-=> Originally posted by Larry Grim in the Military People Echo <=-

 FORT BLISS, Texas (AP) -- A soldier who claimed a sergeant sexually
 assaulted her during the Gulf War is satisfied by his guilty plea to
 a lesser charge, her lawyer said. The case made headlines when she
 told Congress the Army reprimanded her after she said she was attacked.

 Army Reserve Sgt. 1st Class David Martinez, 43, from Albuquerque, N.M.,
 pleaded guilty Monday to a sodomy charge and to making false statements.
 He was given a bad-conduct discharge. He could have received up to 15
 years' confinement. The more serious charge of indecent assault and one
 other count of making false statements were dropped.

 Spc. Jacqueline Ortiz, a former reservist from Sapello, N.M., accused
 Martinez of forcing her to perform oral sex after he summoned her to
 his tent in January 1991. Both were members of an engineering battalion
 stationed about 20 miles from the Iraqi border.

 Ortiz was not present Monday; in a statement from her lawyer, she said
 she was satisfied that justice was done. "She's putting it behind her,"
 lawyer Henry Mark Holzer said. Last year, Ortiz was among a group of
 women who testified before a Senate panel investigating sexual harassment
 in the military.

 She said that she had immediately reported that she had been assaulted
 but that officers ignored her complaint and reprimanded her after they
 concluded the sexual encounter was consensual. "I would rather have been
 shot by a bullet and killed that way than this," Ms. Ortiz said then.

 The investigation was reopened at the urging of Rep. Bill Richardson,
 D-N.M. "I feel sorry for what I did," Martinez told the court. But
 while admitting having sexual contact with the woman and lying to
 officers about it later, he denied that he forced her to have sex.