WASHINGTON -- A Navy Criminal Investigative Service special agent testified Tuesday that one of three men accused of raping a Naval Academy midshipman gave investigators a detailed account of consensual sex with the accuser the night of the alleged attack.
An Article 32 military preliminary hearing is ongoing at the Washington Navy Yard to determine whether the charges against the men, Tra'ves Bush, Eric Graham and Joshua Tate, should proceed to a court martial.
Speaking via video-conference from her new station on the tiny Persian Gulf island of Bahrain, Special Agent Michelle Robinson told defense counsel for Graham that during a September 2012 NCIS interview, Graham said the accuser had performed oral sex on him in a car outside a house party on the night in question, April 14, 2012.
Robinson said Graham told her the accuser had been sitting in the front passenger seat of the car, which had been parked in the house's driveway, while Graham was in one of the backseats.
At some point, the accuser, who Graham said at the time smelled like alcohol, got into the back seat next to Graham and proceeded to perform oral sex on him, without his prompting.
Graham said he told her he didn't have a condom, to which the woman responded that she didn't care, or a similar statement. Whatever she said, Graham told Robinson, had prompted Graham to get out of the car and end the encounter.
Robinson said Graham needed repeated questioning to reveal this account, and had contradicted himself earlier in the same interview, telling Robinson that he had not had sex with the woman.
Robinson also testified about statements made by the woman to NCIS investigators. Robinson said the accuser said in an interview on May 8, 2012 -- less than a month after the alleged incident -- that there had in fact been a sexual act and that she said she was "certain" it happened outside the party house, rather than inside.
The woman refused to say how she knew such a detail given that she also contended she had been too heavily intoxicated to remember any details about the evening.
In a later interview on Sept. 6, 2012, Robinson said the woman also revealed that she recalled a short window of sexual activity, but did not remember any specifics.
Also during that interview, Robinson said the alleged victim said she was concerned about getting other midshipmen in trouble (the NCIS interviewed dozens of them) because she was not sure if the sex, assuming there had been some that night, had been consensual or not.
The hearing has taken on a high profile in the aftermath of President Barack Obama's public condemnation of sexual misconduct in the military at the Naval Academy’s commencement ceremony in May.
The results of this case, and others like it, may have policy implications for how the military deals with reports of sexual assault, which have increased exponentially in recent years. A Pentagon study estimated that unwanted sexual contact in the military jumped by 37 percent in 2012 to 26,000 cases.