Navy Court-Martial to Begin in Sexual Assault Case : Trial: Proceedings begin three years after a woman security officer allegedly was attacked during a training class.

After nearly three years of military snafus and lost documents, U.S. Navy officials plan to begin court-martial proceedings against a petty officer accused of sexual assault at the Long Beach Naval Station, authorities said this week.

Earnest L. Simon faces a military criminal trial Oct. 26 on charges that he attacked a female security officer during a police training class in November, 1989.

Christine Jongejan, 30, said that Simon grabbed her out of a chair, forced her on top of a table and simulated sex in front of fellow security officers. She also says Simon attacked her again moments later.

Simon, 43, admitted picking her up but denied touching her in a sexual manner, said his civilian attorney, Kenneth R. Norgaard of San Diego. “There’s some truth to what she’s saying, but we deny any sexual touching,” Norgaard said.

The court-martial is scheduled to begin in San Diego five days before Simon had planned to retire from the Navy after more than 20 years of service, Norgaard said.

Originally, the case was closed after officials at the Long Beach Naval Station Security Department failed to forward Jongejan’s complaint to the station’s commanding officer and records of their investigation disappeared.

By the time the Navy’s higher ranking officials learned of the case in 1991, they said it was too late to look into it because of a technicality in Simon’s status with the Navy.

But earlier this year, Adm. Robert J. Kelly, commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, reopened the case. Recently, officials decided to proceed with a general court-martial against Simon, who now is assigned to the San Diego Naval Base, said Capt. Mark Neuhart, a Navy spokesman in San Diego.

If Simon is found guilty, the maximum penalty would be a bad-conduct discharge and six months in confinement.

The announcement of the court-martial proceedings came at the same time that Jongejan filed suit against Simon and the Navy for unspecified damages.

Jongejan said that even if Simon is found guilty, it would not make up for a breakdown in the system that allowed her complaint to slip through the cracks. “I could care less what happens to him,” she said. “I want (the Navy) to take action so that something like this never happens again.”

The lawsuit filed in federal court in Los Angeles claims that the Navy failed to provide adequate training to prevent sexual harassment and failed to properly investigate such incidents. The lawsuit asks the court to order the Navy to “develop and implement policies and procedures designed to eradicate unlawful sexual discrimination, sexual harassment and sexual assault.”

Navy officials would not comment on the lawsuit other than to point out that the department adopted several measures last month to “change the culture, environment and attitudes that have previously allowed sexual harassment to occur.”

Among other things, the Navy plans to develop a department-wide system to track sexual harassment complaints and incidents of sexual assault and rape. The Navy has been under increasing scrutiny following accounts of sexual assaults and harassment by pilots attending a Tailhook Assn. convention in Las Vegas last year.

Norgaard said he was unaware of Jongejan’s lawsuit and could not comment on it.

As for the incident, Simon admits to “some sexual horseplay” but he “denies any sexual assault,” Norgaard said.

“There was some sexual bantering going on . . . and he picked her up, put her on the table, spread her legs, but there was no touching,” Norgaard said. “The minute she indicated she didn’t like what was going on, he stopped it.”

Simon also denies a second incident. “All the witnesses we talked to said there was one incident, not two,” Norgaard said.

But Jongejan said she was assaulted twice, and her life has not been the same since.

According to Jongejan, fellow workers in the Security Department, where civilian and military officers together patrol the base and Navy housing, have given her the cold-shoulder treatment and maligned her reputation. The name-calling got so bad, Jongejan said, that she began getting migraines and became nauseated at work.

Two months ago, Jongejan, the mother of two young children, went on a stress-related disability leave but planned to return to work part time this week. She has seen a therapist in recent months. “That has helped me,” she said.

Jongejan and her family also moved from their home in Redondo Beach after getting phone calls “at all hours of the night.”

“Now, nobody knows where I live,” she said.