Former sailor details sexual misconduct by SEALs pulled out from Iraq

US Navy intelligence specialist Colleen Grace was asleep on a remote air base in Iraq in 2019 when she was woken up by knocking on the door next to her room, and then a voice she recognised.

The voice belonged to a Navy corpsman she knew. He was upset and speaking loudly to the Army colonel who lived next door.

Grace heard the corpsman say that a sailor who attended a Fourth of July barbecue had just been raped by a member of the Navy SEAL platoon on the base.

The corpsman asked the colonel what to do because the victim was afraid that if she reported the incident, retribution would follow.

“And that's real,” Grace heard Hospitalman First Class Gustavo Llerenes tell Col Thomas Collins, a physician's assistant with the Florida National Guard.

“It's a good ol' boy's network.”

She said she heard Collins urge Llerenes to keep his voice down, saying the walls between the rooms were thin.

Grace, who could no longer hear the conversation between medical professionals, looked down at her phone to check the time. Just then Grace noticed a missed text from a friend asking her to come over.

“Urgent,” the message read.

When Grace got to her friend's room around 1:50 am, she found the sailor curled up in her bed. A giant black bruise marred her jawline. Several other marks lined her neck.

It was then that Grace realised the overheard conversation about a rape was about her friend.

Grace said her friend told her the sex started out consensual in the SEAL's room but then he started biting and choking her. Her friend told her that at one point she thought “what is he going to do with my body when he kills me?” because she said he was strangling her so hard she couldn't breathe.

Grace gingerly asked her if it would be OK to photograph her injuries.

She said she lifted her friend's shirt to find more bruises — on her breast, a shoulder, her stomach.

Grace sent the photos to her friend's phone, and then hugged her and cried, unsure of what would happen next.

But she and her friend would not stay silent.

Within weeks, the entire Foxtrot platoon of SEAL Team 7, known as Trident 1726, was sent home early to San Diego. It was an extremely rare move to cut short the mission of a unit that was there to combat remnants of ISIS.

Navy officials have given few details other than to say there was an alleged sexual assault and drinking at a Fourth of July barbecue in Iraq in 2019 in violation of Navy rules barring deployed troops from consuming alcohol.

The story of the platoon being pulled from Iraq has been previously reported, but documents obtained by The Associated Press through the Freedom of Information Act and interviews with nearly a dozen people give the first in-depth view into what led to the rare recall.

The documents and interviews show that women deployed with the SEALs say they were ogled and sexually harassed during the deployment.

Records obtained by the AP from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service also reveal a previously unknown reported allegation of sexual misconduct against the SEAL platoon chief, Special Warfare Operator Chief Nicholas Olson, two days before the Fourth of July barbecue. Olson denies any wrongdoing.

The platoon was withdrawn after the Navy made an unusually public push to strengthen order and discipline in its secretive elite force amid a series of scandals involving SEALs.

The misconduct has included cocaine use and tampering of drug tests by members of SEAL Team 10 based in Virginia, and last year's conviction of Navy SEAL Adam Matthews, who was sentenced to one year in military prison for his role in the 2017 hazing-related death of an Army Green Beret in Africa.

The Navy fired three SEAL leaders in the aftermath of the alleged rape on the Iraq air base and charged an enlisted SEAL with sexual assault, aggravated assault via strangulation and assault by battery for allegedly biting the victim on the face, among other counts, according to his charge sheet.

He faces a court-martial in November. A hearing in the case will be held Friday at Naval Base San Diego.

Jeremiah Sullivan, the lawyer for the SEAL, said he is innocent and “we look forward to trying his case in a court of law."

The SEAL, who was charged December 30, filed a counter claim in February against the sailor alleging she sexually assaulted him, taking advantage of him when he was “incapacitated."

AP is not naming the SEAL despite his criminal charges nor the sailor because they both say they were victims of sexual abuse and AP has a policy of not identifying victims unless they choose to be.

Grace is the first service member to come forward to talk about what happened at Ain al-Asad air base in western Iraq.

She spoke to the AP in an exclusive interview, detailing what she witnessed that night, describing what she said were attempts by Olson, the platoon chief, to stop the alleged sexual assault from being reported, and revealing other misconduct towards another female sailor working with the SEAL platoon during the 2019 deployment to Anbar Province