WASHINGTON – Army Lt. Col. Joseph “Jay” Morse, the Army’s top sexual assault prosecutor, suspended last month after being accused of sexual assault, claims he was only trying to “understand what goes on in the mind of a sexual predator.” According to Morse, his alleged attempted to kiss and grope a woman against her will in a hotel room during a 2011 sexual assault legal conference was enormously educational.
“I’d spent so many years prosecuting these guys and I just didn’t understand what drove them,” explained Morse. “So when the opportunity came along to sexually assault a colleague, I just went for it.
“And you know what? I get it now,” he added. “It was totally hot.”
Morse, who served as chief of the Trial Counsel Assistance Program at Fort Belvoir, Virginia and was responsible for Army prosecutorial training and assistance worldwide, supervised more than 20 Army special victim prosecutors. He said the experience led him to incorporate more active sexual assault into his training.
“I was planning on bringing my students out to a series of local bars where they, too, could grope and manhandle random women without consequence,” he said. “It’s an eye-opening experience, for one. Plus the guys would get a chance to blow off some steam.”
He was adamant, however, that his beginning students would need to cease their sexual assaults before any actual rape occurred. “That’s for the advanced course,” he insisted.
Army Chief of Staff Gen. Raymond T. Odierno was asked if this incident, the third in nine months involving an accusation of sexual assault against an officer in charge of sexual assault prevention, would move the military to re-think their policy on sexual assault.
“The military takes sexual assault very seriously, and we are considering incorporating a new program that we think will cut down significantly on the number of sexual assault reports,” said Odierno. “It’s called ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’”
