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Airman: Air Force superior groped her, sent her sexual text messages

File photo/Dayton Daily News Chief Master Sgt. William Gurney, a former top Air Force Materiel Command adviser.

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By John Nolan, Staff Writer Updated 12:16 PM Wednesday, January 26, 2011

SCOTT AIR FORCE BASE, Ill. — The Air Force Materiel Command’s former top enlisted man at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base sent 81 text messages in one day to an airman and asked her what her favorite sexual position was, the airman testified in court Tuesday.

Within the months that followed in 2009, Chief Master Sgt. William C. Gurney touched private parts of the airman’s body on three occasions without her permission, described to her sex acts he hoped to perform on her and made it clear he was irritated when she didn’t respond to his repeated text messages, the airman testified at Gurney’s court-martial.

The airman fought back tears when a military prosecutor asked why she became emotional when discussing Gurney’s text messages.

“Because I think they’re disgusting,” said the airman, who testified for more than two hours Tuesday.

Asked why she submitted to Gurney’s requests to send him pictures of her breasts and buttocks, the airman said: “Because he was the chief.”

Gurney pleaded guilty, as his trial began Monday, to allegations that he had unprofessional, sexually tinged relationships with five other Air Force women he outranked.

Under questioning Tuesday by Gurney’s lawyer, the airman acknowledged that she didn’t tell her parents about the alleged sexual harassment for months. The airman said she continued to send Gurney text messages — including 71 responses on the same day he sent her 81 texts.

The airman said she often received and sent texts while in the presence of her husband, with whom she admitted having a troubled marriage. She said she didn’t reveal to her husband the contents of Gurney’s sexual texts to her.

The airman said she hoped that Gurney could help her obtain permission for a humanitarian leave to be with her Dayton-area parents, who knew Gurney and respected him, and who were grieving over the death of her 22-year-old brother in a military helicopter crash in Italy months before.

The Dayton Daily News is not identifying the airman by name because of the nature of the offenses. The Air Force Office of Special Investigations worked with her in late 2009 to bring the charges against Gurney that led to his trial.

Scott Air Force Base was assigned to handle Gurney’s case. Gen. Donald Hoffman, commander of the Air Force Materiel Command, asked Air Force headquarters to assign the case elsewhere because Gurney had been an adviser to Hoffman as an advocate for the AFMC’s enlisted men and women.

Also Tuesday, two Air Force employees from Wright-Patterson testified that Gurney exhibited unusual interest in employing Sr. Airman Angela Reffett as an administrative assistant in his office on two occasions when the job became available. He sent e-mails lobbying for Reffett to get the job, the officials testified.

Reffett had expressed interest in the job and had, at one point, spent more than a week living in Gurney’s home while recovering from a dental procedure, the officials testified. They said, however, that Gurney eventually relented and allowed the job to be filled by someone else.

Gurney has pleaded not guilty to a charge alleging that he tried to influence Air Force personnel to assign Reffett to his office at AFMC headquarters.

In an opening statement Tuesday, a military prosecutor said that Gurney used his rank to get what he wanted from female subordinates. He established a pattern of using his authority as the AFMC’s command chief to develop sexual relationships with airmen within the 10-base major command, Air Force Maj. Patricia Gruen told the Air Force jury of six male officers.

“He preyed on his enlisted subordinates. He took as much as he could get,” Gruen said.

Maj. Gwendolyn Beitz, Gurney’s chief defense lawyer, countered that the airmen who had relationships with Gurney willingly engaged in exchanging sexually charged e-mails or instant messages with him. Beitz urged the jury to scrutinize the motivations of Gurney’s accusers.

“Do her actions match her accusations?” Beitz said.

Tech. Sgt. Jennifer Tierney, then a patient advocate for a health care clinic at Hanscom Air Force Base, Mass., said she met Gurney during an Air Force ceremony at the Boston-area base, which he visited as an AFMC installation. Their initial communications afterward were professional, Tierney said, testifying as the government’s first witness.

Tierney said she informed Gurney during their early exchanges that she and her husband were struggling with the impending death of their terminally ill 7-year-old son. Gurney was supportive, but their electronic exchanges gradually became full of sexual content, Tierney testified.

“There were sexual text messages,” Tierney testified. “There were pictures.”

Among 13 charges that Gurney pleaded guilty to as the trial began Monday was one in which he admitted dereliction of duty by establishing an unprofessional relationship with Tierney. Gurney admitted sending Tierney nude and semi-nude electronic images of himself through government communications networks, requesting pictures of her, talking to her about sexual intercourse involving three people, and asking her to spend time with him while he was on temporary duty at her location.

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There is only one reporter from the Dayton area at this trial: John Nolan of the Dayton Daily News.

We are the only local media outlet with the resources to send a reporter to cover an important out-of-state story like this.

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