Former sailor details misconduct by SEALs pulled from Iraq

Grace heard the corpsman say that a sailor who attended a Fourth of July barbecue had just been raped by a member of the Navy SEAL platoon on the base. Records obtained by the AP from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service also reveal a previously unknown reported allegation of sexual misconduct against the SEAL platoon chief, Special Warfare Operator Chief Nicholas Olson, two days before the Fourth of July barbecue. The platoon was withdrawn after the Navy made an unusually public push to strengthen order and discipline in its secretive elite force amid a series of scandals involving SEALs. The misconduct has included cocaine use and tampering of drug tests by members of SEAL Team 10 based in Virginia, and last year’s conviction of Navy SEAL Adam Matthews, who was sentenced to one year in military prison for his role in the 2017 hazing-related death of an Army Green Beret in Africa.The Navy fired three SEAL leaders in the aftermath of the alleged rape on the Iraq air base and charged an enlisted SEAL with sexual assault, aggravated assault via strangulation and assault by battery for allegedly biting the victim on the face, among other counts, according to his charge sheet. A hearing in the case will be held Friday at Naval Base San Diego.Jeremiah Sullivan, the lawyer for the SEAL, said he is innocent and “we look forward to trying his case in a court of law.” The SEAL, who was charged Dec. 30, filed a counter claim in February against the sailor alleging she sexually assaulted him, taking advantage of him when he was “incapacitated.” AP is not naming the SEAL despite his criminal charges nor the sailor because they both say they were victims of sexual abuse and AP has a policy of not identifying victims unless they choose to be. She spoke to the AP in an exclusive interview, detailing what she witnessed that night, describing what she said were attempts by Olson, the platoon chief, to stop the alleged sexual assault from being reported, and revealing other misconduct towards another female sailor working with the SEAL platoon during the 2019 deployment to Anbar Province. During the interview in Baghdad on July 29, 2019, Perry made no mention of any sexual assault allegations.————-About a dozen female service members were attached to the SEAL platoon during a six-month deployment to Iraq that began in March of 2019.On the air base, Grace and the other service members who supported Special Operations Task Force-West, the unit responsible for missions inside Anbar Province, Iraq, lived at Camp Fenin while the SEALs stayed at Camp Freiwald, about a 10-minute walk away. “She was tough as nails and she didn’t want anyone to know that anything affected her ever,” Grace said.After the alleged incident with Olson, the woman told Grace that she would only go to the barbecue for a short while, and she wasn’t going alone. They told Grace that Olson had stopped outside her room twice that night and warned that everyone at the barbecue will get into trouble if the second woman reported the rape, Grace said. “She told me to block my door, have my gun by my bed and write everything down.”After the Fourth of July, Grace said she could no longer stay silent about the July 2 assault, even though the woman who told her about the incident with Olson “was adamant that I don’t tell, but I had to. Some of the SEALs blamed the female Navy sailors for the interruption in the mission, and the tension made it difficult to do their job effectively, Grace said.“We were ostracized and that’s a very difficult position to be in when you’re trying to feed people mission information,” she said.