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Groton Daily Independent
Tuesday, March 13, 2018 ~ Vol. 25 - No. 242 ~ 32 of 46
Washington.
When prosecutors don’t get involved, a base commander may ban an offender from returning, pending
therapy, or transfer the family. But commanders don’t have to take any action.
“There’s not necessarily any kind of justice, it’s just, ‘You can’t be here anymore,’” said Marcus Wil-
liams, a former NCIS investigator who now handles discrimination claims, including sex assault reports, at Brigham Young University.
Relocating a kid rather than requiring rehabilitative therapy through a court process misses a crucial op- portunity for reform. The most comprehensive research suggests that only 5 percent of juveniles who are arrested for a sex offense will get caught reoffending. Experts worry that when adults do not intervene, children may conclude assaults are acceptable.
The fear of future victims still gnaws at Heather Ryan, who worked as an NCIS investigator for more than two years at Camp Lejeune.
In 2011, two sisters, 7 and 9, said their 10-year-old half-brother sexually assaulted them and threatened violence if they talked. The boy confessed.
Ryan worried the boy could become a lifelong offender, but said she struggled to get him help from the military’s vast support structure. Desperate, Ryan persuaded a federal prosecutor to take the case with a plan of forcing the 10-year-old into sex offender treatment in the civilian world.
When the boy stopped cooperating, the case fell apart. His family was later transferred to a base in another state. It’s unclear whether he ever received therapy.
“This child needed help. He really, really needed help,” Ryan, who retired from NCIS in 2015, said. “I think of him a lot and wonder how he’s doing, and if he has hurt anybody else.”
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Pritchard reported from Los Angeles. David Rising in Berlin, Germany, contributed reporting. Also con- tributing were Rhonda Shafner and Jennifer Farrar in New York, and Yuri Kageyama in Tokyo.
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If you have a tip, comment or story to share about child-on-child sexual assault on U.S. military bases, please email: schoolhousesexassault@ap.org . See AP’s entire package of stories here: https://www.ap- news.com/tag/HiddenVictims
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Contact the reporters on Twitter at https://twitter.com/lalanewsman or https://twitter.com/ReeseDunklin
Protests to await Trump’s visit to California border By JULIE WATSON, Associated Press
SAN DIEGO (AP) — Rallies for and against Donald Trump’s “big beautiful border wall” with Mexico are expected to mark his rst visit to California as president amid growing tensions between his administration and the state over immigration enforcement.
Trump will visit eight towering prototypes of his planned wall Tuesday before addressing Marines in San Diego and attending a fund-raiser in Los Angeles.
A top federal immigration of cial lashed out at some of the state’s elected leaders ahead of the visit. Thomas Homan, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s acting director, singled out Gov. Jerry Brown, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Monday for recent criti- cism of a spate of immigration arrests in the state and a federal lawsuit challenging state laws that limit cooperation on immigration.
Homan said Pelosi’s comments about federal agents terrorizing immigrant communities were “beyond the pale” and challenged Feinstein to change laws if she disagreed with how they are enforced.
Protests are also being planned across the border in Tijuana, Mexico, when Trump will examine the 30-foot-tall prototypes built along the international border to ful ll his signature campaign promise. Trump has insisted Mexico pay for the wall but Mexico has adamantly refused to consider the idea.
Organizers on both sides were urging people to remain peaceful after recent scuf es at rallies in Southern