Washington, D.C. – A retired Army general, who after leaving the military, worked as VP for embattled DynaCorp International for three years – the private military contractor at the heart of numerous international child sex scandals – has been charged with multiple counts of rape for the alleged assault of at least one minor three decades ago.
Maj. Gen. James Grazioplene faces six charges for alleged rapes that happened in 1983 and 1989, according to an announcement made by the Army last Friday. He faces life and prison and the loss of his pension if convicted of the charges. As a retired officer, Grazioplene is subject to military law under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) and will face an Article 32 hearing to determine if he will face a court martial.
Details surrounding the case remain scarce, as the Army released no other information as to what precipitated Grazioplene being charged three decades after the alleged sexual assault.
According to the NY Daily News:
Grazioplene, from Virginia, graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y. and entered the Army in 1972 as an armor officer.
Before retiring in 2005, he worked as the the director of force development in the Pentagon’s Joint Warfighting Capabilities Assessment.
Grazioplene’s LinkedIn page says that after leaving the military he has worked with the military contractors DynCorp International and Mission Readiness LLC.
While potentially just a coincidence, Grazioplene’s connections with DynCorp immediately raise a red flag, as the company has been embroiled in numerous high-level scandals involving the exploitation and trafficking of children for sex — dating as far back as the Bosnia conflict during Bill Clinton’s tenure as US President.
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Revealing the extreme level of complicity, by DynCorp, in the illegal exploitation of children, former employee, Ben Johnston filed a RICO lawsuit against Dyncorp after he was allegedly fired for reporting human rights abuses by other employees during the Bosnian conflict.
In a 2002 report titled “Dyncorp Disgrace,” Johnston was quoted:
“…None of the girls… were from Bosnia… They were imported in by DynCorp and the Serbian mafia. These guys would say ‘I gotta go to Serbia this weekend topick up three girls.’… “DynCorp leadership was 100 percent in bed with the mafia over there.”
A report by Salon further detailed the systematic abuse Johnson alleged to have witnessed:
“Johnston recoiled in horror when he heard one of his fellow helicopter mechanics at a U.S. Army base near Tuzla, Bosnia, brag one day in early 2000: “My girl’s not a day over 12….… the bragging about a 12-year-old sex slave pushed Johnston over the edge. “I had to do something,” he says. “There were kids involved.” …. At least 13 DynCorp employees have been sent home from Bosnia … for purchasing women or participating in other prostitution-related activities. But despite large amounts of evidence in some cases, none of the DynCorp employees sent home have faced criminal prosecution.”
Denoting widespread knowledge of the sexual exploitation of children engaged in by DynCorp within the halls of government, Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, during a hearing on the proposed 2006 Department of Defense Budget, asked at then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld:
“Mr. Secretary, is it policy of the U.S. government to reward companies that traffic in women and little girls? That’s my first question.”
Since that time, it appears DynCorp, while still enjoying the lucrative privilege of doing business with the US government at the taxpayers’ expense, has failed to reform itself or regulate the sexual exploits of its employees with children, according to numerous emails, released by WikiLeaks, between Cheryl Mills and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
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An email from Mills, to Clinton, warns of a potential Washington Post article, which would describe an event where DynCorp employees hired a 15-year-old boy to do “mock lap dances” that involved “DynCorp employees putting dollar bills in the boy’s waistband, just as a stripper would a stripper’s garter.”
Additional WikiLeaks cables described the event as “purchasing a service from a child,” while denoting specific strategies to convince journalists not to cover the story – disingenuously claiming that it would “risk lives.”
Although the email between Mills and Hillary claims, “no sex took place,” the tradition of bachabaze in Afghanistan often involves rape, and young boys being “sold to the highest bidder.”
“The most disturbing thing is what happens after the parties. Often the boys are taken to hotels and sexually abused…There are many people who support this tradition across Afghanistan and many of them are very influential,” according to a BBC report.
In spite of all these nefarious activities, DynCorp continues to be rewarded with US government contracts. In December of 2016, the US Navy signed a $94 million contract with DynCorp to “facilitate humanitarian aid, civic assistance, minor military construction and contingency programs to support exercises and other initiatives…”
This brings us back to the question asked of Rumsfeld by former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney:
Please share this story to help expose this sickening corruption – as no company that allows the willful exploitation of children should EVER be awarded a contract by the US government!
