After six rape charges against a retired Army major general were dismissed because of statute of limitations laws in the military system, the state of Virginia has decided to take up the decades-old allegations and has charged the 69-year-old retiree.
Retired Maj. Gen. James Grazioplene faces three charges of incest and three charges of rape related to allegations of rape of a minor dating back to his time in service over the course of years in various locations.
At least one of the locations of those alleged incidents was in Virginia.
Grazioplene now lives in Gainesville, Virginia. He faces charges lodged against him out of Prince William County Circuit Court, the Washington Post reported.
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Grazioplene was first indicted by a grand jury and then arrested on Dec. 7. He was being held without bond in the Prince William County Jail as of Monday, according to jail staff. He has a hearing scheduled for Dec. 21.
In August 2017, during an Article 32 hearing at Fort Meade, Maryland, the alleged victim, who at the time of the hearing was 46 years old, recounted years of escalating sexual abuse and repeated rape from the time she was 3 until she turned 18.
Army Times does not name alleged victims of sexual assault. Army public affairs officials declined to comment on the pending case.
Though some of the allegations dated back to the 1970s, due to limitations at the time of the alleged incidents, military prosecutors sought to charge Grazioplene for alleged incidents from 1983 to 1989 at the following locations: Fort Leavenworth, Kansas; Bindlach and Amberg, Germany; Woodbridge, Virginia; and Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
At the time of the incidents, there was a three-year statute of limitations on rape charges. That was removed in 1986 from the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
But a February ruling by the military’s highest court set the statute of limitations on rape cases at five years.
Following that ruling, a military judge dismissed the charges against Grazioplene in March, citing the time limits.
At the time, the alleged victim’s attorney, Ryan Guilds, told Army Times that his client is one of the strongest sexual assault survivors he has ever met, and “it’s really a shame that the justice system failed her.”
But Virginia does not have a statute of limitations on rape cases.
According to the county court records, Grazioplene is being charged with rape and incest after the case was heard by a grand jury earlier this month. The document lists the offense date as Aug. 1, 1987.
At the time, he and his family lived in Woodbridge, Virginia, which is in Prince William County.
The retired two-star is a West Point grad who joined the Army in 1972. He served more than three decades with stints as deputy commanding general at the Army’s armor school and force development director for the Joint Warfighting Capabilities Assessment.
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.
