The National Coalition for Men (NCFM) has filed an official complaint with the U.S. Secretary of Defense and others, after a lengthy inquiry, in the matter of the court-martial of a highly-decorated combat veteran and Army Officer.
U.S. Army Major Christian “Kit” Martin is an Apache helicopter pilot assigned to the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Major Martin has served with honor and distinction for nearly 29 years including several combat deployments to Iraq.
As a result of NCFM’s extensive inquiry they have filed a 19-page complaint with Defense Secretary Aston Carter, Army Chief of Staff General Ray Odierno, the DOD Inspector General and Senator Rand Paul. The complaint has been shared with approximately 20 other political office holders and news media outlets including the Military Times, and Dateline on ID (Investigation Discovery), who is considering covering this story as another in a long list of ideologically and politically motivated persecutions of military personnel involving allegations of sexual assault, harassment, and domestic violence.
As we have seen many times before, the allegations that involve various sexual assault violations stem from a high-conflict separation and divorce from a vindictive ex-wife, who has been well educated in intricacies in the way that allegations of sexual assault are handled in the military, and the knowledge of the ferocity of how those allegations result in court-martial proceedings.
In today’s military, almost any allegation of domestic violence or sexual assault is certain to be sent to a court-martial, regardless of the validity of the allegations. Many of the Pentagon and military senior leadership have been cowed and neutered by ferocious ideological feminists who send cases to court-martial even when the facts state otherwise. In this case, the allegations had been investigated and rejected by civilian authorities more than a year before the Army picked up where they left off.
Not surprisingly, the ex-wife’s allegations came only after being told by Major Martin that he wanted a divorce; allegations about incidents that she said had been going on for years but she never told anyone, never said anything to anyone, never sought out or asked for help from the dozens of resources and programs available to military domestic violence victims; they just kind of popped up when she was faced with divorce. My, isn’t that interesting! Can anyone say, BULLSHIT!?
What is even more disturbing in this case is the fact that court records, transcripts, and official files have already determined that the allegations are unfounded and have decided that Major Martin’s ex-wife was untruthful (a liar).
The court records show that Major Martin’s ex-wife; Ms. Joan Harmon, isn’t his wife at all. She never was. It has been discovered that Ms. Harmon never divorced a man she married, Mr. Carlos Guerra, a resident of Tennessee, before fleeing nearly a decade ago with their three young children. Mr. Guerra, still Harmon’s legal husband, tried without success for years to find Harmon and their kids.
As a result of the efforts of Major Martin’s legal team, his ex-wife, or should we say his bigamist ex-wife has been formally charged with a felony count of Bigamy in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. She has already been arrested, arraigned, and is pending trial in August.
NCFM has also discovered that the military has attempted to pressure civilian authorities to dismiss charges against Ms. Harmon, which is a clear violation of the Posse Commitatus Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1385. If the charges against Ms. Harmon are dismissed, her credibility as the sole accuser will be enhanced, thereby increasing the chances of a conviction. Consequently, the Army is trying to make that little irritating fact go away.
There is also significant evidence of the issue of Unlawful Command Influence on the part of military commanders at Fort Campbell, primarily on the part of the Deputy Commander for Operations, Brigadier General Mark Stammer, or as he is referred to in military circles as “Stammer the Hammer,” presumably due to his no-nonsense and zero-tolerance approach to allegations of sexual assault and domestic violence.
AVfM is in full support of no-nonsense and zero-tolerance approaches and policies to address domestic violence and sexual assault but we are also fully aware of how spurious and false allegations seem to take on a life of their own, especially under the hype and hysteria of the non-existent sexual assault epidemic in the military. This false allegation monster is exacerbated by false and misleading facts about the real extent of the problem, retaliation, extreme political correctness, self-serving interests and capitulation and cowardice to the shrill voices of sex assault epidemic supporters, including the likes of Senators’ Kirsten Gillibrand and Claire McCaskill.
The mountain of evidence, however, paints a very different picture; one of a fast track to a court-martial based on little to no evidence as in this case in addition to allegations made by a liar; a determination already made by civilian Kentucky authorities.
Just as we have seen at our college campuses with the shoddy, Homer-Simpson-like unqualified investigations, kangaroo courts and the rush to judgment, the same principles are applied to our military. It seems, in today’s day and age, innocuous and innocent conduct is immediately classified as some type of harassment or assault, and cases are sent to court-martial based on nothing more than unproven and unverified allegations. In many cases like this one, they are sent to court-martial even when the allegations have been proven false in a civilian court of law.
NCFM has discovered at least 16 separate state and federal criminal law violations that Ms. Harmon has committed that have been ignored by the Army, yet they are basing their case primarily on allegations made by a liar, and quite possibly a pathological liar.
As we have seen and reported before, there are more than a few problems with this suspect court-martial. The desire, or the political need to appear to wipe out sexual assault in the military by any means possible has resulted in the hijacking and obliteration of the truth, the constitution and due process.
Civilian military criminal defense attorney Jocelyn C. Stewart of Tacoma Washington, a former military (JAG) prosecutor and defense attorney who specializes in military sexual assault, states;
Now more than any other time in the history of the United States military is a service member at risk of being accused of sexual assault, facing investigation by tenacious law enforcement and eventual trial by court-martial.
As a stern warning to all male members of the U.S. military; you are in a hostile work environment; an environment that can mean the end of your military career or land you in prison based on nothing more than one false allegation. Even if you don’t end up in the Leavenworth Detention Barracks, you are one false allegation away from having your life negatively changed forever.
The only true and accurate way this can be described is that this is lunacy times infinity on steroids.
This is all too often a common scenario where allegations alone; without proof, seem to suffice to charge a soldier with a host of offenses, and in effect, ending that soldier’s career. The NCFM complaint letter also addresses the overbearing and overreaching sexual assault briefings that portray only men as abusers and only women as victims.
This overreach is having a devastating and negative effect on the military. In a recent article in the Military Times, many soldiers shared their displeasure at being labeled and told time after time that essentially they are rapists who need to be trained and reminded over and over not to rape.
In the article, Army Staff Sgt. Alexander VanArsdall said the military’s sexual harassment and assault prevention training has been
one-sided, and overly focused on painting men as aggressors and women as victims….a common thing among male service members, when they head into the training, is to say, ‘It’s time to learn what a racist, sexist, intolerant bastard I am.’…that’s what it feels like. We start to get a little indignant and upset, and feel persecuted in our own right.
Domestic violence and sexual assault posters, billboards, brochures and handout materials litter military installations like graffiti in Times Square on New Year’s Eve. Leaflets are taped above urinals in the men’s latrines, and one military member interviewed stated that he cannot walk 50 feet without seeing something to remind him what a despicable rapist in waiting he truly is.
NCFM reported of the story of now retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Darin Haas, the former Fort Campbell SHARP director who was charged with violating a restraining order. As it turned out, the restraining order, made by a philandering ex-wife, was fraudulent; the policies and legalities of the Clarksville Tennessee Police Department were called into question, and all charges were dismissed. The main stream media, however, once they got their salacious headlines of a high-ranking Army officer who headed the sexual assault program being arrested, ignored the subsequent exoneration – they were no longer interested in the story.
Major Martin continues to fight and we expect some significant changes in his case. It is to be hoped that someone in the military’s hierarchy will review these draconian, biased policies and make changes to restore a level of sanity, common sense, and rule of law to these types of allegations and how they are handled.
Major Martin’s fiancée Laura Spencer has set up a Facebook page; “Protect your Soldier” for support. Please feel free to visit her Facebook page and offer some support.
It is hoped, due to the media interest, that this case will become the catalyst for the overhaul of the military justice system in the manner in which allegations of sexual assault, harassment, and domestic violence are handled.
The bottom line is that there is no epidemic of sexual assault in the military. Those statistics being thrown around like bird seed have already been debunked. The so-called misleading surveys have already been proven inaccurate, and from a commonsense perspective, does anyone actually believe in the figures being thrown around that essentially state that someone in the military has a chance of being the victim of a sexual assault that is FORTY (40) times higher than what occurs in the City of Detroit?
PUUUU-LEEEEZE!!!
There is no dispute that there are cases of sexual assault, harassment and domestic violence in the military but to classify it as an epidemic based on a false narrative, hysteria and a rush to judgment, is simply a terrible insult to the majority of honorable men and women in our military who do not engage in these types of behaviors.
Level-headed commonsense solutions, rule of law, the constitution and due process should dictate how these cases are handled. Not, as in the case of Major Christian “Kit” Martin, should an innocent man be sacrificed on the hysterical and delusional altar of political correctness and gender ideology run amok.
