VILSECK, Germany — Some gay servicemembers are filing false sexual assault complaints against their sex partners to avoid being discharged under the military’s "don’t ask, don’t tell" policy, according to legal experts.

The experts — including some of the nation’s top law professors and a former judge advocate general of the Navy — make the claim in letters and affidavits presented at an Article 32 hearing Thursday for a 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment soldier, Spc. Raymond A. Verrill.

Verrill, 36, faces a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole after being accused of abusive sexual contact, forcible sodomy and making a false official statement.

A private from Verrill’s unit claims that he passed out in Verrill’s Vilseck barracks room following a Jan. 8 drinking session and awoke to find the specialist performing oral sex on him. However, Verrill told a Criminal Investigation Command special agent that the act was consensual.

Stars and Stripes does not identify victims in alleged sex crimes. Verrill is married and has children. He was in Vilseck on an unaccompanied tour.

The legal experts’ opinions, presented at the hearing by Verrill’s defense lawyers, do not address the specific facts of Verrill’s case but they examine the issue of false sexual assault claims by gay military personnel.

Bridget Wilson, a California lawyer who represents gay and bisexual servicemembers, said in her affidavit presented to the hearing’s investigative officer that she was aware of many cases in which parties clearly consented to sex but where a claim of assault arose from one party’s fear of the potential consequences if their homosexual conduct were to be known to others.

Discovery of the conduct virtually guarantees that the servicemembers involved will be separated, she said in her affidavit.

"The current regulations on homosexual conduct, because they mandate the separation of these persons who engage in homosexual conduct with very limited exceptions, provide a powerful motive to claim a particular sexual incident was not consensual," she said. "If the acts are not consensual, that individual will not face separation and the loss of a career."

John Hutson, the dean of Franklin Pierce Law Center in New Hampshire — and a former judge advocate general of the Navy — also wrote the investigating officer, advising him to consider how the "don’t ask don’t tell" policy has influenced the way some servicemembers interact with one another.

"It would be important to consider the stigma that comes when a servicemember fears that his or her peers or commander will discover sexual activity in violation of the ‘don’t ask don’t tell’ policy," he wrote.

As a result of the policy, soldiers must resort to clandestine activities including nonverbal gestures and verbal acts in order to demonstrate their sexual orientation, reads a letter from Eugene Kanin, former director of the law and society program at Purdue University in Indiana, an expert on false allegations of sexual assault. Kanin’s letter stated: "These soldiers will have a tremendous incentive to falsely claim that he or she had been duped ... or forced into the homosexual behavior. This could easily include a claim that fellatio had been performed during the alleged victim’s slumber."

In the Verrill case, CID special agent Shawn Burke told the Article 32 hearing about interviews he’d conducted with the accused. In one interview, Verrill claimed he thought the private wanted to have sex with him after the two talked about gay and bisexual lifestyles, Burke said.

According to Burke, Verrill said he woke up and found the private in his bed and took it as a sign that the private was consenting to fellatio.

However, the 20-year-old private, who has written a letter stating that he forgives Verrill and does not want to see him prosecuted, told the court that what happened was not consensual.

Verrill’s lawyer, Capt. Evan Seamone, asked the private if he was aware that soldiers who engaged in homosexual conduct get kicked out of the Army.

"‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ is big in the media right now. There’s some talk that the president might get rid of it," Seamone told the alleged victim during cross-examination. "But right now if someone engages in consensual homosexual act that’s a basis to get kicked out."

The private replied that he’d heard of many cases where soldiers continued to serve in the Army after performing homosexual acts.

"In basic training, people would engage in homosexual acts or say they were gay, hoping to get out of the Army but they ended up staying in," the private said.

Verrill’s roommate, Spc. Zane Henson, testified that on the night of the alleged sexual assault, Verrill offered him 60 euros to leave him alone in the barracks room with the private but that he refused.

During an evening spent playing the "Prince of Persia" video game, Henson said he observed the private and Verrill sitting close to each other on a bed watching DVDs and drinking and assumed they planned to have sex. But Henson later fell asleep and did not observe any sexual activity between the two.

Verrill did not testify or make any statements during the Article 32 hearing.

The night after the alleged incident, the private confided in a medic from his platoon, Spc. Joshua Lord, during another drinking session, Lord testified.

The medic told the private to keep quiet about what happened, he said during the hearing.

"As a new guy in the platoon, it wouldn’t be in his best interests to have that come out the first time he was meeting people. It might give the impression that he could be taken advantage of, that he was weak," he said.

Asked about the attitude toward gays in his unit, Lord replied that most soldiers don’t have a problem with homosexuals in garrison.

"I have gay friends. For a lot of us it doesn’t really matter," Lord testified. "Most guys really don’t care [if someone is gay] unless we are downrange. Then it becomes an issue.

"It’s an infantry platoon. Downrange we live very harshly. A lot of guys would be uncomfortable with that (gay soldiers). When you are taking your clothes off, you are going to wonder — ‘Is he looking at me?’ "

Nathaniel Frank, a senior research fellow at the Palm Center at the University of California in Santa Barbara and author of "Unfriendly Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America," also wrote to the investigating officer.

"My research has shown that the existence of the homosexual conduct policy ... creates a climate in which members of the military must behave furtively, dishonestly and deceptively with one another in order to avoid the possibility of discharge or even criminal charges," he wrote.

The policy creates a perverse incentive structure which encourages those who are involved in the same-sex liaison to claim that the behavior occurred against their will, he wrote.

Investigating officer Maj. John Engel will determine whether the charges against Verrill will be referred to a court-martial.