Sex in Bancroft Hall and an unsubstantiated charge of rape embroils a Navy football star and the Naval Academy hierarchy in a courtroom ordeal that satisfies no one—and underscores the difficulties the military still faces in dealing with sexual misconduct cases.
Don Guter, who served as Judge Advocate General of the Navy from 2000 to 2002, said acquaintance rape cases in the post-Tailhook era pose special challenges to convening authorities throughout the Navy.
When he headed the Naval Legal Service Office in Norfolk in the mid-1990s, he said, many commanding officers sent weak sexual assault cases to trial, preferring to let the legal system handle the allegations, even if there was no chance of a conviction. His office bore the brunt of that policy, losing several dozen date and acquaintance rape cases in a row.
"Maybe there's some other process that can be used," said Guter, now dean of the Duquesne University Law School. "Most commanders end up defaulting to the judicial process. They're damned if they do and damned if they don't."
Quarterback Sack
On the evening of 17 February 2006, Midshipman First Class Lamar Owens strode to the podium in Alumni Hall to face an overflow crowd of Navy fans eager to celebrate a renaissance in the football fortunes of the U.S. Naval Academy.
Photo slides played on a giant screen, reminding everyone of the star quarterback's triumphs during one of Navy's best seasons in decades: the 10-point comeback he orchestrated against Air Force in the game's final three minutes, the 1-yard end zone plunge after leading the offense across the field against Notre Dame, three rushing touchdowns against Army, and a 55-yard scoring pass on the opening play of the Poinsettia Bowl.
At two earlier banquets Owens, the team's marquee player, had collected trophies for leading the midshipmen to an unprecedented three straight victories over Army and Air Force and a second straight bowl win.
Former Navy Secretaries John Dalton and Gordon England had personally congratulated him, as had Bill Belichick, the esteemed coach of the New England Patriots, whose father had coached at the Academy.
At the Alumni Hall ceremony, Head Coach Paul Johnson spoke movingly about Owens, who had committed to play under Johnson at Georgia Southern and followed him to Annapolis in 2002 when he took the Navy job.
Like the team he led, Owens was small and quick, surprising defensive powerhouses and their outsize players with his agility and willingness to take crushing blows as he waited till the last possible second to pitch the ball in Navy's triple-option offense, often enabling breakaway dashes from his running backs.
He was the comeback quarterback, the ultimate underdog on a team of underdogs. But as he rose to his feet to accept the E. E. "Rip" Miller Award as Navy's most valuable player, the young African-American looked troubled. At the podium, he talked about his faith, thanked Coach Johnson and his teammates, and quoted Scripture, as was his custom.
Few who attended that Alumni Hall event knew what was bothering him, only his parents, Coach Johnson, and a handful of others, including Vice Admiral Rodney P. Rempt, the Academy Superintendent. No one said anything about what lay ahead.
Five days later, the Academy charged Owens with sneaking into the room of a female midshipman in Bancroft Hall, the dormitory that houses all 4,400 midshipmen, men and women, and raping her.
From the very beginning, the case against Lamar Owens was riddled with contradictions, emotionally charged—and destined to become a cause célèbre for both sides. Until the incident, Owens had a record in which he could take pride. Even then, while admitting he had intercourse with the woman, he contended that she had invited him to do so. She conceded she had been binge drinking that night and allowed that she may have encouraged him to visit her.
After an Article 32 hearing—the Navy's equivalent of a grand jury proceeding—the case was brought to trial. The court-martial found Owens not guilty of rape, but concluded he had engaged in conduct unbecoming an officer by having sex in Bancroft, a lesser-included offense. With the approval of the Secretary of the Navy, Owens was dismissed from the Academy, denied a degree, and ordered to repay some $90,000 of the cost of his education.
His accuser was found to have broken numerous Academy regulations, but faced no charges and received her degree and a commission. Controversy continues about whether there was undue command influence in the case.
The Owens imbroglio has driven a wedge between Academy alumni. Many applaud Vice Admiral Rempt's handling of a dicey situation, but an unusually vocal contingent is infuriated.
Among the offended graduates, Owens is seen as a casualty of the Academy's efforts to integrate women and eliminate a cultural hostility toward them that lingers some three decades after they were first admitted to the school in 1976.
Senior Navy officials, including Superintendent Rempt, Judge Advocate General of the Navy Rear Admiral Bruce McDonald, and Navy Secretary Donald Winter argue in effect that Owens is getting what he deserves. At the very least, they seem to feel, he is guilty of an admittedly irresponsible sexual encounter in the middle of the night with an intoxicated woman in a place where such behavior is forbidden.
A year after the legal proceedings ended, the case continues to sharply divide Naval Academy alumni. It also has entered the annals of what is becoming confusing—and clearly embarrassing—case law involving sexual harassment in the military. For the Academy itself, it was another of several high-profile incidents that have occurred since women were admitted to the school in 1976.
According to complaints over the past 30 years, women midshipmen have been jeered and pulled down from the end-of-year plebe climbs of the Herndon Monument. In 1989, a group of male midshipmen handcuffed a 19-year-old female mid to a urinal after a series of escalating pranks. Seven years later, the third-highest-ranking midshipman in the Brigade was accused of sneaking into the dorm rooms of four women and sexually assaulting them. (He was later cleared of the assault charges, but expelled for sexual misconduct.) In 2000, three football players were accused of gang-raping a female midshipman at an off-campus party. Civilian prosecutors dropped the charges when the trio offered to resign.
The Navy, moreover, still is haunted by the scandal that emerged from the 1991 Tailhook convention in Las Vegas, where 83 women and 7 men claimed they had been victims of sexual assault or harassment during a two-day session that attracted 4,000 attendees. The fallout ended or damaged the careers of some 14 admirals and almost 300 aviators. Navy Secretary H. Lawrence Garrett III and Admiral Frank Kelso, then Chief of Naval Operations, stepped down from their posts prematurely.
But such problems are evident in other services as well. A survey of women stationed with U.S. forces in Iraq recently disclosed an alarming proportion that said they had been victims of rape or sexual harassment. In 2003, current and former female cadets at the Air Force Academy took rape allegations to Congress and the media after allegedly being ignored by the school's senior officers. The academy Superintendent, Lieutenant General John R. Dallager, and his three top subordinates were eventually fired. Dallager was demoted as well.
That same year, a nationwide study sponsored by the Pentagon of women veterans seeking V.A. health care found that nearly one-third said they had been victims of rape or attempted rape while in the service, the New York Times reported this past March.
Lawrence J. Korb, former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manpower during the Reagan administration, says the Owens case will take its place among dozens of incidents that the military gradually is learning to deal with—and, hopefully, prevent, both at the service academies and in operational environments. The Naval Academy is charged with training "the next generation of people who are going to be leaders under difficult conditions," said Korb. "We hold them to a higher standard."
The Story Unfolds
At first, the allegations against Owens appeared more substantial than the majority of he-said/she-said cases reported at the Academy. He made several potentially incriminating comments as he emotionally apologized to his accuser in a telephone conversation recorded by agents of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS). And testimony from the accuser, her boyfriend, and close friends went largely unchallenged at the Article 32 hearing on 8 and 9 March 2006. Here is the gist of their account:
Owens' accuser—whom Proceedings will not name because she was an alleged victim of sexual assault—spent the evening of Saturday, 28 January, with her female friends, traveling around Annapolis and drinking in various haunts, including a T.G.I.Friday's restaurant and the Acme Bar & Grill on Main Street, the city's central thoroughfare.
Eager to unwind, she drank three rum and Diet Cokes, and downed four shots—two of tequila, one Southern Comfort, and a Kamikaze shooter. She waited until the bar closed to call her midshipman boyfriend so he could escort her on the five-minute walk back to the Academy.
Her boyfriend, Mitchell Dow, a member of the sprint (lightweight) football squad who graduated in May 2007, went to get her right away, helping her and several other women—all of whom had been drinking heavily—back to their rooms in Bancroft Hall. He tucked his girlfriend in bed. She made a few advances, but he resisted, fearful of getting caught in a compromising situation in Bancroft, which is tantamount to breaking Navy rules prohibiting sexual hijinks on board ship. She slapped him playfully, and he left at about 0330 Sunday morning. She went online not long after, exchanging a few instant messages with Dow, inviting him back to her room. She sent her last message to him at 0347, after which she changed her clothes and returned to bed.
When she awoke, she said, Lamar Owens was standing near her bed (she slept on the top bunk), trying to kiss her. They were acquaintances in the same Academy company, and he had occasionally sent her text messages complimenting her looks or lamenting that he didn't have a chance to flirt with her or, as she says he put it, ""to spit my game at you.""
She told him she had a boyfriend, and tried to go to sleep. The next thing she remembered was feeling him on top of her. She was naked from the waist down. She didn't tell him "no," but tried to move away, pulling her body up to the headboard so he would stop, but he grabbed her legs. The second time she pulled herself back, he stopped and abruptly left.
After a few minutes, she sent a text message to Dow, "I'm scared," and a few minutes later a second one. He ran to her room and heard sobbing as he reached her door. He opened it. She was on the bed, lying in the fetal position, hysterical. Dow tried to calm her, but she couldn't speak for the next half hour. "I think I've been raped," she finally said, identifying Lamar Owens.
Over the next 24 hours, two of the woman's close friends—at her urging—would confront Owens after she told them she had tried and failed to persuade herself that it wasn't rape. Sitting in a small courtyard on the Academy grounds, he told them that the woman was in her bed when he entered the room and that he himself had been drinking that night after partying in Baltimore with a few teammates, according to the testimony of the woman's friends. She had invited him in, Owens told them, and "things escalated."
Owens' accuser—a petite white woman with short blonde hair, 20 years old at the time, and, like many who testified at the trial, a varsity athlete—at first made a "restricted report," allowing her to get a vaginal exam and use counseling services without going to authorities. The exam found no signs of injury and no traces of Owens' semen. She delayed reporting the alleged assault to NCIS because she was afraid her peers would turn against her, said close friend Betsy Burnett, a basketball player.
"Any girl at our school who turns in a guy is going to be crucified," Burnett said at the hearing. "And he was Midshipman Owens, he was the quarterback of the football team, a very good football team. He leads Bible study, and this was a terrible position to put her in."
Throughout the two-day Article 32 hearing in March, just a single piece of exculpatory evidence emerged while Owens' accuser was being cross-examined. When one of his attorneys asked her whether it were possible that she consented and didn't remember, she said "It's possible." But then she quickly added: "I wouldn't define it as consent if I can't remember it happening."
A day after the alleged rape, NCIS agents recorded a cell phone conversation between the woman and Owens, an unusual step in Academy cases. The call produced what would become the centerpiece of the government's case. Early on in the short call, the woman asked Owens whether she should take a pregnancy test or whether she could have contracted a sexually transmitted disease. "I didn't do it long," he replied, later adding, "You weren't awake and I stopped." Although Owens never uttered the word "rape," he said he wanted to kill himself when he woke up the next day. "I know I can't take it back, but if I could . . . I would change everything. That's nothing I would ever do," he said. "I could never expect you to forgive me."
About a month after the Article 32 hearing, Admiral Rempt, the Academy's superintendent, called on Head Coach Johnson and asked him to persuade Owens to offer his resignation, according to two people the coach has spoken with about the encounter. Together with his attorneys, Owens drafted two resignation letters, one before and one after it was announced in April that he would face a general court-martial. But negotiations broke down over his unwillingness to admit guilt; he never agreed to say anything other than that the sex was consensual. Rempt, in an interview, declined to comment on the negotiations. Johnson refused to be interviewed, as did Owens and his accuser.
The Unraveling
By the time the rape charges against Owens reached a Washington Navy Yard courtroom in July 2006, the case had all the trappings of a Hollywood legal drama: a gifted black athlete on trial for raping a white woman, a five-person jury with no African-Americans on it, an aggressive defense lawyer recruited by powerful alumni, a blunt-spoken judge, and impeccably attired midshipmen, all calmly tearing the lid off a previously unexposed subculture of drinking and partying at Annapolis.
The opening day of the court martial set the stage for the rest of the trial: two Navy prosecutors with comparatively limited courtroom experience pressing the case of a woman with an admittedly faulty memory facing off against a team of seasoned, highly-skilled defense lawyers.
From the opening statements on 11 July, it was clear the trial would be as much about Owens' accuser as it would about him. The Navy prosecutors went first, presenting the case against Owens much as they had at the Article 32 hearing, saying he had gone uninvited into the room of a woman who was drunk and forced himself on her despite her physical resistance and intermittent losses of consciousness.
Then Reid Weingarten, the veteran white-collar criminal attorney who had signed on as Owens' defense counsel, took his turn. No crime was committed here, Weingarten told the court-martial panel of four men and one woman. He then proceeded to publicly recount Owens' side of the story for the first time.
The woman sent Owens an instant message inviting him to her room, the lawyer said; he didn't just show up there. His accuser, however, was known to frequently drink to excess, often becoming promiscuous with men when she did, and then, sometimes minutes later, growing angry when they left her side. She also had a severe blackout problem, Weingarten said, causing her to forget things she had done, things that might embarrass her later.
The case against Owens ran aground that same day when prosecutors put the woman on the stand for six hours. Her testimony about the alleged rape remained largely the same, but Weingarten's cross-examination zeroed in on her drinking habits. She said she didn't remember any of the instances he brought up about her flirting with one or more men. She did, however, admit to frequent binge drinking, although she testified she had stopped drinking entirely since the incident. Asked why she binged on a certain evening, the woman said she had had a tough day, including running into terrible traffic in Washington on the way to an event. "So your reaction to traffic in D.C. was to binge?" Weingarten asked.
The key question—among the most important of the case—was why Owens went to the woman's room. Weingarten asserted that she had invited his client in a computer instant message. She denied it, and said she didn't remember telling her midshipman boyfriend in the days after the alleged rape that she had been exchanging instant messages with Owens before the assault.
However, the boyfriend, Mitchell Dow, had already testified in the Article 32 hearing that she had told him precisely that. Moreover, the woman's friends had said in that same hearing that Owens told them as much just hours after the incident when they confronted him. All would repeat that testimony at the court martial. Why would she forget something like that, Weingarten asked?
The woman maintained her composure under the lawyer's deliberate, softly worded, yet pointed, questions. But her answers often seemed evasive. At one point during her testimony, Commander John Maksym, the judge in the case, cleared jurors from the room and warned the woman to tell the truth or face legal consequences. By the time she stepped down, the damage was done. Although Maksym denied a defense motion to dismiss the case, he chided prosecutors for having "anemic witnesses" and "weak facts," saying at one point that Weingarten had "eviscerated" the woman and "took her apart like a Swiss watch."
In his two hours on the witness stand, Owens said the woman invited him to her room, and, when he got there, into her bed. He couldn't tell that she was drunk, and although they scarcely spoke a word to each other, they had a passionate few minutes. Then, suddenly, she fell asleep.
"It was the most bizarre thing that ever happened to me in my life," he said. "I've never been having sex with someone and then they just stopped." When he saw that she was "resting peacefully," he left. Speaking to her friends that evening and then to the woman herself a few days later, he apologized repeatedly in hopes that she would "back off" on rape charges.
Acquitted But…
After deliberating for almost ten hours, the jury acquitted Owens of rape, but convicted him of conduct unbecoming an officer for engaging in sex in Bancroft Hall and for disobeying an order to stay away from his accuser. (He had inadvertently walked past her room in violation of orders to stay out of the section of Bancroft Hall where she lived). The jury imposed no punishment. The question of whether Owens should graduate and receive his commission was left to Vice Admiral Rempt.
A source familiar with the jury's thinking said that while the members were uncertain as to what really happened that night, they believed the prosecution didn't come close to meeting the burden of proof for the rape charge. And defense efforts to gild Owens' character, which Weingarten did throughout the trial through testimony from friends and teammates, may have backfired. The jury reasoned that as a leader of such high repute, he should be all the more accountable for an offense as serious as sex in Bancroft, the source said.
The case was not resolved quickly. In the six months following the trial's conclusion, Rempt solicited Owens' resignation once more. He offered to throw out the two convictions and the onerous obligation to repay the $136,000 cost of his education, according to Owens' legal team. Rempt declined to discuss the negotiations.
Implicit in the offer, according to Weingarten and others, was the threat that if Owens didn't resign, he would be charged under the Uniform Code of Military Justice with downloading and viewing pornography on his Academy computer.
Owens, who had been pushing papers and counting parking spaces at the Washington Navy Yard on midshipman's pay that hovered around $800 a month while he awaited a decision on his fate, refused the offer, still hoping to get his degree and commission.
On Tuesday, 13 February 2007, Owens was served with Rempt's recommendation to the Secretary of the Navy that he be expelled and denied his commission. The document cited his conviction on the two court-martial charges, the additional charge of "possessing, viewing, or displaying" pornographic images on his computer, the 185 demerits in his conduct record, and a recent failing grade he received in the semester after he was charged with rape.* But, significantly, it did not require Owens to pay back the $136,000.
Owens' defense team cried foul. By far the most controversial aspect of the ruling was again the contrast between the treatment of Owens and his accuser, who had been granted immunity at the trial for her testimony and was on her way to graduation and, if she so desired, a career as a naval officer. Owens' class had graduated without him the previous June.
Because the jury had found Owens guilty of conduct unbecoming an officer for what was essentially a violation of Academy regulations—having sex in Bancroft Hall—his lawyers insisted that the accuser, at least by the jury's reckoning, was guilty of the same offense.
Calling immunity a "standard law enforcement procedure," Rempt said he granted it to witnesses at the judge's request. Commander Maksym declined to confirm that statement or to grant an interview.
"The key point here is that if we really want to get to the truth about what are criminal cases, we have to realize that if we hold it over people's head that they're going to be punished for other stuff, I'm not going to hear much about these cases," Rempt said in the interview. "So we want to provide the free-est, least-fettered environment to do that."
The defense also argued that the jury's "no punishment" sentence should have sent a signal that members thought Owens deserved to graduate and receive a commission.
But a source familiar with the jury's thinking said that was not what members intended at all. With the "no punishment" verdict, they anticipated the Academy would weigh the matter, believing Owens' expulsion would be the likely—and just—result.
Owens appealed to Navy Secretary Winter—and hundreds of alums sent letters on his behalf, including Navy's only two Heisman Trophy winners, Roger Staubach and Joe Bellino—but once again a defense tactic backfired. On 12 April, Winter concurred with Rempt, ordering Owens' expulsion. The Secretary also demanded a recoupment of $90,797.75 of education costs, the repayment that Rempt had waived. Noting that Rear Admiral Bruce McDonald, the Navy's Judge Advocate General, had upheld the court-martial convictions, Winter said that Owens' "admitted misconduct, coupled with his general court-martial conviction, does not afford me the confidence necessary to entrust in him the extraordinary responsibilities incumbent in naval officers."
Winter declined an interview request, but a Navy official familiar with his decision-making said he thoroughly researched expulsion cases and found that the "vast majority of those caught having sex in the Hall are separated" from the service.
As for the money, Winter was concerned about precedent, the official said, noting that those who are expelled overwhelmingly are required to repay their education costs. The Secretary reduced the amount "in recognition of his (Owens') noteworthy professional conduct during the time he served as a midshipman following his anticipated graduation date."
Command Influence?
Some saw problems with the charges against Owens from the moment they were announced via e-mail on 22 February 2006 to broad sections of the Academy community, including faculty, staff, midshipmen, alumni leaders, and parents.
In an 800-word electronic missive, Navy Captain Helen Dunn, Rempt's chief of staff, emphasized that the charges were accusations until proven otherwise. Her e-mail, however, carried the aroma of prejudgment. She identified Owens by name, called his unnamed accuser a "victim" six times, and reiterated the Academy's zero tolerance stance on sexual assault.
"Our policy is clear: we do not tolerate sexual harassment or assault; these actions have no place in the Navy and Marine Corps," she wrote. "Anytime an alleged event like this occurs, it is detrimental to the Brigade, the Academy family, and is contrary to all we are hoping to achieve."
The Academy public affairs office notified selected reporters just before the e-mail was sent, and the story drew national attention almost instantly.
Rempt later would defend the e-mail message. He told the court-martial panel that he had heard that investigative documents were being circulated at the Pentagon and press queries were coming in, and he didn't want any possible perception that the Academy was hiding something. He also expressed concern that the press would only convey "incomplete information" from the defense side. Asked by the judge how he would change the e-mail if it could be rewritten, Rempt first said he wouldn't change it, but then said he "might."
"I wanted to warn everybody, don't jump to conclusions, don't pass on rumors, don't assign blame or find no blame to people just because you don't have all the facts," he said. But the judge, Commander Maksym, was not persuaded. He said the Dunn e-mail and others "insinuate guilt" and were "rather damnable."
As Rempt went about attempting to improve the Academy climate for women and convening several sexual-misconduct-related courts-martial, critics labeled him a zealot bent on using what defense attorney Charles Gittins and others called "show trials" as a deterrent.
Supporters, though, say he had little choice but to follow the policies put in place in the aftermath of the 2003 scandal at the Air Force Academy, noting that any Superintendent who ignores rape allegations at a service academy does so at his own peril.
Although many alumni look back on their support for Owens as unwavering from the start, the movement behind him didn't gather steam until a few months after the trial, when word began to trickle out about a dinner party in Idaho.
Rempt had gone on vacation in Montana, where he has since retired, and arranged to have dinner with members of the Idaho alumni chapter in the Hayden Lake home of footballer Peter Optekar, a 1963 graduate who played alongside Staubach and Bellino.
Although the alums had intended to avoid bringing up the Owens case, Rempt did so himself. When he eventually was asked whether Owens would now be able to obtain his commission and "get on with his life," Rempt said no.
"I don't think so," he said, according to affidavits filed by four of the five USNA graduates around the table, throwing up his hands and raising his voice. "You don't know everything. The victim lay in the fetal position for two to three days. He was guilty of sexual assault."
The alleged outburst stunned those at dinner. The Superintendent was supposed to be an honest broker. To that point he had, quite rightly, not taken a public position on guilt or innocence since it was his duty to decide Owens' fate. Now, within days of Owens' acquittal, Rempt was saying he was guilty. And there had been no testimony about the woman being curled in a fetal position for 48 hours or more.
Calling the description of his comments "ridiculous," Rempt declined to get into details about what he said in Idaho, commenting only that "it was the opposite of what they're saying." In meetings with alumni groups, Rempt has gone further, according to people who attended, insisting, "I didn't say those things."
Admiral Rempt bowed out of his role of reviewing the record of trial, a phase in which a convening authority can throw out minor convictions or reduce sentences. Vice Admiral Paul Sullivan, commander of the Naval Sea Systems Command, reviewed the case and affirmed the convictions without fanfare on 19 January 2007.
As Optekar's account of the dinner spread, the reaction among alumni was explosive, he said. More and more people contacted him and asked to help. But despite their efforts, which included calling on members of Congress, gathering support on social networking Web sites, and sending hundreds of letters to the Academy and the Navy Secretary, Rempt would not remove himself from his role in Owens' separation proceedings.
Rempt said in the interview that he had little to do with how the case was prosecuted. In forwarding the charges to an Article 32 hearing, he had only followed the advice of the NCIS and his legal team, who characterized the allegations as "serious," he said. Then, the Article 32 investigating officer recommended the case proceed to a general court-martial, and Rempt followed that counsel. As for the expulsion decision, Rempt said it was not complicated.
"There are no officers on active duty who have been convicted at a general court martial of conduct unbecoming an officer," he said. "We're talking about an officer candidate. It was a pretty straightforward decision . . . I had very little to do in this whole process other than review what was being recommended to me and see if that stood up to common sense and precedent and all of those kinds of things.
"My goal was to ensure that everything was done fairly and correctly and properly. Fortunately, I don't have to make these decisions, right? I've got an Article 32 investigation, I've got a court, I've got a whole bunch of folks. The end result for me is you had two vice admirals and the Secretary of the Navy each do in-depth independent reviews. I don't know of a case that's been reviewed to that extent."
Rempt got a powerful valediction from hundreds of supporters 8 June in Alumni Hall as he turned over the reins of the Academy to Vice Admiral Jeffrey Fowler. Rempt's classmate, Admiral Mike Mullen, then Chief of Naval Operations but just named to his current post, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, praised him for making the Academy hospitable to women "in the face of scrutiny and criticism," according to an account in the (Annapolis) Capital. "You took on some tough problems and held fast to your beliefs. We are all in your debt."
As the ceremony concluded, a group of midshipmen in the balcony broke out in a chant of "Fire it up," one of Rempt's favorite refrains, which he had often led at pep rallies with both hands in the air, pumping up and down like pistons.
Lamar Owens has had a quiet retreat from the public spotlight. Committed to moving on with his life, he has since submitted applications to the University of Maryland and Georgetown University. A group of alumni is raising money to pay his debt, and he has vowed to fight the Navy until the last possible appeal options have been exhausted. His accuser graduated and was commissioned an ensign in May.
Post-Tailhook Culture
At the Naval Academy, commanders have shown considerable restraint with sexual assault allegations, according to a wide swath of statistics. Some, including victim advocacy groups, would say there's been too much restraint over the years. Between four percent and six percent of female midshipmen—or statistically about 35 to 50 a year—say they have been sexually assaulted, with the vast majority of those incidents amounting to some form of non-consensual touching or fondling, according to recent surveys conducted by the Academy and the Pentagon. Since the 2002 academic year, about 10 women a year have reported some form of unwanted sexual contact to authorities.
Of those reports, about half make it to an Article 32 hearing and a small fraction of those reach a court-martial. Since 2001, just three cases have made it to the final phase, all in the past two years. They were a 2005 case in which a male midshipman was convicted and sentenced to one year in the brig for an indecent assault on another male; the Owens case; and the April 2007 trial of Kenny Ray Morrison, a backup linebacker on the football team who was convicted of indecent assault and is now serving a two-year sentence in Charleston, South Carolina.
According to about 50 case summaries reviewed for this article, many of the incidents would have presented daunting odds for prosecutors. About half involved underage drinking and allegations based only upon the spotty recollections of the accuser, who frequently had a prior sexual relationship with the accused. The assaults were sometimes reported months or more after the fact and often came from women who had a troubled conduct history. In one 2001 case, for instance, investigators found out a female midshipman who reported being raped by a civilian was working as a stripper in Baltimore. When she refused to identify her assailant or cooperate with an investigation, she was expelled for working at a topless bar.
Many graduates find themselves caught between the two camps, lamenting a case that ruined two young lives and tarnished the Naval Academy, and longing for a day when the indiscretions of midshipmen no longer find themselves on the front pages. But in the months since the Owens case, that longing has gone unfulfilled, as mids were accused of groping women on a private cruise ship over spring leave, another football player, Morrison, was convicted of sexual assault and sent to prison, a former female officer stationed at the Academy was revealed to have worked for an escort service, and a Navy doctor who hosted mids in his home was accused of secretly videotaping them having sex.
As the unraveling of the Lamar Owens case makes abundantly clear, the academies have yet to find a way to circumvent problems associated with young men and women living in close proximity to one another, as they do in Bancroft Hall. And, at least as important, the authorities—try as they might to be even-handed—invariably find themselves sucked into a quagmire with faulty tools or no tools at all with which to extricate themselves.
It is not too much to say that situations such as those in which Lamar Owens, his female accuser, and Vice Admiral Rempt found themselves embroiled are destined to end unhappily—with no winners and far too many losers.
Mr. Olson is the Naval Academy reporter for The (Baltimore) Sun. He has covered the Lamar Owens case from February 2006 until the present.