Sixth Woman Accuses Sergeant Major

WASHINGTON — The sixth woman to accuse the Army’s top enlisted man of sexual misconduct testified Wednesday that he grabbed her around the waist as she sought to leave his hotel room and demanded to know if she wanted to kiss him.

“Hell, no, that’s the last thing I wanted to do,” Sgt. 1st Class Rita Jeczala, a Florida recruiter, said she told Sgt. Maj. of the Army Gene C. McKinney. While McKinney then stopped his approach, she said she considered his conduct “not pleasurable. It was uncomfortable, it was unwelcome, it was unprofessional.”

Jeczala was testifying at the eighth week of a pretrial hearing on 22 misconduct counts against McKinney, a 29-year Army veteran. The counts could theoretically put him in jail for 57 1/2 years, although some lawyers say it is more likely that an adverse judgment could force him out of the Army with reduced benefits.

Jeczala’s account followed a pattern described by most of McKinney’s other accusers. They have testified that McKinney sought to win their trust through personal and often highly emotional conversations, then pressured them for sex, sometimes touching them while he did.

Jeczala told how McKinney met her during a June 1996 tour of Florida in which he invited her to dinner. Two months later, on a second trip to Florida, he invited her to his personal quarters at Patrick Air Force Base, she said, and engaged her in a painful discussion of her pending divorce.

While leaving, “I was grabbed from behind and pulled back,” Jeczala testified. “He grabbed me by my waist.” But when she tried to hold him at bay, he relented and dropped his hands.

She said a male colleague, another Florida recruiter, had warned her about the motives of McKinney, whose job as top enlisted man made him one of the Army’s chief preachers against sexual harassment.

Jeczala said the recruiter told her: “He’s a hound, he’s a dog; he’s trying to get your skirt.”

Jeczala said she had seen a televised news story about McKinney’s first accuser, retired Sgt. Major Brenda L. Hoster, and had been tempted to come forward to tell her own story. Hoster’s encounters with McKinney fit the pattern of her own, she said.

She said she made an anonymous call to Army investigators to let them know that another woman had been accosted by McKinney, but she had not initially been willing to come forward publicly. She did so only when Army officials approached her.

Jeczala said she believed it was important to train soldiers to be more sensitive to sexual harassment. But, she added, pointing at McKinney, “I realized I can’t train Sgt. Maj. of the Army McKinney. He’s up at the Pentagon. He’s my superior.”

The day’s testimony also brought the first public tears from McKinney’s wife, Wilhelmina, who has been at his side during the proceeding.

Mrs. McKinney cried quietly when Jeczala testified that a woman she believed to be Mrs. McKinney had called her number and asked who she was. The testimony suggested that Mrs. McKinney may have found Jeczala’s phone number and called it to find out who lived there.

Jeczala said she received a call identified by her “caller ID” equipment as coming from McKinney’s home. The caller didn’t identify herself but asked who she was and whether “Minnie” was there.

A few days later, when McKinney himself called, Jeczala told him she didn’t know “what you did to hurt this woman” but that she didn’t want to be drawn into any dispute while she was coping with a divorce.

The pretrial hearing may wind up Monday with closing arguments.