DISTURBING READ OF THE DAY

Trial postponed for retired Army two-star facing charges of rape and incest
By: Todd South

(PIC) Retired Maj. Gen. James Grazioplene leaves the courtroom at Fort Meade, Md., with his wife and attorney after an August 2017 Article 32 hearing on charges of rape. (Todd South/Staff)

The incest and rape trial of a retired Army two-star general in a Virginia civilian court has been postponed until September.

Retired Maj. Gen. James Grazioplene, 69, faced an Article 32 hearing on charges he had repeatedly raped his daughter at various military postings in the United States and Germany in the 1980s. The military charges were dropped due to statute of limitations issues within the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

In late 2018, a grand jury in Prince William County, Virginia, returned an indictment on rape and incest charges related to three counts of incest that allegedly occurred between August 1987 and May 1988 while Grazioplene and his family lived in the jurisdiction. The family lived in off-post housing in Woodbridge, Virginia at the time.

Prince William County has no statute of limitations on rape.


The trial had been scheduled for April 29 but, according to the county’s circuit court website, the trial date was postponed to Sept. 3.





Grazioplene, a Gainesville, Virginia resident, was denied a bond request and has been in custody at the Prince William County Jail since mid-December, jail officials told Army Times.


Grazioplene’s daughter, Jennifer Elmore, 47, told investigators at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in 2015 near where she lived at the time about the incidents after years of therapy, she said in the 2017 Article 32 hearing.


She described ongoing assaults that began at age 3 and continued until she was 18 years old and left home.


Elmore reported the alleged assaults to the Army a decade after her father had retired from the Army.


Army Times’ policy is not to identify alleged victims of sexual assault, however Elmore went public with her story in a Washington Post interview in late 2018. She cited one of her reasons was to help others know that they too could come forward.





A February 2018 ruling by the Armed Forces Court of Appeals set a precedent of assigning a five-year limit to rape charges in the case of an Air Force lieutenant colonel who had been accused of sexual assault in 1997.


Under Virginia law, Grazioplene faces 10 years in prison for each of the three incest charges and life imprisonment for the three rape charges.


If found guilty of the alleged 1987 rape of his daughter, his retirement rank would be reduced by three to four pay grades from his last rank of O-8, or major general.

About Todd South
Todd South is a Marine veteran of the Iraq War. He has written about crime, courts, government and military issues for multiple publications since 2004. In 2014, he was named a Pulitzer finalist for local reporting on a project he co-wrote about witness problems in gang criminal cases. Todd covers ground combat for Military Times.