A Fairfax County jury has imposed an $8.4 penalty on an amateur blogger who claimed that an Army officer up for promotion to General had raped her when they were cadets at West Point about 30 years ago. The claim (made in 2013) caught the Pentagon’s attention when the promotion was under consideration (also in 2013), and the officer’s promotion was eventually dropped. The officer sued the woman for defamation. The jury found that her statements were false and ordered her to pay $3.4 million in compensatory damages for injury to his reputation and lost wages, and $5 million in punitive damages. (Court records show he claimed a “consensual” sexual encounter, and that she initially denied any sexual assault to West Point officials at the time.) The Washington Post quoted one juror (sex not reported) as saying the $5 million was “to make sure nothing like this will ever happen again.”
The merits of the conflicting versions of events — consensual vs not — aside, the juror’s reported remarks suggest something went very wrong in this case.