In the report that cleared the man accused of raping Navy sailor Yuriria Acunapineda, the investigator cited many reasons for dropping the case:
No one heard Acunapineda say no or cry for help.
Her supervisor said that, in general, he did not believe she was a truthful person.
The investigator questioned her fear, her emotional trauma and brought up that she had been drinking the night of the alleged rape in June 2001.
There was one hitch: The polygraph exam of the accused rapist showed he was deceptive when he denied forcing Acunapineda to have sex.
Still, the investigator dismissed this “contrary piece of evidence” with the accused rapist’s own explanation: While at one point Acunapineda said no, she later changed it to yes.
“He coaxed her to allow him to continue, which, according to his description, was successful,” wrote Navy investigator Kevin O’Neil in a report dated Oct. 15, 2001. Therefore, O’Neil said, he recommended the accused rapist, Roger Northern II, receive no more than nonjudicial punishment. The Navy refused to say if Northern was disciplined, and he could not be reached for comment.
O’Neil also discounted Acunapineda’s account of putting her hands on Northern and choking him after the encounter, something backed up by an eyewitness who walked into the bathroom where the incident occurred. He also did not give weight to the fact she ran from the bathroom and immediately reported the alleged assault, breaking down in tears to those who asked her what happened.
During the investigation, Acunapineda said, “My chief, everybody, said, ‘You weren’t raped.”‘
It took Acunapineda six months after the alleged rape to be released from the Navy. Once out, she moved in with her father in California, but he couldn’t acknowledge what happened to her.
She said she would follow him around the house saying “rape, rape, rape” to force him to accept reality.
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She said she slept with many men. “If I had sex with different people, it would validate me. I came so close to killing myself.”
At a homeless shelter for veterans in Long Beach, she met Linda Miles, a caseworker who also was a veteran and victim of military sexual assault. Miles helped Acunapineda apply for benefits for post-traumatic stress syndrome and begin counseling.
Although she is only 24, she said it’s hard to feel hopeful about her future when she had planned to remain in the Navy. “Everything I learned in there, it’s useless now. I have to start all over. I feel it was all taken from me, what I had worked so hard to get.”
