A Bangor Naval officer has been accused of stalking a woman by hiring a private investigator to gather information about men she dated, placing a tracking device on her car and peering through a window while she was on a date, according to a charge sheet provided by the public information office of Submarine Group 9 of the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Fleet.
The accused, whose name was redacted from the documents provided to the Kitsap News Group Tuesday, is an active-duty officer on the USS Nebraska, a ballistic missile submarine homeported at Naval Base Kitsap in Bangor.
The specifications of the stalking charges include allegations that the submariner, between April 2016 and February 2018, followed the alleged victim “to various locations without her knowledge” throughout Washington, DC; climbed “up to a vantage point to video record her kissing” another man “inside his 4th story apartment”; made a copy of her home key without her knowledge and entered her apartment while she was not there, inducing a “reasonable fear of bodily harm.”
Allegations of assault, housebreaking and unlawful entry were also made stemming from a sworn statement dated September 4 by an unnamed accuser, whose name was also redacted.
Michael L. Smith, a spokesperson for Submarine Group 9, said that the charges made against the service member will be considered at an upcoming Article 32 hearing, to determine whether there is enough evidence to proceed to trial. An Article 32 hearing is one of the first steps in the military justice process, similar to a Grand Jury proceeding.
The Article 32 hearing was initially scheduled for September 28 but was postponed until a date to be determined, Smith said.
“The initiation of an Article 32 hearing in the case reflects that the Navy takes allegations of misconduct very seriously, and the conduct alleged in the case is not consistent with the Navy’s values,” Smith wrote in an email.
The allegations, which were first reported by the Navy Times on October 4, follow the release of accusations earlier this month that four U.S. Navy service members, including two USS Nebraska submariners, engaged in unlawful sexual behavior with an underage girl at Naval Base Kitsap in September 2017.
