A collective "hoo-ah" could be heard in the courtroom gallery as an Army drill sergeant was declared not guilty of using threats to extort sexual favors from trainees.
Although convicted Wednesday of four less serious allegations, Staff Sgt. Steve A. Holloway smiled broadly and shook hands with a group of drill sergeants present for the verdict.Some broke out with the military idiom "hoo-ah" to register their approval when the military judge's decision was announced.
Holloway, 32, of New Bern, N.C., was accused of sodomy and trying to force trainees to have sex with him. He was found not guilty on 14 of those charges but convicted of forcing a kiss on a trainee and having consensual sex with another.
He faces up to seven years in prison and a dishonorable discharge for maltreatment, assault and battery and violating a regulation prohibiting personal relationships with trainees.
The judge also convicted him of soliciting to obstruct justice for trying to get one woman to change her story. His sentence hearing was scheduled for Thursday.
Defense lawyers maintained Holloway was a tough drill sergeant - sometimes called Hurricane - who was wrongly accused by people with a grudge or questionable character.
"They thought I was a drill sergeant from h---," Holloway said of the trainees. "But in the very end, they understood my philosophy and my way of training."
Prosecutors said Holloway knew of a system where instructors helped each other carry out personal relationships with female trainees.
The military judge said he did not believe the stories of some of the six trainees who testified against Holloway.
One former 17-year-old private said Holloway forcibly kissed her and fondled her at a time when defense witnesses said he was at the mess hall.
Holloway is the sixth instructor at this south-central Missouri post to be brought to a court-martial since sexual misconduct charges were announced last November, days after the sex scandal at the Army's Aberdeen Training Ground in Maryland came to light.
At the Missouri post, five have been convicted; four were sentenced to discharges. Three more noncommissioned officers are charged and scheduled for courts-martial in June.