Editorial: Corps put spin control ahead of victims’ health - Navy Community - discussions, photos, video - Navy Times

Editorial: Corps put spin control ahead of victims’ health

Lt. Cmdr. John Thomas Matthew Lee, a Catholic chaplain who led a second, secret life as an HIV-positive homosexual predator, acknowledged to a military court that he lied when a lieutenant colonel asked him about his health prior to a sexual liaison in 2006. He told the officer he was fine, knowing full well he could infect him with the incurable virus that causes AIDS.

After being exposed when his advances toward an enlisted Marine were rebuffed, Lee was removed from his post as a chaplain at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Va., in June and court-martialed Dec. 6.

Now, having abused his rank and position and having disgraced his church and his service, he will serve only a nominal two-year sentence.

With good behavior, he could be out in 19 months.

In a deal between Quantico’s base commander and Lee’s attorney, Lee earned his lenient sentence in exchange for his guilty plea and telling the government all the people he had sex with — or at least as many as he can remember.

After the trial, Lee’s attorney said the Marine Corps should be lauded because “their primary interest here was to protect people.”

But the truth of the matter is, the Marine Corps — which refused to release vital public information with respect to the charges before the Dec. 6 general court-martial — was trying to protect itself.

Lee was quietly removed from his chaplain’s duties in June. And he was quietly charged Aug. 24, Nov. 1 and Nov. 6. And had it not been for a timely leak to this newspaper, the Corps may have quietly court-martialed Lee to avoid the inevitable embarrassment cast on the services by such a scandal.

The facts of this case are startling. Lee apparently led a double life for much of his 12-year career as an officer, and many of his sexual partners were service members. In at least one known case, he used alcohol, his rank and his role as a chaplain to seduce a midshipman during a tour of duty at the Naval Academy.

Such facts are explosive enough to ensure Lee’s picture would appear in the news and his story would get more than its share of headlines and air time. Those partners didn’t need the government to come knocking and tell them that they might be at risk for HIV — odds are, they would have found out on their own.

By trying to control the story and dampen the coverage, Marine officials delayed informing the public about the case — and Lee’s partners and victims about potential health risks. The officials knew that aim was important: They were willing to reduce the fairness of the sentence to achieve it.

Had the Corps released this public information to the media, it would have bought Lee’s victims more than a month to seek treatment, since the charges relating to his HIV status were preferred Nov. 1. It might not sound like much, but ask the victims whether they would like that time back. More important, ask anyone who’s had sex with the victims since then.

Unlike the civilian courts, the military does not offer a publicly accessible docket of pending cases. As a result, military commanders release that information at will, giving them unmatched control over information that should be out in the open.

Justice done in the dark is no justice at all.