SAN DIEGO -- Several Camp Pendleton-based Marines have been found guilty in recent weeks of crimes including rape and child pornography, with similar cases pending in the military criminal justice system, records show.
The cases are coming to light after a series of Freedom of Information Act requests filed by the San Diego Union-Tribune over the past four months. Documents released by the Marines revealed that some of the most serious cases were tied to senior leaders like former Chief Warrant Officer E. DeLeon Jr.
At a Camp Pendleton court-martial last month, a military judge convicted DeLeon of possessing and distributing child pornography. The judge sentenced him to seven years behind bars, but a pretrial agreement capped his imprisonment at five years.
Highly redacted records trace DeLeon's crimes back to Nov. 26, 2016, at Camp Pendleton, when he distributed a digital image of a child engaging in sex. Three days earlier, he had communicated to an unidentified person his desire to molest "a little girl," an act he thought "sounds amazing," according to his records.
Camp Pendleton Lance Cpl. M.F. Currington was found guilty of abusing anabolic steroids and sexually abusing a child. He was sentenced to three years in prison. Currington's charges stemmed from a late-2016 investigation into steroid and drug paraphernalia possession, according to records.
Another Camp Pendleton Marine, Lance Cpl. B.J. Morton, was convicted last month of possessing and distributing child pornography. He was demoted to private and given a bad conduct discharge.
He was jailed Aug. 14 after investigators accused him of possessing three videos and other sexually explicit images of children, according to his records.
Several cases involve Marines accused of sneaking into other service members' rooms to assault or grope them.
For example, Lance Cpl. J.P. Hill was convicted last month of sexual assault causing harm, abusive sexual contact and making an indecent recording. He crept into the room of a fellow Marine at night to assault her and photographed her when she was naked, according to records.
He was sentenced to two years in prison, demoted to private and given a dishonorable discharge.
Other cases involving Marines at bases in the region are making their way through the justice system.
L.M. Schmidt, a Marine assigned to a base in Yuma, Ariz., was charged Aug. 17 with entering an unnamed service member's barracks to touch the person's hips to gratify his sexual desires, according to court records.
Another Yuma Marine, Sgt. C.S. Panatta, is accused of raping a child under 12 at the base in 2016. Commanders also filed two charges tied to reported lewd incidents involving another child under 16 around the same time, records show.
He faces a third set of charges linked to child abuse that, according to records, occurred in 2014 and 2015 at Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, Twentynine Palms, in San Bernardino County, Calif. He's accused of beating a child with a fly swatter, punching a child's face, slamming a child in the head with a door and attempting to suffocate a child with a pillow, according to records released to the Union-Tribune.
Panatta has been in pretrial confinement for a year.
A Marine assigned to an aviation unit in California, P. Wiredu of Miramar's Marine Wing Headquarters Squadron 3, was charged in 2015 with committing three 2013 rapes in or near San Diego, according to heavily redacted records released to the Union-Tribune.
Marine officials declined to comment.
A Section on 02/18/2018