A Marine colonel accused of sexually assaulting a child was locked up in the brig at Camp Lejeune after investigators uncovered new allegations of misconduct, Marine Corps officials said.
Col. Daniel H. Wilson, 55, was not originally placed in confinement when first charged in November with sexual abuse of a child. Instead, he checked into an inpatient treatment facility in North Carolina, according to his attorney.
But after new allegations of misconduct surfaced in a Naval Criminal Investigation Service probe, the II Marine Expeditionary Force Commanding General, Gen. Walter Lee Miller, Jr., ordered Wilson into immediate confinement at the Marine Corps Installations East Regional Brig facility, Marine Corps officials said Friday night.
"It's unfortunate that they pulled him out of a treatment facility and put him in a confinement facility with no treatment," Wilson's attorney, Phillip Stackhouse, told Marine Corps Times Saturday.
Wilson's attorney declined to say what kind of treatment Wilson was receiving.
The colonel was slated for transfer to another residential treatment facility in Virginia when the general issued the confinement order Friday. "In between the transfer of the North Carolina and the Virginia facility, they basically went in and grabbed him and took him to the Camp Lejeune brig," Stackhouse said in a phone interview.
Wilson is scheduled to face an Article 32 hearing on Jan. 31 at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina for the charges leveled in November that include sexual assault and sexual abuse of a child; assault consummated by battery on a child under the age of 16; failure to obey a general order or regulation and conduct unbecoming of an officer.
The Article 32 hearing will help determine whether the colonel faces a court martial.
The recent alleged misconduct occurred after the initial charges were preferred on Nov. 15, 2016, according to a statement from II MEF.
Stackhouse said the new allegations are "completely dissimilar and unrelated" to the child sex assault charges leveled against Wilson in November.
"He's become a very soft target for anyone who wants to say anything they want to," Stackhouse said.
Wilson became II MEF’s operations officer on April 30. He was reassigned to administrative duties after II MEF and the NCIS began investigating him.
Andrew Tilghman is the executive editor for Military Times. He is a former Military Times Pentagon reporter and served as a Middle East correspondent for the Stars and Stripes. Before covering the military, he worked as a reporter for the Houston Chronicle in Texas, the Albany Times Union in New York and The Associated Press in Milwaukee.
