Sergeant major charged with raping junior soldier
Allegation stems from incident in Naples, Italy
HEIDELBERG, Germany — One of U.S. Army Europe’s top enlisted soldiers has been charged with raping a young soldier in his command who was too meek and cowed by his rank to deflect his advances, military prosecutors said at an Article 32 hearing this week.
Sgt. Maj. Garry Tull is also charged with abusing his rank and authority, committing adultery and disobeying Army regulations on a trip to Naples, Italy, last May, according to the official Army charge sheet.
At the time of the alleged incident, Tull was command sergeant major of the U.S. Army NATO brigade at the time, on a trip to help select the unit Soldier of the Year.
He is now performing duties "commensurate with his experience," Army officials said.
Tull’s defense lawyers disputed all but one of the charges at the sergeant major’s Article 32 hearing on Monday.
The woman involved had willingly had drinks with the sergeant major, had let him into her room, had not told him to stop kissing her, defense lawyer Guy Womack said.
There was no evidence Tull had used force, and every reason to believe the woman had consented, he said.
In fact, Womack said, she was perhaps a "predator" who "enticed" senior enlisted men for sex.
"The adultery charge would appear to be valid," Womack said in his closing argument. "He shouldn’t have been doing it, but it doesn’t make it rape."
But prosecutors told the hearing’s investigating officer — who will make a recommendation on what, if any, charges Tull should be court-martialed for — that the evidence showed the sergeant major was guilty of a lot more than adultery.
Tull used his rank and position to intimidate an underling, an unusually timid woman who didn’t know how to escape his attentions, they said.
He had forced himself on her, they said; the force from his strength and size made the woman unable to avoid or escape him.
"Consensual sex does not usually consist of a person crying …," Capt. Sandra Leeber said in her closing argument, referring to the woman’s testimony that she started to cry when Tull started having sex with her.
The woman also had testified that at that point, she did protest, saying, "No, I can’t do this.’’
But Tull did not stop, the woman testified.
Lt. Col. Tiernan Dolan, the hearing officer, and chief of USAREUR’s International Law and Operations Division, is expected to make his recommendation regarding a potential court-martial to the V Corps commander in a couple of weeks.
The woman, now 24, a sergeant and assigned in the U.S. testified at the hearing in a barely audible voice.
She said she’d met Tull once before, at a warrior leadership course. When she ran into him in the Navy Exchange and he suggested they have drinks, she felt powerless to decline, she said.
She felt just as powerless when after three drinks he walked her to her room and came inside.
When he kissed her, she said, "I kind of turned my head and said I had to go to the bathroom."
She said when she came out and he was still there, she sat on the bed, and he came over, undressed, put on a condom and pulled her jeans down, while she remained mostly silent.
"It’s very easy to sit back and say what she should have said, what she should have done, but she’s the one who lived it," Leeber told the hearing officer.
Tull did not testify at the hearing. But his statements to investigators were discussed.
According to his lawyers’ questioning and Leeber’s closing argument, Tull told investigators that the woman had flirted with him, had come out of the bathroom dancing, lifted her shirt to show her tattoos, and, begged him to sexually take her.
The woman called her sergeant shortly after Tull left her room, according to testimony, and told him what had happened.
She had not wanted to pursue the matter, but by confiding in her chain of command had initiated an unrestricted report that came to law enforcement attention.
