WüRZBURG, Germany — Two 1st Infantry Division soldiers landed terms in the stockade in separate courts-martial last week, one for viewing adult and child pornography on a government computer, and the other for faking a pregnancy to get out of going to war.
Spc. Sean Brown, 30, of the 601st Aviation Support Battalion in Katterbach, was sentenced to 10 months’ confinement and reduced to the lowest enlisted rank in the pornography case May 21 at Würzburg. He also was ordered to forfeit all pay while in prison.
Brown, a nine-year veteran, pleaded guilty to charges of receiving and possessing child pornography and disobeying a noncommissioned officer.
On March 18, 2002, a sergeant in his unit caught him viewing pornography and warned him to stop, said Capt. Kyle Reardon, a prosecutor for the 1st ID’s staff judge advocate.
An hour later, the sergeant caught him again.
Investigators also found child pornography had been downloaded onto his personal computer.
In the other court-martial, Spc. Jeannine Fernandez, 23, of the 54th Engineer Battalion in Bamberg, pleaded guilty May 19 to charges of attempted fraudulent separation, conspiracy, missing a troop movement, filing an official false statement and use of the drug Ecstasy.
Reardon said Fernandez found out Jan. 24 that her unit was deploying to the Middle East.
She told her superiors she was pregnant and turned in a blood sample from another soldier who actually was pregnant as part of a medical exam.
He said Fernandez was taking pregnancy classes and had begun the process of separating from the Army when the fraud was discovered.
She also admitted that she had lied a year earlier when, after a positive drug test for Ecstasy, she swore she had not taken the drug but that it probably had resulted from a spiked drink.
A military judge ordered that Fernandez be imprisoned for eight months, reduced in rank to E-1 and given a bad-conduct discharge.
