A retired Army major general was arraigned Thursday on six specifications related to the alleged rape of a minor over at least six years.
Retired Maj. Gen. James Grazioplene deferred entering a plea during the brief hearing at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, on Thursday. He was not placed in custody and a date has not yet been announced for the next proceedings in his court-martial.
The Army said in a statement in October that Grazioplene would be assigned a military judge and a date would then be set for his trial. He faces a maximum punishment of forfeiture of pay and allowances as well as confinement for life.
At Grazioplene’s Article 32 hearing in August at Fort Meade, Maryland, the alleged victim described in detail escalating abuse starting at age 3 and repeated rapes going back to the early 1980s until she turned 18.
At the time of the August hearing, she was 46 years old.
Military prosecutors alleged in the August hearing that Grazioplene assaulted the girl at or near each of his duty stations from 1983 to 1989, which included Fort Leavenworth, Kansas; Bindlach and Amberg, Germany; Woodbridge, Virginia; and Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
But the alleged victim also cited alleged abuse that occurred at other locations, including while Grazioplene taught at West Point and in a location in New York state. Some of her testimony referenced abuse that predated the time frame listed in the charge sheet.
Army Times does not name alleged victims of sexual assault.
In 1986, a three-year statute of limitations on rape charges was removed from the Uniform Code of Military Justice. No statute of limitations on rape exists in the military now.
The alleged victim testified in August that she revealed different portions of the ongoing abuse to different people over the years, depending on how much she trusted each of them.
She admitted blacking out during some of the alleged incidents but also noted that the abuse advanced as she got older.
But at the August hearing, Grazioplene’s civilian attorney, Tom Pavlinic, challenged the alleged victim’s recollections, noting that she had told investigators different versions of what happened in different instances.
He also pointed to her use of language specific to therapy and that she rarely shared any concrete details and instead relied on spotty memories and “feelings” rather than specifics of alleged incidents.
The government prosecutor, Lt. Col. Carol Brewer, said at the August hearing that problems with parts of her client’s recall were due to Grazioplene’s “depraved acts.”
Grazioplene has not been recalled to active duty. He continues to draw retirement pay and benefits but for purposes of adjudicating the charges is attached to Headquarters, Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall in Virginia.
He is a 68-year-old resident of Gainesville, Virginia.
The retired two-star is a West Point graduate who entered the Army in 1972 and retired in 2005.
Todd South has written about crime, courts, government and the military for multiple publications since 2004 and was named a 2014 Pulitzer finalist for a co-written project on witness intimidation. Todd is a Marine veteran of the Iraq War.
