Army Sergeant Is Convicted of Indecent Assault in Sex Inquiry

A U.S. military jury here cleared an Army sergeant Thursday of rape and sodomy charges but found him guilty on multiple counts of indecent assault in the first conviction at a foreign base since the Army launched a worldwide probe of sexual harassment within its ranks.

Sgt. 1st Class Julius Davis was sentenced to two years in prison, a dishonorable discharge and a reduction in rank by the five-man jury that convicted him on 11 counts involving sexual misconduct after more than a dozen women testified that he had behaved improperly.

Davis is one of three instructors in the V Corps accused of sex-related crimes at this training base about 30 miles south of Frankfurt, where soldiers attend a two-week orientation course after arriving for duty in Germany. More than half of the 84,000 U.S. soldiers on duty in Europe serve in the V Corps.

The Darmstadt sex scandal was the first to rock the U.S. military community in Europe in the wake of accusations of sexual impropriety at a training center in Aberdeen, Md., that led to the appointment of a military panel to investigate the scope of the problem in the Army.

In closing arguments, the prosecutor, Maj. Michael Klausner, argued that Davis exploited his rank to take advantage of rookie female soldiers and to intimidate them so they would not report his abuses. He called Davis “a sexual predator in a target-rich environment.”

But a defense attorney, Maj. Linda Taylor, argued that Davis was the victim of a “witch hunt” conducted by criminal investigators engaged in a frenzied campaign to uncover evidence of sexual harassment after three sergeants were convicted of rape and other charges at Aberdeen.

Army spokesmen said other V Corps instructors face courts-martial on sexual-harassment charges. Sgt. 1st Class Paul Fuller is to appear in court next week on 17 charges, including rape, sodomy and cruelty to a subordinate. A third sergeant has been accused of sexual misconduct and remains under investigation.