CAMP FOSTER, Okinawa — A Marine sergeant was given 180 days’ confinement and a bad-conduct discharge after pleading guilty to seven charges, including adultery and having sex with a junior enlisted woman in barracks on Camp Foster.
Sgt. Keegan Alex-Quijano, Headquarters and Services Battalion, pleaded guilty Thursday on the first of a two-day special court-martial before Maj. Charles C. Hale. Charges included fraternizing with two junior enlisted women from April 2005 to March 2006 and having sex with them more than 20 times each during that period in barracks — all violations of written orders.
Alex-Quijano, of New Orleans, said he then was married and on an unaccompanied tour.
He also pleaded guilty to unauthorized absence and private use of a government cell phone, showing disrespect to a senior noncommissioned officer, stealing a government DVD player, driving with an expired SOFA license, making a false official statement and leaving the scene of a minor accident.
In sentencing the sergeant Friday, Hale also busted him to the rank of E-1 and fined him $800 a month for six months. The defendant was given 60 days’ credit for pretrial confinement.
During questioning by the judge, Alex-Quijano admitted he dated a private first class from April 2005 to March 2006 and a lance corporal from April 2005 to December 2005, frequently having sexual liaisons in their barracks rooms on Camp Foster. The incidents were tried as violations of Article 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice — being prejudicial to good order and discipline and bringing discredit upon the Armed Forces.
The sergeant said he was having marital difficulties, having been assigned to an unaccompanied two-year tour of Okinawa just a month after he was wed. He said he’d never lived with his wife and was depressed at being separated from his daughter and by losses his family suffered due to Hurricane Katrina.
He also pleaded guilty to lying to an investigator about leaving the scene April 21 after a minor collision with a taxi near Camp Foster’s shopette. Alex-Quijano said he lied to the officer because he’d been driving with a suspended license.
Hale also found the sergeant guilty of driving without a license and leaving the accident scene.
“I was stressed by a lot of things,” he said. “But it’s no excuse to do what I did.”
Testifying via phone from California, the defendant’s mother, Nettie Mae Alex, said she believed others in her son’s command were singling him out because he’d been found not guilty of adultery with a co-worker in a November 2005 court-martial.
Defense attorney Capt. Josh Rosen made the same argument, saying, “He ticked off his command ... and they’re just trying to throw everything at him, and that’s wrong.”
Rosen argued that the charges were the sort that would get most Marines nonjudicial punishment, not a special court-martial.
