Karisa King Entry 3 - Headliners Foundation of Texas

Spurs can afford
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BRIAN CHASNOFF
RN
E
T
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WE
District 8 loser
a conservative
backing a
progressive
Star is still hugely needed but team is
less needy when he’s off the floor. C1
1 Western Conference finals, Game 2:
Grizzlies at Spurs, 8 p.m., AT&T Center
MYSA.COM
|
21
POSTER INSIDE,
C7
MYSA
100
SPORTS
Century Club
is getting
more
crowded
Page D1
Page A2
Tuesday, May 21, 2013 | THE VOICE OF SOUTH TEXAS SINCE 1865
THE EXITS
ARE BLOCKED
SPECIAL REPORT
STORIES BY KARISA KING | PHOTOS BY LISA KRANTZ
TWICE
BETRAYED
A three-part investigation
into how military sex-assault
victims fight a lonely battle
Sunday: Victims often
labeled as mentally
unfit to serve
Monday: Few
sex offenders
are punished
Today: No
protection from
their offenders
FEW SEX-ASSAULT VICTIMS GET EXPEDITED TRANSFERS
Sue Ogrocki / Associated Press
A woman carries her child through a field
near the leveled Plaza Towers Elementary
School in Moore, Okla., after the tornado.
Deadly
twister
slams
town
Dozens of school kids
among Okla. victims
By Tim Talley
AS S OC I ATED P R E S S
MOORE, Okla. — A monstrous tornado
at least a half-mile wide roared through the
Oklahoma City suburbs Monday, flattening
entire neighborhoods and destroying an elementary school with a direct blow as children and teachers huddled against winds
up to 200 mph.
At least 91 people were killed, and officials said the death toll was expected to
rise. At least 20 of the dead were children.
The storm laid waste to scores of buildings in Moore, a community of 41,000 people about 10 miles south of the city. Block
after block lay in ruins. Homes were
crushed into piles of broken wood. Cars
and trucks were left crumpled on the roadside.
Tornado continues on A12
San Pedro Creek
could be restored
By John W. González
STAFF WR I TER
ark Bilton-Smith
answered his cellphone shortly after
11 p.m. and heard
the panic in his
daughter’s voice. She told him she’d
been raped and was hallucinating.
He struggled to make sense of her
words. She was talking about the
devil and kept saying the door to
her room at Goodfellow AFB had
been nailed shut.
“Go find the officer on duty and
get help,” he told his daughter,
Myah Bilton-Smith, a 20-year-old
technical school trainee at the West
Texas base in San Angelo.
M
TEXAS
TROUBLE:
Myah BiltonSmith with
her mother,
Tina
Clemans, in a
hotel room in
San Angelo,
the home of
Goodfellow
AFB. BiltonSmith’s
ordeal began
at the base.
He listened as she went to a security office and reported that she’d
been raped.
About a week after the April
2012 call, Bilton-Smith said he began requesting that Myah be transferred from the base. But her superiors insisted it was best for Myah
to remain at Goodfellow, where
they could keep her career on track,
he said.
In the months that followed, as
she fought the demons of sexual assault and learned she possibly had
been drugged with a laced cigarette,
documents show she and her fam-
With redevelopment of the San Antonio
River nearing completion, Bexar County is
turning its attention to San Pedro Creek.
Natives used its springs 12,000 years ago,
and Spaniards established a presidio on it in
1718 near what’s now City Hall. Despite that
legacy, the creek was relegated to a narrow
culvert decades ago, its ecosystem obliterated
for the sake of downtown flood control.
The Commissioners Court on Tuesday
plans to reverse the fortunes of San Pedro
Creek. Backed by a court majority, County
Judge Nelson Wolff will propose a $175 million ecosystem restoration on a 1 1⁄2-mile segment of the 3-mile-long creek.
Creek continues on A18
Military’s continues on A8
WEATHER
Videos and slideshows: Hear the victims tell their emotionally
wrenching stories in their own words, and see additional images.
HIGH
LOW
94
72
Partly cloudy
Full report, C12
D
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A8 | Tuesday, May 21, 2013 | SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS AND MYSA.COM
TWICE BETRAYED
Accounts from victims and advocates indicate that service
members who report a sexual assault can face long delays,
or superiors tell them they’re ineligible before being
allowed to formally apply.
HAPPY SIGHTS: Myah Bilton-Smith looks at recent family photos she hadn’t seen with her father, Mark Bilton-Smith, and half-sister Avrie.
Military’s ‘expedited transfers’
are more theory than fact
EARLY
AF LIFE:
Myah BiltonSmith’s photo
from basic
training at
Joint Base
San AntonioLackland
hangs at her
greatgrandmother’s home.
From page A1
ily repeatedly requested her
transfer.
In all, it would take seven
months for her to leave
Goodfellow, and by then,
she had been scorned by
her superiors in an email as
a “basket case,” improperly
diagnosed with bipolar disorder and subjected to what
she described as a second
sexual assault on base.
Bilton-Smith appeared to
be a perfect candidate for a
new Defense Department
policy that offers sexual-assault victims an “expedited
transfer” from their base or
unit. The measure was part
of a series of reforms that
was supposed to protect victims who feel threatened after reporting sex crimes.
But her case and others
show that policy doesn’t always match reality. Accounts from victims and advocates indicate service
members who report sexual
assaults can face long de-
lays, or superiors tell them
they’re ineligible for a transfer, a San Antonio ExpressNews investigation has
found.
As a result, some victims
must remain in close proximity to the alleged assai-
lants and face reprisals from
their chain of command.
“The intentions of some
of these reforms may be
good, but in practice they’re
not working,” said Nancy
Parrish, president of the
victim advocacy group Protect Our Defenders.
“They’re not working because they’re not addressing
the fundamental problem,
which is the retaliation
against victims.”
While some commands
are providing prompt trans-
fers, Parrish said she has
received reports that victims
elsewhere are routinely kept
on bases because they are
required to assist with the
subsequent criminal cases.
Some victims were prohibited from leaving their units
because they became targets
of misconduct investigations
stemming from the circumstances of the assaults they
reported, such as underage
drinking or adultery, she
said.
In other cases, victims
These reforms … are not working,
because they’re not addressing
the fundamental problem, which
is the retaliation against victims.”
NANCY PARRISH, PRESIDENT OF PROTECT OUR DEFENDERS,
A VICTIM ADVOCACY GROUP
were put on a medical hold
for mental-health problems,
a troubling practice that coincides with a pattern of
discharging victims with
disputed diagnoses of psychiatric disorders.
The transfer policy, which
took effect in December
2011, was imposed in response to rising public concerns about an epidemic of
rape in the military.
Since then, the sexual
abuse of young recruits by
training instructors at Joint
Base San Antonio-Lackland
and lawsuits against the Defense Department for failing
to prosecute sex crimes have
roiled the Pentagon. Lawmakers and military brass
have pushed in sweeping reforms, and the issue continues to gain prominence.
Expedited transfers are
touted as one of the most
important new protections
for victims, and there is
widespread need for the
policy to work. An anonymous Defense Department
SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS AND MYSA.COM | Tuesday, May 21, 2013 |
A9
SPECIAL REPORT
Support
for her
transfer
This document
is part of the case
relating to Airman
Bilton-Smith.
UNHAPPY MEMORIES: Myah Bilton-Smith (left) becomes emotional on her first night out of the service as she discusses her discharge.
They came
forward
These are the victims of
sexual assault who shared
their stories with the
San Antonio Express-News.
survey released this month
shows 62 percent of victims
who reported assaults said
they suffered retaliation.
Yet the effectiveness of
the measure has received little scrutiny.
The law allows victims
who feel threatened after filing an open report of sexual
assault to apply for an expedited transfer “so as to reduce the possibility of retaliation against the member
for reporting.”
The policy requires that
commanding officers review
the requests within 72
hours. Victims can appeal a
denial with the first general
officer in the command
chain. The statute does not
stipulate how quickly relocations must occur. And the
Defense Department does
not track how long service
members wait to move.
U.S. Rep. Niki Tsongas,
who co-wrote the law, received about a half-dozen
requests last year for help
from victims who faced difficulties obtaining the transfers. In every case that
Tsongas’ office intervened,
commanders approved the
requests. Forcing victims to
languish on bases does not
meet the intent of the law,
she said.
“It may be that it’s taking
much, much longer than it
should,” Tsongas said. “We
may well determine that we
need to put in place other
reporting requirements.”
PUNISHMENT
FOR VICTIMS
In the first year the policy
was in effect, the Defense
Department reported the
services approved 334 of
336 requests.
But interviews and evidence provided by victims
who were told they don’t
qualify for transfers raise
questions about the reliability of those numbers and
how the Defense Department defines a request.
“Not only is there not an
expedited transfer, there’s
punishment for victims,”
said an officer who was a
nurse in the Army Reserve
last year when she reported
to superiors at her base in
Maryland that she had been
raped. She told her story to
the Express-News, then later asked that her name not
be used because she feared
retaliation.
The nurse, who now is on
active duty, said she went on
a date in April 2012 with a
senior officer in her unit.
Anna
Moore
Terry
Odom
Lola
Miles
Rebecca
JohnsonStone
Elle
Helmer
Kelly
Smith
Brian
Lewis
Jenny
McClendon
LEAVING: Bilton-Smith packs up her belongings in Washington state with the help
of her mother, Tina Clemans, as she prepares to be discharged.
She said they had drinks
and went back to his house,
where she passed out and
he assaulted her. She regained consciousness during sharply painful moments of the attack, she
said.
She hesitated to report
the assault for two weeks,
when she disclosed it to her
superiors. Records show her
command opened an investigation, but did not relay
her accusation to military
criminal authorities.
When she returned for
her next weekend training
in May, she was required to
drill with the officer she had
accused.
Tortured by the close
proximity, in which she literally bumped into him after breaking from parade
formation one day, she
found herself retreating to a
bathroom stall, crying and
vomiting. Soon after, she
asked for a transfer.
In July, her company
commander told her she
had been placed on a “nontransferable flag” as a result
of the investigation into her
assault, which meant she
could not leave the unit. She
turned to her victim advocate for help.
The advocate, Thomas
Pardue, who managed the
Sexual Harassment Assault
Response Program, spoke
with members of her command in a teleconference
call on July 18 that included
two colonels, a major and a
lieutenant colonel.
During the conversation,
Pardue expressed concerns
that her complaint was not
referred to criminal authorities, and he pressed for an
explanation on why she had
been grounded to the unit,
according to Pardue’s sworn
statement.
One of the colonels told
Pardue that the nurse “was
not flagged directly as a result of her allegation of a
sexual assault, but that she
was flagged as the subject of
a second “Conduct Unbecoming” investigation into
her past actions.”
The colonel ordered Pardue not to inform the woman that she was the target of
a separate investigation, he
wrote.
She trained for another
weekend with the alleged
perpetrator and sat a few
feet away from him as they
waited in the same room for
dental exams.
The woman was desperate to get away from the officer and convinced that her
command was bent on punishing her for reporting that
she was raped. She contacted Rep. Tsongas’ office in
August and her transfer
came quickly in September.
“The only reason I got
transferred was Congresswoman Tsongas’ office,” she
said.
CONFLICTS
OF INTEREST
On April 11, Air Force 1st
Lt. Adam Cohen asked his
command at McConnell
AFB in Kansas to relocate
him to another base.
Cohen, a combat systems
officer who specializes in aerial refueling, said he had
been receiving violent
threats from an Army soldier and his friends since
reporting in 2011 — shortly
after the repeal of the “Don’t
Ask, Don’t’ Tell” policy —
that the man had sexually
assaulted him.
Cohen kept silent for four
years about the attack because he said the soldier
Not only is there not an expedited
transfer, there’s punishment
for victims.”
AN ARMY RESERVE NURSE WHO REPORTED AN ASSAULT
Myah
BiltonSmith
Adam
Cohen
threatened to claim the encounter was consensual if
he told authorities.
As part of his request for
a transfer, Cohen submitted
screen shots of menacing
Facebook posts and a Yahoo
instant message in April
that warned he soon would
be shot in the back. Cohen
urged commanders to let
him leave McConnell because he suspected a man,
who punched him in the
face in January while he
was in his squadron workout room, had targeted him
in retaliation for coming forward as a victim.
After telling his superiors
that he was sexually assaulted and threatened, Cohen became the target of a
criminal investigation for
conduct unbecoming an officer and other alleged misconduct, emails obtained by
the Express-News show.
In a report that was excerpted in the emails, the investigating officer who reviewed the charges against
Cohen noted the intermingling of the two cases posed
legal problems.
“At some point, most likely in late February or March
2012, (Cohen) became the
subject. However, he was
not read his rights until his
formal interview on 2 April
2012,” Lt. Col. Shelly
Schools wrote. “(Cohen) was
interviewed again on 22
May 2012 as the ‘victim’ for
the blackmailing allegation.
He was not read his rights
because (the Office of Special Investigations) determined this was a separate
case. From listening to the
interview, it is clear the two
cases are overlapping.”
The command at McConnell denied Cohen’s expedited transfer request April 13
on the grounds that he
didn’t qualify because he
then faced a court-martial.
“Once those threats were
posted online encouraging
people to be violent, that
should’ve been a reason to
transfer me,” Cohen said.
The rationale for denying
Cohen’s request points to a
troubling interpretation of
who should be eligible for
expedited transfers, said
Maj. John Bellflower, the
special victims counsel appointed by the Air Force to
represent Cohen.
McConnell commanders
interpreted the expedited
transfer provision to be subject to the same rules that
govern a broader policy that
Transfer continues on A10
A10 | Tuesday, May 21, 2013 | SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS AND MYSA.COM
TWICE BETRAYED
For expanded
coverage go to
SPECIAL REPORT
mySA.com/twicebetrayed
VIDEO: Victims tell their own stories in one-on-one interviews.
PHOTOS: Galleries of the former servicewomen and men at home with
family and friends and from their days in the service.
RESOURCES: Find links to victim advocacy groups and more.
DOCUMENTS: Read Pentagon reports, surveys and studies on the issue.
PARTICIPATE: Discuss the series and the issues with other readers.
CONTINUING COVERAGE: Look for future stories on these issues, as well as the scandal
at JBSA-Lackland.
TRANSFER
From page A9
allows service members —
not just assault victims — to
apply for “humanitarian
transfers,” he said.
Air Force rules for humanitarian transfers allow
officials to deny requests for
about a dozen reasons.
Among those who are ineligible to relocate: Airmen
who recently received a bad
job review, troops who fail
physical fitness standards,
enlistees who were passed
over for re-enlistment, airmen who were disciplined
for financial irresponsibility
and service members facing
criminal charges.
“It eviscerates the expedited transfer in all but the
most simple cases,” Bellflower said. “I don’t think
that’s what Congress had in
mind.”
When Bellflower sought a
clarification on whether
rules for humanitarian
transfers should apply to
sex-assault victims, he said,
Air Force personnel lawyers
told him they concur with
the interpretation used by
the command at McConnell,
not only in Cohen’s case but
for all others.
The defense directive also
leaves it to commanders to
decide transfer cases after
determining whether victims made “a credible report
of sexual assault.”
In a memo explaining
their decision to deny Cohen’s request, McConnell
commanders said they did
not believe his allegation of
sexual assault.
In Bellflower’s view, leaving transfer requests in the
hands of commanders who
also must vet criminal
charges against victims is a
mistake.
“The very same people
who are trying to put him
in jail get to decide whether
he should be transferred,”
Bellflower said. “That’s a
huge conflict of interest.”
The approach to evaluating the merits of transfer requests appears to vary from
one command to another, he
said. But Bellflower believes
commanders should err on
the side of caution for protecting victims.
“We’re not in court where
I have to prove there is a
threat beyond a reasonable
doubt. “Is there a credible
inkling of a threat against
my client? And if so, then
shouldn’t we as fellow airmen do what we need to do
to look out for them?” he
said. “We’re supposed to
have each others back.”
In Myah Bilton-Smith’s
case, her parents said the
command at Goodfellow
AFB and the Sexual Assault
Response Coordinator office
ignored repeated requests to
relocate her to another base.
Her mother, Tina Clemans, said they were not informed about the right to
apply for an expedited
transfer, even after Myah
reported in July that she
had suffered another sexual
assault on base.
“We weren’t using the
term “expedited transfer”
but they knew we were desperate to move her off
base,” Clemans said.
In August, she learned
about the transfer provision
from victim advocates outside the military. Mark Bilton-Smith inquired about
the transfer provision with
a master sergeant in Myah’s
chain of command.
“He told me verbatim:
There’s no such thing as an
expedited transfer,” BiltonSmith said.
Meanwhile, Myah struggled to cope with anxiety attacks and flashbacks of the
assaults.
She had come to the base
to receive technical training
for a career in intelligence
and never entered classes,
which began days after the
first assault.
She felt like a social pariah among her fellow trainees and faced hostility
from her command, whose
members scoffed at her
emotional torment. Her
mind was addled by a
heavy regimen of drugs for
sleeping troubles, anxiety
and bipolar disorder, a diagnosis that later was disputed by doctors outside the
military.
She received a letter of
reprimand Aug. 17 for falling asleep on duty and missing marching formations.
She later faced punishment
and was required to work
extended hours of duty and
for a several weeks even
was prohibited from leaving
the base at all, her family
said.
“Everybody thought I
was a nut case, so that really disabled me as far as a
support system,” she said.
“I started feeling like I was
caged. It made things
worse.”
In September, the family
members began putting
their transfer requests into
writing, according to documents obtained by the Express-News. In a Sept. 7
email to a Goodfellow training captain, Mark BiltonSmith asked for “an expedited transfer immediately”
and included a web link
that detailed the policy.
RECEIVED
NO RESPONSE
“I think it is clear that
Myah falls within the guidelines as listed,” Bilton-Smith
wrote. “Myah has requested
an expedited transfer 2
times in the last 60 days
and nobody has responded.”
After that, the family was
told Myah was not eligible
for an expedited transfer
because Goodfellow officials
had asked a medical evaluation board to review her
case for a possible discharge
from the Air Force for bipolar disorder.
On Sept. 24, Donna
Casey, the sexual assault response program manager at
Goodfellow, sent Clemans
an email and a copy of the
rules regarding medical
evaluation boards and limits
on who can receive a “permanent change of station.”
“The applicable content
specifies that anyone placed
on a assignment limitation
code 37 (MEB) cannot PCS
(regardless of the reason)
until the medical board has
determined the Airman is
fit to return to duty,” Casey
wrote.
Myah’s parents were dismayed. More bewildering
was the news that results of
a rape kit performed on
Myah after she reported the
second assault came back
negative. Clemans witnessed
the exam and held onto the
bloodied robe her daughter
had worn. She and BiltonSmith do not trust the results, partly because they
said it took several weeks
for the Air Force lab to process and release the findings.
A spokesman at Goodfellow said officials there
could not discuss the case
due to privacy rules.
After being told Myah
was ineligible for a transfer,
Clemans launched panicked
attempts to enlist the help
of victim advocates, government watchdog agencies
and lawmakers. Only after
she sought help from Tsongas, whose office inquired
about the case in November,
was Myah allowed to fill out
a formal application for the
transfer, she said.
“That’s when the whole
thing changed completely,”
Clemans said. “From that
point, everything went
quickly.”
Myah, who now is 21, left
the base in December. She
was reassigned to McChord
Field in Washington. She
and her family won an appeal of the medical board’s
decision to discharge her for
bipolar disorder and she received an honorable discharge in April.
She continues to suffer
from panic attacks and is
haunted by visions of the
assaults. She and her family
are looking at a long recovery for the damage done.
Clemans blames the failure to move Myah off base
as one of the biggest reasons for her daughter’s
emotional devastation.
“It’s still under command
jurisdiction to decide when
and if they grant a transfer,”
she said. “These are loopholes in the law. I want the
system to be fixed.”
[email protected]
He told me verbatim:
There’s no such thing as an
expedited transfer.”
MARK BILTON-SMITH, AFTER ASKING GOODFELLOW AFB TO TRANSFER HIS DAUGHTER
THE
PATH
HOME:
Airman
Myah
BiltonSmith
(right)
walks with
her
mother
as she
prepares
for her
discharge
from the
Air Force.
Quick
stats
1 Superiors
retaliated
against
62%
of victims
who
reported
assaults,
the DoD
says.
1 The
military
says it has
approved
334
of
336
transfer
requests.
1 The
Pentagon
doesn’t
track
how long
transfers
are
delayed.