Power, fear and sex collided at basic training

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JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO-LACKLAND — Basic training under Staff Sgt. Luis Walker was a fiefdom, and he was lord.

Trainees learned first that what happened in their dormitory, stayed in the dormitory. They weren't to discuss what Walker said or did with anybody. Not among themselves. Not to other trainers.

Loyalty checks ensured it, they told a packed courtroom during three days of court testimony here. Walker would send a fellow military training instructor into the trainees' dayroom during airman's time, relatively informal periods during the otherwise rigid and rigorous 8½ weeks of basic. Here, they were to be free to talk about things that concerned them.

But when word got back to Walker that one of the trainees said he'd used profanity, one former trainee said, he ordered them into the dayroom and "smoked" them: pushups, situps and flutter-kicks until they were so exhausted they cried and slipped on their own sweat.

But for some recruits — many of whom were just out of high school and away from home for the first time — that wasn't the worst of it. In vacant dorm rooms, empty stairwells, locked flight offices and a remote supply closet, Walker preyed on young women whose future Air Force careers were entirely in his hands, they said.

One by one, 10 trainees tearfully, matter-of-factly, quietly and, at times, defensively, painted this picture of life in basic training under Walker.

A jury of five enlisted airmen and two officers convicted Walker of rape, sexually assaulting and having improper relationships with 10 former trainees — 28 charges in all. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison June 21 after a tearful plea for leniency. He faced life in prison.

Walker's defense team, made up of two military lawyers and a civilian attorney, argued Walker had neither the means nor opportunity to commit the crimes he is accused of and attacked the credibility of his accusers.

The accusations against the staff sergeant that first surfaced a year ago touched off an investigation into basic training that so far has identified 31 alleged victims and led to charges against five other MTIs. More could be charged. Six other instructors are being investigated in the sex scandal that rocked Lackland and reverberated all the way to Washington, D.C., where, on July 19, the four-star general poised to become the next Air Force chief of staff was questioned about the abuse by lawmakers during his confirmation hearing.

Inside the courtroom where media from around the country looked on, each of Walker's accusers recounted in graphic detail their encounters with Walker. Over three days of direct testimony and aggressive cross-examination, the women told strikingly similar stories of how Walker at first seemed like all the other MTIs who greeted them as soon as they stepped off the bus for basic — a disorienting and frightening experience meant to establish from the start an instructor's superiority. But as the weeks went by, Walker became friendlier and more relaxed.

Then he turned on them, the women said.

He called himself God, several women testified. He called the women in his flight bitches. When he walked into their dorm, he announced himself: "Daddy's home."

Walker had his favorites, one airman testified: "He pulled [into his office] the same girls over and over, every day."

Trouble starts

Walker joined the Air Force in 2004. The service said it was withholding his age and hometown for privacy reasons. He was stationed at Dover Air Force Base, Del., and spent time in South Korea before becoming an MTI in the 326th Training Squadron — part of the 37th Training Wing's 737th Training Group — in the summer of 2010. The alleged abuse began just a few months later, in October. It continued until his removal June 25, 2011.

None of the victims ever sought out law enforcement, a point underscored by Walker's defense attorneys.

It wasn't until one of Walker's former trainees transferred to another training squadron and reported the sexual assault of a fellow recruit that he was ultimately reassigned. The first sergeant notified the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. The squadron commander issued Walker a no-contact order that barred him from contact with all trainees, removed him from his position as MTI and out of the squadron.

It wasn't the first time Walker had been in trouble, the prosecution revealed during motion hearings before the trial began: He'd been stripped of his MTI hat temporarily because of improper contact with a trainee via Facebook. Then he got it back. No other details were offered, and the Air Force declined to elaborate.

Also revealed on the final day of testimony in the case: At least one other MTI knew about an alleged assault a month before Walker was removed. It was during that month that Walker is accused of assaulting a woman, identified as Airman 8. Air Force Times does not identify victims of sexual assault.

The woman known as Airman 1 testified in a video deposition that she told her instructor, Staff Sgt. Johnathan Roberts, in late May 2011 that Walker had assaulted her while she was at basic several months earlier. But that report apparently never made its way up the chain of command.

Col. Polly Kenny, staff judge advocate for the 2nd Air Force and a spokeswoman in the case, said senior Air Force leadership involved in the case learned Airman 1 made the complaint to Roberts when they heard her testimony at trial.

Kenny said there would be an investigation into "when who knew what and who told who," and could potentially bring charges against others.

Training instructors are obligated to report allegations of misconduct — particularly sexual assaults, Kenny said.

Roberts was still an MTI as of July 19, she said.

Testimony

Airman 10, the first victim who testified at Walker's trial, didn't fit in with most of the other women in her flight, she said.

She recounted the first time Walker, the instructor of her "brother flight," made a comment that surprised her: "He said I had a switch in my walk."

Later, Walker summoned her into a stairwell in the dormitory. He asked her how basic training was going. He talked to her about the stresses of being dorm chief, Airman 10's assigned task. He told her to stick it out, that basic training wouldn't last forever.

It was nice, she testified. Then he held out his arms, as if offering a hug. She hesitated. No other trainer had ever done such a thing.

"I wasn't sure what the consequences were," Airman 10 said.

She decided to hug him. When she went to pull away, he held on. Then he kissed her. She said she can't remember if she kissed him back. She went back to the dormitory.

For Airman 1, it began with a kiss on the cheek after he asked her to help him get some file folders from another MTI's flight office.

For Airman 9, the prosecution's final witness, it was a comment to her and another trainee: "You two look like freaks." On a second occasion, he asked her how many piercings she had. She told him.

"Show me. Take your clothes off," Walker told her.

When she told him no, he asked if he needed to get a female MTI to come and inspect her. She said yes. He laughed. He was just testing her, Walker told her. She'd passed.

In the case of Airmen 10, 1 and 9, as in most of the others, Walker's behavior escalated, they said.

He was convicted of raping Airman 1 and seeking to develop an inappropriate relationship with Airman 9. He was convicted of using his rank and authority to have sex with Airman 10.

Each gave the following accounts:

When Airman 1 was assigned to entry control duty in Walker's dorm, he called her into his office and closed the door. They talked about her career field. He made a joke. He approached her, and they began to kiss. She laughed — too loud, he told her. She would be heard. He dismissed her. On her final encounter with Walker, he told her to meet him in an empty dormitory. They lay on a bed in the flight office and began kissing again. Then he pulled his pants down to mid-thigh and tried to force her hand on him.

"It wasn't right. I didn't want to," Airman 1 said in a video deposition played for the court. She did not attend the trial because she had recently given birth and was under doctor's orders not to travel.

After pulling her hand away, Walker forced his hand down her pants as she repeatedly told him no. When she yelled, he stopped. She left. They never spoke again, Airman 1 testified.

During an encounter between Airman 9 and Walker after the piercing questions, he asked to see her cellphone. Airman 9 testified she asked if she could delete any of the images first. He told her no. She handed over the phone and Walker pulled up an image in which she was naked.

It was meant for only her and her fiancé, who lived 1,400 miles away, Airman 9 said she told him. He told her she could go. Later, Walker called her into his office and told her to get her cellphone from a locker where they were kept. She thought she was in trouble, she said, and did as she was told.

Walker scrolled through 500 photos and videos on her cellphone. Some of the videos were sexually explicit. He turned up the volume and played them over and over.

"Look at what you did to me," he said, pointing to his crotch. He told her to perform oral sex on him, she testified. "Get on your knees. Go ahead and start."

When she told him no again, he said, "You're going to finish this."

When she refused, the airman testified, he told her to leave his office because he needed alone time with her phone.

The experience shocked her, Airman 9 testified. Minutes before, Walker had called his flight into the dayroom. He was angry. Rumors were going around about him and certain trainees, he said. That was his career, his rank, his family on the line.

Two of the alleged victims in the case testified to that dayroom encounter. No one would ever believe the word of a trainee over that of an MTI, they said Walker told them.

"I felt like he was bipolar," Airman 9 testified. "Right after, he did something like this."

The next day, she and another trainee confronted him in his flight office. She told him what he'd done with her phone had been humiliating, that it was inappropriate.

Walker said he was sorry if he'd offended her, Airman 9 testified. "He said he'd completely forgotten about it."

The encounter had happened less than 24 hours earlier, she said.

Other airmen testified that Walker made inappropriate comments after a few minutes of casual conversation: How many men had they had sex with? What kinds of wild sex acts had they done? What were some unusual places they'd had sex?

He'd ask to see birthmarks and tattoos, tell women to take off their clothes or show him their breasts. He pulled out a ruler and asked one trainee, Airman 8, to tell him how long she preferred a man's penis.

Walker called Airman 10 into his flight office, struck up a casual conversation from behind his desk, and then moved over to the bed, where he waved her over.

"I smiled it off," she testified. "I was trying to be polite. By that time, I knew he was a staff sergeant. He made it known that he was important. … I said no several times, several different ways. He reached out and nonviolently pulled me over. He started trying to persuade me to take my clothes off. I said no several times, several different ways."

They had sex, Airman 10 tearfully testified. Afterward, she said, Walker told her not to tell anybody.

"I didn't say anything. I couldn't. I felt like there was nothing I could say," she said.

Another former trainee recalled her last night of basic training: Everyone had retreated to their beds, but they couldn't sleep. They were airmen now, and about to ship off to technical training.

An hour after lights out, Walker roused them.

"He came in and said we were boring and needed to get up," she testified.

He offered to let them help clean the flight office.

At one point, Walker told the woman to get some bleach from the supply closet. Her brother flight had made a mess, she said Walker told her. It was past midnight by then.

"I went to the supply closet. He followed me … he took off his hat and sat it on a cabinet."

She said she asked him: "I'm not getting bleach, am I?"

Walker pushed her onto a couch and had sex with her. She remembers staring at the blue light of a computer monitor until it was over.

She, like all the others, never went to law enforcement, she said.

"He could get away with whatever he wanted," she said.

Rebuttal

The defense put on a single witness before resting its case July 19: former MTI and Tech. Sgt. Richard Capestro.

Capestro testified to the layout of the dormitories. He also talked about trainee supervision: random checks of flight offices, dorms and laundry rooms, video surveillance and a box that allowed MTIs to listen in on trainees when they were out of their sight.

He also testified to the presence of bulletin boards posted with information on how to report sexual assaults and a sexual assault briefing received by all trainees within the first week of training.

Prosecutor Maj. Patricia Gruen called Walker a predator and a "wolf in sheep's clothing" who abused his position in order to gain sexual favors from trainees.

Defense attorney Maj. Naomi Dennis argued there simply was not the opportunity for an MTI to carry out a sexual assault in such a high regimented and supervised environment. She said the 10 victims had made up the stories about Walker.

Dennis questioned the lack of physical evidence in the case and pointed out that the lead investigator on the case had been on the job for less than a year and did not specialize in sexual assault cases.

Walker, who appears to be in his mid-20s, stands no more than 5-foot-5 and wears a pencil-thin mustache and closely cropped hair, did not testify. He remained emotionless throughout the testimony. His family, including his wife, sat attentively behind him in the courtroom gallery.

'Peeling back the onion'

Across the country, the general expected to become the next chief of staff within weeks, told a panel of lawmakers July 19 that the Air Force has spent the past 10 years trying to improve training at every level to combat sexual assault.

"What we have been doing is not working," Gen. Mark Welsh told the Senate Armed Services Committee. "It's not for lack of effort."

At Lackland, where 35,000 recruits pass through each year, leaders are reaching out to psychiatrists, behavioral analysts and researchers to help identify a root cause of the alleged sexual misconduct and to determine whether the problem is a systemic one.

"We are peeling that onion back to the core," said Col. Eric Axelbank, commander of the 37th Training Wing.

The top general at Lackland, Gen. Edward Rice, commander of Air Education and Training Command, has ordered an independent review of all initial and technical training schools, expected to be completed in August. The commander of the training squadron to which most of the MTIs, except Walker, were assigned, has been relieved of command. And 78 members of Congress have signed a letter requesting a congressional inquiry.

Rice told reporters during a June briefing that he is considering all-female training flights led by female instructors, but said he isn't sure of the benefits of such a change. There also aren't enough female MTIs to do that — 22 percent of recruits are women, compared with 11 percent of instructors.

Welsh said perhaps the Air Force should look at tougher screening to enter the service, or stiffer penalties for lesser offenses to keep airmen on track.

"If we can stop the crime, everything else becomes easier," Welsh said. "We all feel, senator, these are like our children that we are being given the privilege to command. Any time this happens, it's horrible and we're not doing enough to stop it."

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