As a drill instructor, Staff Sgt. Delmar Simpson was respected and feared by his young trainees and he used that power to intimidate them into having sex, a government prosecutor said Friday.
“This was not consensual sex. There wasn’t any romance here. It was `Take off your clothes, lay down on the floor, stop crying.’ And after the sex, it was `Put your clothes on and leave,’ ” Capt. David Thomas said in opening statements of Simpson’s court-martial.
His case is the most serious arising from the Army’s probe of sexual misconduct at this weapons-testing and training center 30 miles northeast of Baltimore. He is one of 12 Aberdeen staffers charged in the probe, which has spread worldwide.
But a Simpson defense lawyer said the 19 rape counts against female trainees and scores of other allegations against Simpson were lies by Army investigators or trainees who willingly had sex with Simpson.
The defense said prosecutors had no physical evidence of rape, and were basing their allegations on statements the women gave under pressure to Army investigators. Brady said investigators “aggressively and actively encouraged them to embellish their statements.”
Five current and former Aberdeen trainees have said investigators tried to pressure them into claiming they were raped.
