Navy Doctor Arrested as Sex Offender

Military.com ^ | August 7, 2010 | Staff

[SloopJohnB]

A doctor who is being expelled from the Navy was charged by Kitsap County prosecutors Thursday with failing to register as a sex offender, according to attorneys familiar with the case.

Anthony L. Velasquez, 48, was arrested ....SNIP.... after being contacted by Naval Criminal Investigative Service about the possible violation, Wilson said.

State law requires people convicted of certain sex crimes to register as sex offenders...SNIP....But, Velasquez in a court martial at Yokosuka Naval Base in Japan and it was unclear at first if his conviction required registration....

[SloopJohnB]

Register for something occurring in Japan?

[Soothesayer9]

Obama will have us registered for far less crimes.

[Lmo56]

I was a Navy Brat and lived at Yokosuka for three years.

The prisoners in the brig had to run a circuit of the base from sun-up to sun-down in formation, with their MP guards switching off every time they came past the brig ...

And, FYI, the base IS a part of the United States - so [if required by his conviction] he should have registered in Maine.

[sinsofsolarempirefan]

They had to stay running during the whole of daylight hours?

[OldDeckHand]

"Register for something occurring in Japan? "

He was charged, tried and convicted in a military court, not a Japanese court. When convicted in military court of a non-military crime (like a sex-crime against a child), it is usually treated like a felony conviction, but the sex-crime registries are somewhat lacking and need to be remedied in these situations. The way the law is currently written, it's up to the military to inform local authorities, not the convicted. It should be both and the guilty should face specific penalties for not registering just like state and federal felons do. Additional Federal legislation needs to be written to close this loophole.

This case is well-known in military legal circles as one that is an embarrassed to the service. For reasons to long to go into here, he was sentenced to two years confinement (which is still way too little), but served less than a month - maybe even less than a week.

[mainsail that]

Was he living inside a US navy base and had to register to local county police or what?

[SloopJohnB]

He was charged, tried and convicted in a military court, not a Japanese court.

---

I know it is U.S. court - in my Navy days I worked in the legal section, but as the article states there was confusion if his conviction in Japan applied in the state of WA.

This case is well-known in military legal circles as one that is an embarrassed to the service.

---

Is this one of the embarrassments?

"A former enlisted sailor testified she once looked forward to climbing the Navy’s ranks. However, she said the episode and how she was treated after reporting the Jan. 13, 2008, incident convinced her instead to leave the military.p> “I wasn’t taken seriously … when I reported this; nothing happened,” said the former sailor. “I couldn’t do anything. I had no power.”

The enlisted sailor filed a report with Naval Criminal Investigative Service agents at Atsugi shortly after the incident. Three more of Velasquez’s patients made allegations against him soon afterward.

The sailor and the three others were then told nothing about the results until finding out more than a year later that no action had been taken against Velasquez by U.S. Naval Hospital Yokosuka, which oversees the Atsugi branch clinic.

According to testimony, the hospital discounted the sailor’s story, failed to reach a second complainant and ignored the other two — despite NCIS providing the complaints to the hospital.

Cmdr. Lorraine Nadkarni, a doctor and the hospital’s peer reviewer, reviewed 371 of Velasquez’s patients’ medical records beginning in March 2008, and spoke with 40 other women but received no complaints from them, she testified.

However, Nadkarni said, she had never been notified by her hospital about two of the complainants to NCIS, nor of another woman who later gave her statement to prosecutor Lt. Emily Dewey.

Nadkarni recommended that the hospital defer judgment on Velasquez until after the NCIS investigation ended. Instead, the hospital cleared Velasquez of wrongdoing by April 14, 2008, while the investigation was ongoing..."

Here.

[IYellAtMyTV]

Ping

[OldDeckHand]

"I know it is U.S. court - in my Navy days I worked in the legal section, but as the article states there was confusion if his conviction in Japan applied in the state of WA."

It should have applied in the state of WA. The Navy should have contacted both state and county officials in Washington, but didn't. That's embarrassment number one - one of many. There was some confusion in the state of WA as well, but they don't bear the bulk of the culpability, the Navy does.

There needs to be some homogenization amongst the states with respect to how they view conviction at GCM. Some states look at all convictions at GCM as felonies, most states look at conviction at GCM of plainly non-military crimes as felonies, and some other states look at it on primarily ad-hoc basis - which leaves too great an opportunity for people like this former physician to slip through the cracks.

In addition to the story you've added, there were significant problems with the court-martial itself, and with both the military judge and trial counsel and even the convening authority. In short, everything that could have gone wrong here did.

[sionnsar]

Thanks to IYellAtMyTV for the ping.

Say WA? Evergreen State ping

Quick link: WA State Board

FReepmail sionnsar if you want on or off this ping list.
Ping sionnsar if you see a Washington state related thread.

[Lmo56]

They had to stay running during the whole of daylight hours?

Pretty much - they had daily housekeeping duties in the brig, but from 9am - 11am they ran. After lunch, from 2pm -4pm. Mostly in slow formation trot ...

[sinsofsolarempirefan]

That doesn't sound as bad as I thought. Still pretty bad though considering I feel pretty buggered after running for about an hour. Still, it reminds me of one story I heard off someone who used to be in the (Royal) Navy. He said he went to an army base once to play an inter-service rugby game, and he saw a couple of soldiers doing what he assumed was a punishment drill. Basically, he they were being made to run laps around the parade ground in full NBC kit (in the blazing sunshine) whilst carrying a GPMG above their heads.
He said they had already started when he arrived and they were still doing it when he left the field when the match was over 90 minutes later. He said that at that point, he thought he'd definitely joined the right branch of the armed forces as he went off for a refreshing post-game beverage...

[Trial Counsel]

This case was a travesty of justice but it is important to remember in the military system prosecutors and judges do not make or approve deals. The convening authority for whatever reason didn’t care about jail time and his sja agreed.