On Monday, the US Army had dropped sexual assault charges filed against Brigadier General Jeffrey Sinclair to allow the disgraced military leader to plead to lesser charges, the Washington Post said in a report. Sinclair's sex scandal has rocked the military in the US.
According to the plea deal, Sinclair would need to acknowledge that he maltreated and caused emotional distress to a junior officer he had a long, extramarital affair with. Should Sinclair comply with the plea demand, the Post said he will be avoiding a conviction on the sexual assault charges. The newspaper said people who are found guilty on such charges will have to be registered as a sex offender and will need to face time in prison.
The Post said that Sinclair's punishment has yet to be determined, but his attorneys had expressed their agreement to a side deal should the US Army include a cap on his punishment.
Sinclair's case is rare, considering there are only three such cases of charges filed against a high-ranking official in the past sixty years, the Post said. Moreover, the newspaper said it was also rare for a one-star general to possibly get a conviction over sexual misconduct.
The lawsuit against Sinclair was spurred by allegations of a female captain, who claimed to have carried on a torrid, extramarital affair with the Army general for three years and had broken off with him after Sinclair forced her to perform oral sex on him. According to the captain, Sinclair has threatened to kill her and her family should she decide to reveal the affair.
Sinclair, on the other hand, had tapped an expensive legal team to defend his case, and countered that the captain made up all the charges because she was determined to punish him for not breaking off with his wife.
