18 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY FEBRUARY 20-26, 2025 www.montereycountynow.com pool. Following the afterparty, Hegseth and Jane Doe joined a group from the conference at what was then Knuckles sports bar, adjacent to the hotel lobby. It was there, Jane Doe told police, that things started to get fuzzy after hours of drinking. After Knuckles, the two of them wound up walking to the pool. According to a description in the police report, hotel video surveillance footage showed the two walking arm in arm, seemingly pleasantly, at about 1:15am. Around 1:30am the calls came in about people being too loud. A hotel employee walked over to ask them to quiet down. Jane Doe told police that Hegseth started cursing and said “that he had freedom of speech. Jane Doe intervened and told [the hotel staff member] that they were Republicans and apologized for Hegseth’s actions.” After the poolside argument, the next memory for Jane Doe was being in Hegseth’s hotel room, where she said he blocked the door with his body. “Jane Doe remembered saying ‘no’ a lot,” according to the police report. “Jane Doe stated she did not remember much else.” She next recollected Hegseth on top of her, his dog tags dangling in her face. WHEN POLICE ASKED HEGSETH for his account of events, he said that he and Jane Doe had sex but that it was consensual. In his telling, she led the way back to his hotel room, and “there was ‘always’ conversation and ‘always’ consensual contact between the two of them.” Jane Doe told police she had no memory of how she got back to her hotel room early on Sunday morning. Three days later, on Oct. 12, she was back home and went to Kaiser Permanente seeking a sexual assault exam, and told a nurse there she was not sure whether penetration had occurred. As a mandated reporter, the nurse called the Monterey Police Department at about 12:20pm, spurring the investigation. MPD referred its findings to the Monterey County District Attorney for potential charges under Penal Code section 261(A)4, rape of an unconscious person. Three months later, on Jan. 18, 2018, the DA decided not to file charges. Any deliberations they made about how they arrived at that decision are documented in a declination memo, but the DA has not released that memo to Hegseth, or to the public at large. Hegseth and his attorney, Parlatore, have stated that he was cleared in the case. That is not quite true. Local prosecutors file in only about half of sexual assault referrals, and even fewer when the alleged victim is unconscious, according to data from the Monterey County DA obtained by the Monterey County Weekly via a Public Records Act request. In the past 11 years, when the current tracking system began, the District Attorney filed charges in about half of sexual assault cases referred by local law enforcement agencies, and rejected about half. (See chart, below right.) Most of those referrals, 401, were for forcible rape. The DA received far fewer referrals for rape on an unconscious person, the charge Hegseth could have faced. Of 54 referrals in 11 years, the DA filed charges in just 17 of those cases, or 31 percent. Monterey County District Attorney Jeannine Pacioni has declined to be interviewed for this story. In a statement issued in November, she said simply: “No charges were supported by proof beyond a reasonable doubt.” Lauren DaSilva, executive director of the Monterey County Rape Crisis Center, says it is typical that no criminal charges are filed in such a case— proof beyond a reasonable doubt is the threshold for prosecutors. That does not mean the case should not be taken seriously, she adds. “In general, sexual assault reporting is the lowest reporting of all violent crimes, and Monterey County is no different,” DaSilva says. “The vast majority of sexual assault cases do not have criminal charges filed.” While she declines to speak about the specifics of this case, DaSilva says in general, “People who commit sexual assault can only say two things in their defense: That it was consensual or the other person was lying.” She adds that understanding what happened afterward can be complicated for a survivor, especially if a perpetrator offers a clear alternative version: “If there’s a lapse in memory, they have to do so much sense-making,” DaSilva says. “That [offender] has a lot of power determining what the narrative is.” ON TUESDAY, JAN. 14, HEGSETH sat in front of members of the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services for his confirmation hearing. The matter of character flaws came up right away, starting with opening remarks from the chairman, Sen. Rob Wicker, R-Mississippi, even as he added a dismissive tone. “Regarding his personal conduct, Mr. Hegseth has admitted to falling short, as we all do, from time to time,” Wicker said. He expressed doubt about the rape allegations, and allegations first reported by The New Yorker that Hegseth had a history of excessive alcohol consumption on the job. Later on Wicker said, “The majority of these have come from anonymous sources and liberal media publications.” Throughout the hearing, Hegseth repeatedly dismissed claims about his personal conduct as “anonymous smears.” When Sen. Mazie Hironi, D-Hawaii, questioned Hegseth, he flatly denied the assault in Monterey. “I was falsely accused in October of 2017. I was fully investigated and I was completely cleared,” he said. Hironi responded, “I don’t think ‘completely cleared’ is accurate.” (It’s not.) Ten days later, on Jan. 24, the U.S. Senate voted 50-50, mostly along party lines with just three dissenting Republicans, to confirm Hegseth. Vice President JD Vance cast the tie-breaking vote, 51-50. Hegseth became the United States Secretary of Defense. ACKNOWLEDGING A PERVASIVE ISSUE of sexual assault in the military, in 2005, the U.S. Department of Defense established the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office. The office’s vision statement: “A military free from sexual assault.” The DoD provides annual reports to Congress on sexual assault data, and the most recent report (for 2023) shows that the rate of reporting increased from 20 to 25 percent, with 7,266 service members reporting sexual assault incidents while in the military. “The Department encourages greater reporting to promote more help-seeking by service members and to hold alleged offenders appropriately accountable,” according to the findings. Reporting was up, but overall incidences were down. The DoD found that 6.8 percent of active-duty women and 1.3 percent of active-duty men experienced unwanted sexual contact in the year prior. For women, that marked an 8.4-percent decrease, and for men, a 1.5-percent decrease. As of that report, published in March 2024, the DoD had implemented 32 of 82 recommendations from the Independent Review Commission on Sexual Assault in the Military. Implementation of the remaining 50 recommendations approved by former Monterey County District Attorney Jeannine Pacioni has served on the boards of the Monterey Rape Crisis Center, Child Abuse Prevention Council and other organizations. RAPE CASES BY THE NUMBERS This chart shows the cases referred to the Monterey County District Attorney over an 11-year period, from Sept. 1, 2013-Dec. 27, 2024, under three sections of the California penal code concerning sexual assault. Source: Data provided by the Monterey County District Attorney DANIEL DREIFUSS CRIME NUMBER OF CASES REFERRED CHARGES FILED CASES REJECTED FORCIBLE RAPE 401 212 (53%) 189 (47%) RAPE OF AN INTOXICATED PERSON 68 27 (40%) 41 (60%) RAPE OF AN UNCONSCIOUS PERSON 54 17 (32%) 36 (67%) Totals: 523 256 (49%) 266 (51%)
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