Col. Scott C. Nauman, 53, was found guilty of one specification of abusive sexual contact, one specification of sexual assault of a child and three specifications of sexual abuse of a child. (U.S. Army)
A colonel at Fort Leavenworth was sentenced Thursday to 28 years in prison and dismissal from the Army after a panel of officers found him guilty of sex abuse charges in a general court-martial.
Col. Scott C. Nauman, 53, was found guilty of one specification of abusive sexual contact, one specification of sexual assault of a child and three specifications of sexual abuse of a child.
The conviction followed a March trial in a Kansas civilian court where he was found not guilty of groping two young relatives. In that case, the testimony of two other relatives who said Nauman had sexually exploited them was ruled inadmissible. After the civilian trial, the Army arraigned Nauman for court-martial. He pleaded not guilty and chose to be tried by a panel of officers serving as the jury.
The witnesses against Nauman who were barred from testifying in the civilian trial were allowed to give evidence in the court-martial, the Army has said.
The Army Office of Special Trial Counsel, based at Fort Belvoir, Va., prosecuted the case. The office did not release a statement after the verdict.
Aimee Bateman, an attorney for Nauman in the civilian and military court proceedings, could not be reached for comment. She declined to comment at earlier points in the process.
Nauman will serve his sentence at the United States Disciplinary Barracks, the military’s maximum-security prison, at Fort Leavenworth. A dismissal from the Army for an officer is equivalent to a dishonorable discharge for enlisted soldiers.
Leavenworth County prosecuted Nauman in March on two counts of aggravated indecent liberties with a child. Jurors found him not guilty.
The two girls said they were around 11 and 15 when Nauman began to inappropriately touch them between 2020 and 2022, according to civilian court documents. One girl said during a preliminary hearing that Nauman would grope her breasts once or twice a month as she sat at her desk and he sat behind her. The older girl said Nauman would give her massages that didn’t feel like massages because he would move his hands from her shoulders to her waist and would squeeze her sides. She said she felt uncomfortable but never asked him to stop.
Both girls testified that Nauman measured them for a bra and touched their breasts in the process. The older girl asked to measure herself and was told no, she said.
The civilian case took two years to reach a courtroom, in part because prosecutors appealed, unsuccessfully, a judge’s decision not to allow the jury to hear testimony from two adult relatives who claimed to be former victims.
Prosecutors said the women would testify that Nauman also engaged in various acts of sexual abuse of them while they were minors — including massages, groping, oral sex, kissing and touching Nauman’s private area, according to Kansas court records.
The Army charged Nauman with the allegations of those two women because it has jurisdiction that the state of Kansas does not, according to the Army Office of Special Trial Counsel.
Those charges occurred in and around a white trailer-based camper in June and July 2012 at Fort Riley, Kan., and Fort Drum, N.Y., according to court documents. The girls were younger than 16 at the time.
Nauman graduated from U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in 1995. He attended the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, R.I., prior to his assignment at Fort Leavenworth. He was promoted to colonel in 2017.
Stars and Stripes reporter Rose Thayer contributed to this report.
