Great Reporting on Disturbing & Predatory Behavior: Lackland AFB

Sig Christenson, a reporter at the San Antonio News Express, has been relentless in covering what amounts to highly disturbing- but not surprising- predatory behavior by recruiters and instructors at Lackland Air Force Base outside of San Antonio, Texas. The latest sentence handed down by a court martial was directed at a 7 year Air Force veteran and instructor who had sex and inappropriate contact with trainees under his guidance, but it pales in comparison to the 27 years received by former recruiter Jaime Rodriguez earlier last month. Rodriguez's sentence seems deeply harsh, but the trust he betrayed and power he abused in order to victimize mostly adolescents with dreams of entering the Air Force are considerable. Recruiters have immense power, usually over the lives of young and impressionable teenagers hoping for the opportunities that a military career can offer. It's sad, but not uncommon to see young people enlisting from challenged backgrounds and difficult circumstances. Sadder still is that recruitment posts are also attractive to predators who seek to offer the promise of the military, to those most in need of its attributes and opportunities, only for a price. As usual, most recruiters and instructors are not predatory. But the few who are, and Rodriguez is a particularly vicious example, create untold damage to young people subjected to the exact opposite of the example they hope and in some cases pray to receive when they seek to enlist and serve.