More than three dozen NCIS case summaries describe investigations that appeared to indicate a sex crime, but were resolved using lesser charges or simply dropped with little or no explanation.
Such is the case for an investigation that began in January 2008 against a Navy doctor who would go on to sexually abuse women in the military until his clinical privileges were suspended in 2009.
Airman Tina Wilson's name is redacted from the report, but she spoke up a day after she went to the health clinic at Naval Air Facility Atsugi, a U.S. base southwest of Tokyo, to have a dressing changed following surgery on her tailbone.
In Wilson's sworn statement to NCIS and other records, the doctor, Lt. Cmdr. Anthony L. Velasquez, walked over to look at the wound as a corpsman took care of the dressing. Then Velasquez announced that the results were in from a staph-infection test, and that he was going to check Wilson's lymph nodes.
He checked her neck, then went under her shirt and ran his hands up the sides of her torso. Then he asked Wilson, whose pants were unzipped because of the dressing change, to lie on her side. He felt her left hip bone, then slid his hand down the front of her pants and under her panties.
Wilson pulled up her pants, and confused and shaken, headed for the door.
“I saw Dr. Velasquez smile and wink at me on the way out,” her sworn statement reads. “He was by the computer getting hand sanitizer. The whole exam, he didn't wear gloves.”
The NCIS document summarizing the investigation prompted by Wilson's complaint shows that three other women subsequently came forward, saying Velasquez had touched them inappropriately.
Nevertheless, after 10 months the investigation was closed with no action. According to the document, Yokosuka Naval Hospital declined to take any action against the doctor, and the Navy legal services office in Yokosuka determined the case would not be forwarded to Navy officials in San Diego who oversee medical operations in Japan.
