By DAVID MCCORMACK and REUTERS REPORTER
A female Air Force instructor who had sex with a male trainee was sentenced to three months in jail on Thursday. Staff Sgt. Emily Allen was also given 30 days' hard labor and demoted to airman first class. She is the first woman to be tried in the ongoing sex scandal swamping Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland in Texas. Allen pleaded guilty to having sex in 2011 with a trainee airman, seeking to have a liaison with a second airman she met in basic training and having unprofessional social relationships with a pair of female airmen. 'She pleaded guilty to having a relationships with all four of the technical school Airmen,' Lackland spokesman Brent Boller said.
Technical training is the course immediately after basic training where new Air Force recruits learn the skills needed to enter their military work assignment. It is a violation of military law for Military Training Instructors to have any kind of personal relationship with trainees under their command. Prosecutors sought harsh punishment, including six months in jail for Allen. They painted a picture of an officer out of control, who abused her position of power.
One airman told the court how Allen pursued him, calling him on a dormitory intercom, arranging a laundry room encounter and, finally, meeting with him three times during a technical training course. 'She asked if I wanted to have sex and I said, "No, I didn't have a condom,'" he told the court, reports MySanAntonio.com. Allen, the single mother of a seven-year-old girl, has blamed her downfall on feelings of insecurity.
She also broke down in court when her father took the stand and said his daughter had ‘always been a good kid.’ The Air Force could yet move to discharge her after her release from jail. The scandal has prompted some members of Congress to criticize the Pentagon and hold hearings on what they said was a failure of top military leaders to deal with a culture of sexual harassment and abuse. Allen is the 18th Air Force instructor to face court martial in what has become the largest sex scandal in the U.S. military in nearly 20 years.
Pic of the instructor is in the middle-
