, here's your rights. Like 70% of the time, and this was just interesting. because there were so many people, 70% of the time, whenever there was like a conflict between the perpetrator's rights versus the victim, the judge was favoring the perpetrator,

the John Bat, the individual accused of the crime. Like 70% of the time, if there was like a conflict between the two, he would side with the perpetrator. So I think what I'm getting at is that we're allowing this. we are setting the conditions to allow these rape myths to drive charging decisions, to drive um, if, if people don't get charged, then everybody thinks, well, the problem isn't that bad. And if the problem is not that bad, well, then probably that person's just, they're just,

they're exaggerating their stories. And if the evidence doesn't wind up going into the trial, well, you think, well, then there's only one person. it's like a self-flicking ice cream cone and the legal apparatus is there to allow for it to happen. That's what I'm that that was my takeaway of all of this. And so again, like I, you know, I took the pill and I can't unknow any of this anymore. But I don't think that younger female service members do not understand like that that was actually that that was going to be one of my, my, my next questions here, Bethany's. what would you say to a 17-year-old in high school or a 21-year-old in ROTC, a younger person, specifically a woman that's thinking about joining the military?

What advice would you give them? Five years ago, I would have said, I would have, like, supported it. Five years ago, we were kind of going in the right direction. Okay. Five years ago, five years ago was 2020. the implementation of the Office of Special Trial Council, I would have supported it at that time. And now I would say no, this is not, like, these are years of my life, I can't get back. Even if, even if I hadn't dug my heels in and said, like, no, I'm not, I'm not backing down.

The Army is going to, they are going to go through this until it's done. it's it's not going to be me that is the person that decides that all this is over. If I, even if I hadn't done that, well, I was still exposed to a person that should have been kicked out three years before I met him and assaulted. Even if, even if I hadn't participated in the court martial process at all, that still happened. And then when I reported it, people covered it up. So no, I would not recommend, my goodness, I think I have like 20, 25 nieces and nephews right now, I would not, I would not recommend to pursue military service, especially not now, especially not. So.

And that's reflected in the recruitment numbers and especially a lot of those of us who are veterans are not encouraging their children to join the military. Yeah. And I think it's reflective also in public approval polls of the U.S. military are at its lowest point, I think, since like 1988. It's kind of unprecedented. And it's unfortunate. It shouldn't be like that.

And a lot of the things that you've been talking about on this show, Bethany, it's very frustrating for me as sort of an outside observer of some of these things because these are problems that do have, many of them have solutions. I mean, getting to justice is, you know, getting to justice is difficult sometimes. a lot of times it is. It's a tough process. But there are solutions to many of these things that you've mentioned, many of these like bureaucratic hurdles that don't work.

They don't make sense. And we could have resolved them. We could have results a lot of this stuff in like the 1990s if we wanted to. But then you see all these like scandals coming out and women being murdered, sex assaults. And the public becomes very aware of it. And even then, as you point out, the military has still not fixed. these problems and they will gaslight victims, but they'll also gaslight the American public

and tell them in these hearings, we're doing things, we're fixing this. We found no malfeasance in our ranks, no ethical concerns at all, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, just going through their teeth. Yeah, I think, I mean, the SHARP program, they tell you that every, I mean, you get a briefing every year and it tells you that there's no tolerance for sexual assault, sexual harassment. So you believe it. And I believed it for 20 years. 20 years, I believe that.

And I, like, Tail Hook was, tail hook was 30 years ago. And we're still screwing around with the same problems that have solutions that, in any case, yeah. Well, Bethany, tell us, you know, you're recently separated from the military. If you want to, you want to tell us kind of like where you're at now, were you planning to go in the future as far as your plans? Let me see.

So I have a civilian job that I went back to. I'm going to refrain from mentioning my employer on this podcast. But I work in a financial analyst capacity. And I enjoy it. I also, you know, I do want to pivot toward some kind of advocacy at some point. And I think, you know, I'm very newly separated. So what I didn't realize that getting out is kind of like a, it's kind of, it's a big life change. I, you know, it's 20, you know, 22 years in my life, I've always been accountable to a commander somewhere.

And I'm not now. And it's a really good feeling. I have to, I have to say. Or just to be able to talk about some of the things to be able to go on. on this podcast and talk about what I dislike about what the government did or didn't do. Just the ability to do that is really refreshing. So I would say, yeah, like I'm intending to pursue some kind of advocacy in this space. And I'm still trying to, I'm figuring out what that means.

So I'm figuring out what that looks like. Yeah. And as you're saying this, I can think of a couple people. I'd like to put you in touch with too, that, you know, one woman in particular went through absolute, you know, hell in the military. She was the spouse of a soldier, but she's involved in advocacy and is doing much, much better today. I'd love to put you guys in touch.

Yeah, that would be great. Yeah, I would appreciate that. Any other final thoughts before we get going for tonight. Again, I really appreciate you coming on the show and speaking. so candidly about, you know, what is a very difficult subject. There's no getting around that. I think, like, aside from the need for further legislation, a big part of why I decided to speak about this if and when I had the opportunity to do so was that when I was going through it, I read everything that I could get my hands on. I read probably a lot. I read lots of your articles

about these issues. I read any other experience that another service member had going through this. And I couldn't find a lot. I couldn't find very much that was like recent, that somebody that had gotten through this like recently. And I mean, a lot of people never speak out about it at all. So I decided really early on, like if I have the opportunity to do so, I'm doing that because when I was going through this and I was absorbing all this, you know,

everybody else's experiences, it made me feel less alone. So that's the other big piece, you know, is that if you are going through this, you're not alone, it's not you. You're probably being gaslit every which way to Sunday. It's not you. This is a, the sharp program has come a long way, but there's still so many more things that could be improved upon and allowing for. for somebody to go through this and have a better experience,

um, as opposed to just ensuring that justice is served for the perpetrator. So that's it. Thank you, Jack. I really appreciate you allow me to come on here. Thank you so much. Thank you, Bethany. It's so wild to like, you know,

this has been like three years of my life and a lot of it started from your article. So. Yeah. No, I'm, I'm sorry to hear all of this. I hope that you're able to find a little bit of closure through telling your story publicly like this. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. Yes, you have no idea.

And yet everyone else watching this, listening to this, thank you for joining us tonight. Hope you'll share this with other service members or potential service members in your life. It's important information. As Bethany mentions, hire a civilian attorney. That's an important step. Absolutely. And otherwise, we will see all of you guys on the next show. Thank you for joining us. And thank you, Bethany. Thank you, Jack. Have a good one. Hey, guys, I want to tell all of you today about a new newsletter that we're launching that encompasses both the Team House podcast, the Eyes on podcast, and the high side news outlet, which I run with Sean Naylor.

The newsletter is going to be once a week. It's going to come into your inbox and you're going to to get the most current podcasts on Aizon and the Teamhouse and whatever's topical or current on the high side. So it's another way for us to get the information out to you as social media algorithms are pretty iffy and you never really know what you're going to get. So this is a once a week email. It'll slide into your inbox and it will have, you know, the greatest hits of that week. It's really good. I'm checking it out. The website for it is teamhousepodcast.kitt.com slash join. Teamhousepodcast.com slash join.

You go there and you enter into your email list or you enter your email into the little thing on the website and you're good to go and that'll be it. So we really appreciate your support and hope you'll consider signing up. Where's the link? The link will also be down in the description if you're looking for it there. And that's teamhousepodcast.kittkiloindiatango.com backslash join.