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.

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