An American soldier raped several women between 2006 and 2017. Although the army had been informed, none of the cases went to court, it was only given a note in his personal file. Until it met his own daughter – who insisted on trial and publicity.
A US Army sergeant major has been sentenced to 13 years in prison. He had been charged with raping various women for years, but was never brought up for any consequences by the army. Instead of convictions, Randall SH had always got away with settlements in lawsuits and with entries in his personnel file. So he could keep his crimes secret from others. It wasn’t until one of his victims was his 16-year-old daughter that the previous cover-ups were exposed. The underage girl insisted on going public so that her father could finally get under lock and key.
On March 30, H. pleaded guilty to eight counts in a court in Fort Drum, New York, and is now awaiting transfer to Fort Leavensworth, Kansas, to serve his prison sentence. Some of his victims, like his daughter, renounced their anonymity in order to denounce the army because they did not arrest the man, which would have prevented his further attacks.
A victim reports
One of the victims, Leah R., told the Army Times that investigators found her account credible but decided to let H. get away with a warning. Her ordeal began when her husband, also a sergeant major, invited H. to a Super Bowl party at her home in Texas in 2017. Spurred on by H., her husband drank one whiskey after the other and at some point passed out while drunk. She put her husband to bed, the party was over and all the guests said goodbye. When she was alone with H. on the terrace, he suggested sex. After Leah R. said no, he grabbed her, pressed her against a grill, then pulled her hair into the house and raped her. R. then hid in the bathroom until H. had left the house.
“I waited until morning and then went to the hospital for an examination,” Leah R. told the Army Times. The army’s crime investigation division, on the other hand, was ineffective from the start. “It took them two days to get into my house and secure evidence, so I lived on a crime scene for 48 hours. And then it took them three years to do anything at all.” After a year of investigation, the team decided that R’s accounts were credible and that there was enough evidence. But the army refused to prosecute him. Instead, H. received a written warning for his personnel file.
Everything was covered up
Leah R. and her husband moved away, first to Fort Benning, Georgia, then back to Texas, to Ford Hood. The woman had the feeling that there was nothing she could do. Little did she know that H’s ex-wife had accused him of rape back in 2006 while he was still stationed at Fort Carson, Colorado. The charges were dropped as part of the settlement in H.’s criminal case.
During the investigation into the R. case in the summer of 2017, H. raped his girlfriend at the time. H. came to an agreement again in the criminal proceedings, the investigators found the documents, but disregarded them, although his girlfriend had testified that he had cut them with a broken bottle.
Then his daughter moved in with him
In late 2017, H’s 14-year-old daughter Lesley moved in with her father, her mother ignoring the previous three rape allegations. “I had no idea there was anything in it,” she said. In retrospect, she believes that H. took the teenager in to distract the investigators. “Apparently he wanted to look like an upright single father. I didn’t know he was being investigated. And Fort Bliss allowed him a 14-year-old girl to join him at the base.”
Lesley, who is 17 today, said her father behaved inappropriately towards her and offered her drugs. His misconduct increased when they switched bases and went to Fort Dix, New Jersey. On March 25, 2020, he gave the girl sleeping pills and raped her, reports the Army Times. H’s prosecution did not include this charge, but he did confess to sexual abuse and assault on a child.
His daughter is speeding up the lawsuit against him
“He wanted an agreement so that he would get the minimum of years,” said his daughter. As a minor, she asked, with her mother’s permission, to be featured on the Army Times article to highlight the number of missed opportunities to put him behind bars. She agreed to the deal so that justice could be done quickly, writes the Army Times. H. pleaded guilty of rape in two cases, cited in two cases of sexual assault with assault, one case of sexual abuse of a child, one case of assault with assault on a child, one case of offensive language and one case of adultery the Army Times from the court records.
“If I’d said no to the deal,” says Lesley, “it would have meant years in court. It was the easiest way for anyone to close it out and lock him up before harming anyone else.” Lesley had told her mother about the abuse by her father and they had reported the crime. Investigators eventually found the warning in H’s personnel file on the Leah R. “I was very lucky to have investigators who really took care of them because they found all the other things and started adding up,” says Lesley. “It was crazy because nobody knew the extent of what they did to others.”
Don Christensen, President of Protect Our Defenders (POD), a national organization devoted exclusively to addressing rape and sexual offenses in the military in the United States, the number of which is constantly increasing.
© Brendan Smialowski / AFP / Getty Images
“I am not ashamed”
Lesley explains, “I’m not ashamed of what he did to me. I want people to know that I am a minor, that I am a daughter.” Lesley, her mother, and Leah R. praised Fort Dix investigators but accused the army of not stopping H. years ago when his first rape was reported in 2006. Army Deputy Chief Public Affairs Director Michael Brady told the Army Times that the “likely reason” is that prosecution is not always appropriate.
Former Air Force chief prosecutor Col. Don Christensen, now retired and currently president of Protect Our Defenders, told Army senior officials they should be shocked by H’s story. “Contrary to the persistent myth that suspicious military sex offenders are prosecuted at high rates, the reality is that there is a chain of command that rarely goes to court,” he explains. Only 49 percent of the cases would be charged and only a third of these would go to court. Commanders instead often issued extrajudicial penalties and administrative measures, he added. “Commanders should be appalled by their failure to hold the rapist accountable. It enabled a sex offender to commit a wave of crimes against numerous victims.
source: “Army Times”
This article originally appeared on stern.de.