General who blocked probe replaced as head of military anti-sex abuse office
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is replacing the general in charge of preventing sexual abuse in the military in the wake of new allegations, first reported by NBC News, that the general interfered with an internal investigation into horrific patient abuses at a U.S.-funded hospital in Afghanistan.
The Defense Department announced Monday that Army Maj. Gen.l Gary S. Patton is stepping down as director of the Defense Department Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office (SAPRO), effective next month, and retiring from the Army next spring. The new director will be Maj. Gen. Jeffrey J. Snow.
In a statement, Hagel praised Patton's work on sexual abuse, saying he has "made a lasting positive impact" on the department's efforts to curb assaults in the military. The statement makes no reference to the new allegations against Patton.
But the action comes after a Defense Department inspector general finding disclosed in September that Patton improperly "restricted" an investigation into abuses at the Dawood National Military Hospital in Afghanistan while serving as a top NATO commander there in 2011. Patton was recently formally admonished over the finding, an Army spokesman said Monday.
The Dawood hospital, where wounded Afghan soldiers were treated, received national attention in 2011 after the Wall Street Journal reported on abuses at the facility and gruesome photos surfaced showing patients starving and suffering from maggot-infested wounds. One U.S. legal adviser in Afghanistan later told Congress that conditions at the hospital – funded with more than $200 million from U.S. taxpayers -- were “Auschwitz-like.”
On Nov. 15, NBC News reported new allegations that Patton had blocked a U.S. Navy nurse from briefing a team from the Pentagon inspector general's office about patient abuses at the hospital. "Gen. Patton gets me cornered in the hallway, he puts his finger in my chest and he says, 'You need to stay in your f--- lane,’ lieutenant," Lt. Commander Jeremy Young said in an interview about his efforts to brief investigators.
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