US Army General Might Face Life in Prison Over Sexual Abuse: Report

A Brigadier General of the US Army will face a trial that might sentence him to spend the rest of his days in prison, after a military judge refused on Monday to drop the charges of sexual aggression presented against the Brigadier General.

Brig. Gen. Jeffrey A. Sinclair must face a trial for sexual abuse against a Captain, after a preliminary investigation in which he plead guilty to three charges of adultery, a crime that in the US Armed Forces is punished with a discharge from military service and 15 years in prison, according to Time magazine.

According to the same source, Gen. Brig. Jeffrey A. Sinclair is one of the Army officials with the biggest rank that has been to taken to trial for a serious sexual aggression crime.

It's worth noting that trials against high ranking officers of the U.S. Army are very unusual due to the military hierarchy which has been said to be decisive factor for sexual crimes inside the Armed Forces not being reported.

According to Fox News, Brig. Gen. Sinclair faces accusations of sexual abuse from his subordinate, who reported that the Brig. Gen. forced her to practice oral sex on him twice while they were both deployed to Afghanistan in 2011.

James Pohl, the case's judge, refused to drop the sexual abuse charges against 51-year-old Brig. Gen. Sinclair, after the Brig. Gen's lawyers requested the charges to be dropped since they allege that the Army pressured the judge to not reach an agreement with the Brig. Gen. and send a message of adopting a hard posture against sexual abuse in the Armed Forces.

Despite this, Judge Pohl considered that the Army's influence in this case was not enough to dismiss the accusations made by the plaintiff, a Captain 20 years younger than Brig. Gen Sinclair.

In recent years, the number of accusations of sexual abuse in the ranks of the Armed Forces of the U.S. has been widely documented in national and international press.

According to a report published by the AFP, in 2013 alone the reports of sexual abuses in the US Army rose 60 percent above those registered in 2012.