According to recent charges revealed in a Virginia-based federal court, a Navy SEAL based in San Diego, California, kept an undisclosed number of images containing child pornography on his cell phone, filmed himself molesting a sleeping girl, and raped a woman after she passed out while the two were drinking alcohol together.
Petty Officer 1st Class Gregory Kyle Seerden, of the Navy's SEAL Team One, was arrested in San Diego earlier this month after investigators with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) discovered evidence of child pornography on Seerden's phone in the process of investigating his rape of a 27-year-old woman, as reported by the Los Angeles Times.
Seerden is accused of raping the woman after she fell asleep while the two were drinking alcohol at his hotel room in a Norfolk, Virginia, military base.
He is also accused of being in possession of an undetermined number of child pornogaphy images, as well as video-recording himself sexually molesting a girl, whose age was not disclosed by NCIS, while she was asleep.
If convicted, Seerden faces a mandatory 15-year prison sentence for his activities.
Alongside the notorious online network of US Marine servicemembers sharing and hosting illicit photographs and personal information of female members of the force, often without their consent or knowledge, and the outing of a decorated Navy SEAL who was working as a pornographic film star to make ends meet, the US military's branded image has been battered recently by two other incidents of note, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Just last month Virginia-based SEAL Chief Special Warfare Operator Stephen Varanko III was found guilty of sexual harassment and battery by a US military tribunal, and, last summer, SEAL Petty Officer 2nd Class Theo Andrew Krah, stationed in San Diego, was arrested after beating and stabbing to death a man, following a fight on the Santa Monica Pier in Los Angeles.
