Posted on 02/11/2010 3:08:23 PM PST by NormsRevenge
A single mother from Oakland has been discharged from the Army for refusing to leave her infant son behind to go to Afghanistan, but she will not be court-martialed, her attorney said Thursday.
Alexis Hutchinson, 21, had faced criminal charges at a court-martial for refusing to accompany her unit when it deployed in November. Although that is no longer a prospect, Hutchinson has been demoted from specialist to private and will lose all military and veteran benefits, said her attorney, Rae Sue Sussman of San Francisco.
She said Hutchinson had been given an other-than-honorable discharge.
In a statement, Hutchinson said she was "excited to know what will happen to me, and that I am not facing jail. This means I can still be with my son, which is the most important thing."
Hutchinson enlisted in the Army in 2007 straight out of Fremont High School in East Oakland. She was supposed to deploy overseas as a cook with her unit, the 3rd Infantry Division, on Nov. 5. She skipped the flight, she contended, because she had nobody to take care of her then-10-month-old son, Kamani.
Hutchinson told her commanding officers she had arranged for her mother to watch Kamani while she was away for her one-year tour of duty, but when that fell through at the last minute, she could find no alternative.
In January, the Army charged her with four court-martial counts. She could have spent up to two years behind bars had she been convicted of being absent without leave, missing a movement, dereliction of duty and insubordinate conduct toward a noncommissioned officer.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Females were always a mistake in the armed forces and homos will be even a bigger one.
You mean they don't care about a bad service record - or there are no jobs anyway. :-))
She almost certainly thought having the kid would buy her immunity from deployment. It’s long been a given that women servicemembers have been routinely getting knocked up to get out of an overseas tour.
This is going to send out shockwaves. I only hope Obammy doesn’t put his oar in.
She may not, probably doesn't, understand, but there will be consequences to her.
Ugly ugly. Leave the baby out of it.
The kid is a bastard.....no nice language can remove the stain
Good
Too much money wasted keeping her so long
You mean invite her and the Chief of Staff over to the White House for a beer, or would that be a malt liquor. (Oh, I shouldn't have said that.)
Not everyone in a particular unit is deployed. Why not have her be one of the ones that stays behind?
Cindie
My bet is that she was not a single mom when she enlisted. This is a major, major problem with having women in the armed forces. There is a need to have people who can deploy and having a kid makes that a tough proposition.
I dunno.....I thought that when you serve in the military, you go where they tell you to go, you serve where you’re needed....you mean, they can say no, I’d rather stay home, send someone else?
Umm, how about no. This is the military, not some mickey mouse club. Giving some soldiers, marines, airman, or sailors preferential treatment doesn’t help morale so much.
1 rule that should be enforced without excpetion:
Each military dependent child must have one custodial parent who is not in any branch or component of the armed services.
Ensuring each child has at least one parent present MUST take priority and MUST NOT interfere with military operations. This can never be the case when both parents are subject to activation or deployment.
If you get a divorce or are widowed, you need to find a new career. The military is a war fighting machine, not a social services agency.
If this was the rule, then it would be very easy to accomodate the true exceptions when a soldier should not deploy because his spouse is in the hospital with cancer or some other unexpected catastrophy.
Not so much that she’s a single mom; she’s just an irresponsible person. Even if she wanted to have a child and be in the military too, she should have thought through the pros and cons and make the appropriate decisions. She should have been prepared for the possibility that she would be deployed (it wasn’t like it was a surprise) and should have made better arrangements for her child. Depending on her mother was kinda stupid.
And what about the baby’s father? Where is he in all of this?
21 years old...probably a product of our state run education system. Sure, the kiddies are indoctrinated about global warming, but they know nothing about the practical matters in life. More and more of our young are graduating from school with the intelligence of a turnip.
>”I’ve seen single mothers are not worth the trouble of hiring for most jobs.”
As a retired First Sergeant, I can attest to that.
* Women who become pregnant to avoid undesirable service.
* Women who call RAPE after consensual sex (3 out of 4 rape investigations in 5 years resulted in this)
* Women who REFUSE to make arrangements concerning their deployments.
I have no sympathy for them.
Women will never be warriors.
You obviously don't know what the team concept is.
Agreed. OTH is a good solution here. She gets out, the Army avoids the headache and bad press of a court martial, the unit deploys minus one deadbeat that would have been nothing but a problem.
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