TORII STATION, Okinawa — The Army will court-martial an Okinawa-based soldier for the alleged rape of a bar worker last February, officials said Wednesday.
Spc. Ronald Hopstock Jr., 25, faces a single charge of rape in the alleged attack on the 22-year-old dancer Feb. 17 in an Okinawa City hotel.
The court-martial is set tentatively for late February at a location to be determined, said Army spokesman Maj. James Crawford.
Army Col. James Woodard, commander of the 10th Support Group on Torii Station, ordered the court-martial as the convening authority. He acted on the recommendation of Lt. Col. Seth Sherwood, who was the investigating officer for a three-day Article 32 preliminary hearing in October.
Hopstock, of the 1st Battalion, 1st Air Defense Artillery Regiment, also is charged with three unrelated violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice — sodomy, procuring a prostitute and disobeying an order.
Those charges stem from Hopstock’s admissions to Army investigators that he frequented a sex shop on Okinawa City’s infamous "Hooker Hill" on several occasions in 2007, according to evidence presented at the hearing.
In the rape case, Hopstock allegedly paid $200 to an employee of the Mermaid, a club on Park Avenue in Okinawa City, for the dancer’s company. He claims sex with the woman in a room at the New Century Hotel was consensual and that he stopped when she started bleeding profusely.
The woman, who had arrived on Okinawa from the Philippines three days before the incident, claimed she believed a "bar fine" Hopstock paid was only for her company that night and not an agreement to have sex. She testified that she went to sleep fully clothed and awoke when Hopstock assaulted her.
She was bleeding so badly that hours later she was taken to a local hospital, where a doctor said she could have died had she waited longer for treatment.
It was later confirmed that the vaginal bleeding may have been caused by a rare medical condition called androgen insensitivity syndrome.
Hopstock is under no restrictions or pretrial confinement, Crawford said.
"He has not been deemed a flight risk and is on normal duty status," he said.
Okinawa police initially investigated the alleged rape, but was turned it over to the Army after Japanese prosecutors declined to press for an indictment.
The Army investigation began May 15.
