The case of former Chief Logistics Specialist Calvin Halfacre was one of a rash of sex and trafficking cases involving Thai women and sailors stationed on the Middle Eastern island in 2017.

That year, three women working as prostitutes accused Halfacre of brutally raping them in his off-base apartment.

Navy prosecutors lost track of the women and none were available to testify against the chief at his trial in 2019.

The married father ended up signing a deal early last year that saw him plead guilty to paying the women for sex in exchange for the government withdrawing the sexual assault charges.

Navy judge Capt. Arthur Gaston sentenced him to 30 months in the brig, a bad-conduct discharge and reduction in rank to E-1.

An appeal filed in the Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals by Halfacre’s attorney later argued that the judge improperly considered evidence at sentencing involving the sexual assault allegations, which went beyond the prostitution charges to which Halfacre pleaded guilty.

But in a decision by the three-judge panel released on Nov. 30, the appeals court ruled that Gaston did not err when he considered rape evidence, including a victim impact statement by one of Halfacre’s accusers.

Gaston currently is assigned to the appeals court, but he works on a different panel than the one that weighed Halfacre’s appeal.

While Halfacre’s civilian attorney, Phil Cave, argued that Gaston could not consider the sexual assault evidence since his client only pleaded guilty to patronizing prostitutes, the appeals court wrote that the judge had applied the law correctly.

In its analysis, the panel wrote that while Halfacre was convicted on three specifications of patronizing a prostitute, “they were not run-of-the-mill transactions, but rather extremely aggravated events that left each of the three women with significant physical and emotional harm.”

The women each told investigators that they agreed to have vaginal sex with Halfacre in exchange for money, but that he anally raped them against their will.

The panel wrote that the aggravation evidence provided “context for the offenses for which (Halfacre) was convicted.”

The appeals panel also rejected Cave’s argument that the women were not “victims” since Halfacre was only convicted of patronizing prostitutes, and that evidence regarding alleged rape was therefore not applicable.

“Assuming without deciding that prostitutes are not ‘victims’ but rather co-participants in a ‘victim-less crime,’ the evidence of (Halfacre’s) alleged sexual assaults during the course of his adjudicated misconduct are nevertheless ‘circumstances surrounding the offense’ of patronizing a prostitute,” the ruling states.

The judge considering the sexual assault evidence “was proper…because it was inextricably interwoven with the facts and circumstances of the convicted offenses and painted a complete picture” for the sentencing judge, the panel wrote.

The appeal panel also rejected Cave’s argument that Halfacre’s 30-month sentence to the brig was unduly harsh.

The panel wrote that Halfacre’s team negotiated so that no confinement longer than 30 months would be levied, and Gaston properly confirmed that Halfacre entered into the deal of his own free will.

Such a sentence was also appropriate given the misconduct, according to the panel.

“We are convinced that justice was done and (Halfacre) received the punishment he deserves,” the panel wrote.

Cave declined to comment on the ruling but wrote in an email that he expects to petition the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces over the case.

Halfacre remains confined at the Naval Consolidated Brig Charleston, South Carolina, and is facing new criminal charges for allegedly raping a woman in Virginia Beach, Virginia, in February 2019.

That alleged crime occurred roughly a month before he pleaded guilty to paying the Thai women in Bahrain for sex.

Chief Logistics Specialist Calvin Halfacre pleaded guilty in 2019 to patronizing three Thai prostitutes he met while assigned to U.S. 5th Fleet headquarters in Bahrain in 2017.

The three Thai women all told Naval Criminal Investigative Service agents that they had agreed to be paid for vaginal sex with the chief but that he ended up anally raping them, according to court records.

As the case made its way through the military justice system, Navy prosecutors lost track of the three accusers as well as another key witness in the case, the women’s female pimp — referred to in records as a “mamasan” — who helped them find clients and protected them if they ran into trouble.

None of those women were available to testify against Halfacre at trial regarding those initial allegations of sexual assault.

In the end, the government offered Halfacre a deal where the sexual assault charges were dismissed and the chief pleaded guilty to charges of paying the three women for sex.

Military judge Capt. Arthur Gaston sentenced the husband and father to 30 months in the brig, a bad-conduct discharge and reduction in rank to E-1 in early 2019.

But in recent filings with the Navy-Marine Corps Court of Appeals, the chief’s civilian attorney, Phil Cave, argues that Halfacre’s sentence was too severe and that the judge considered evidence at sentencing that did not apply to the prostitution charges for which Halfacre pleaded guilty.

Cave has submitted several appeal filings in the past year and orally argued his case to the appeals court this summer.

The defense attorney declined further comment on the appeal this week and Navy officials have not indicated when the appeals court is expected to rule.

Cave’s argument boils down to the fact that Halfacre pleaded guilty to paying the three Thai women for sex, not for sexually assaulting them, charges that were ultimately dropped as part of the plea deal.

But after Halfacre pleaded guilty, Gaston considered evidence at sentencing — specifically, a victim’s impact statement — that pertained to those dismissed sexual assault charges, Cave alleges in filings.

“The military judge sentenced Chief Halfacre for sexual assault, not patronizing prostitutes,” the filing argues. “But he was only convicted of patronizing prostitutes.”

A victim impact statement that Gaston admitted — from a woman dubbed “PS” in filings — should not have been considered because she wrote of the impact of Halfacre’s alleged raping of her, a crime for which he was not convicted, according to appeal filings.

“She is not a ‘crime victim’ because she did not suffer a direct harm from Chief Halfacre for patronizing a prostitute,” Cave wrote. “All harm that P.S. references in her impact statement stems from the alleged sexual assault charges that were dismissed.”

“Chief Halfacre pleaded guilty to three specifications of patronizing a prostitute,” the appeal continues. “That is a victimless offense.”

The appeal also reiterates Cave’s argument at trial that Halfacre was a good sailor whose personal life stresses had led him to pick up the three Thai women at Bahrain watering holes frequented by junior sailors.

“In his unsworn statement, (Halfacre) explained that there were ‘a lot of deaths in the family, we had to take on a lot of financial burden, and it was just a lot at probably one time.’ This led Chief Halfacre to take the assignment to Bahrain in order to promote to chief,” Cave’s filing states. “He admitted that the stress led him to drinking and bad decisions. Chief Halfacre took responsibility for his actions.”

Cave argues in the appeal that “the quality of evidence was low” in the case as well.

He notes that the recorded NCIS interviews of the three women accusing Halfacre of raping them was conducted using the women’s pimp to translate between the women’s native Thai language and English.

That pimp was a Thai woman known as Lin Raiwest, who was also a confidential NCIS informant.

“(Raiwest) was allegedly involved in human trafficking for purposes of prostitution,” the appeal states.

Those recordings were entered into evidence at trial, but with the accusers not present, Halfacre was prevented “from confronting or testing the credibility of any of those witnesses.”

“Chief Halfacre was confronted with allegations without any reasonable means to refute them,” the appeal filing argues.

Cave also contends in filings that his client’s sentence was “inappropriately severe.”

“He plead guilty to patronizing prostitutes and was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison,” a recent filing states. “The maximum sentence for patronizing a prostitute is one-year confinement…The sentence is more severe than that warranted by the offense.”

Attorneys for the government argued in filings that Gaston’s actions in the case followed the law, and that Halfacre’s sentence was in sync with the severity of the crimes to which he pleaded guilty.

“(Halfacre) admitted the seriousness of his offenses, exacerbated by his status of a Chief Petty Officer stationed in a foreign country,” a filing states.

The chief “bartered with foreign nationals for commercial sex acts in public bars in the presence of servicemembers, and as such prejudiced good order and discipline…the flagrancy of [Halfacre’s] misconduct underscores its service-discrediting nature.”

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-CT, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-NY, and Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-WI, sent a letter to Braithwaite on Tuesday requesting “immediate information on the steps you have taken to remedy the deplorable circumstances in Bahrain, combat the broader culture that allowed these crimes to flourish, and ensure that justice is delivered to trafficking survivors and their family members.”

The letter comes in the wake of a series of stories published last month by Military Times that revealed for the first time a web of investigations into sailors trafficking Thai women working as prostitutes on the island.

Those stories unearthed a shadowy subculture where sailors sought to traffic and pimp the women, often out of their taxpayer-funded apartments.

Allegations of sexual assault against the women and sailors shaking down other shipmates on behalf of Bahrain prostitutes were also revealed.

“We write with deep concern regarding U.S. Navy Sailors’ involvement in human trafficking in Bahrain,” the three senators wrote in a letter obtained by Military Times. “We look forward to your response and are committed to ensuring that the Navy has all the necessary authorities and resources to ensure that these horrific crimes never again occur at the hands of U.S. military personnel.”

Navy officials told Military Times earlier this year that there had been no new cases involving sailor trafficking or solicitation in Bahrain since late 2018, but the lawmakers wrote Tuesday that they were “concerned that these crimes are not confined to this location.”

The senators also pointed to Military Times reporting which showed that sailors and trafficked women had long co-mingled on the island, a shadowy subculture that was “left unaddressed for years.”

“Even the perception that Navy personnel could be involved in trafficking is damaging to local and global perception of U.S. forces,” the letter states. “Beyond the despicable crime that Sailors were charged with, the underlying culture—often referred to as ‘a girl in every port’—that has allowed prostitution in U.S. Navy ports is shameful.”

The senators also questioned the efficacy of Navy policies to prevent such crimes. Blumenthal and Gillibrand sit on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“It is evident that the Navy’s zero tolerance policy against trafficking has not been effectively communicated to every echelon of commanders,” they wrote. “We request information on the training that the Navy provided in response to this investigation and how measures to prevent future infractions are communicated down the chain of command.”

Several of the Navy’s cases against sailors accused of such crimes in Bahrain ultimately collapsed when the victimized women at the center of several cases did not take the stand to testify, and Tuesday’s letter also calls on Braithwaite to explain how the service is protecting the rights of such women.

“Regardless of their decision to participate in proceedings, it is incumbent on the Navy to ensure that survivors are connected with appropriate victim services and that all Sailors who participated are subject to appropriate punishment,” the senators wrote.

The letter also calls on the Navy to establish “formal relationships with human trafficking advocacy organizations to ensure that assistance is available to survivors” and asks if the Navy needs additional authorities to establish such partnerships.

The senators also questioned whether the Navy has considered allowing such victims to testify virtually, which could increase their willingness to participate.

How much help the Navy has sought from the Bahraini government in combating human trafficking among sailors remains unclear, and Bahraini officials did not respond to repeated requests for comment from Military Times before the investigation was published.

“We request information on the Navy’s efforts to combat prostitution and trafficking by Navy personnel in Bahrain, including efforts to engage with local government agencies,” the letter states.

Navy spokesman Cmdr. Clayton Doss declined to comment on the letter Tuesday, stating that the service does not comment on Congressional correspondence.

[Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to include a Navy clarification of a misstatement .]

Trafficked women in Bahrain, some working as prostitutes, are seeking to collect sensitive intelligence from U.S. sailors that they can later sell, according to a Naval Criminal Investigative Service agent.

The claims arose in a human trafficking training recording for service members arriving in Bahrain on a tour with U.S. 5th Fleet, which is headquartered in Manama, the capital of the Middle Eastern island.

That recording was posted to the Pentagon’s public page for sharing military photos and video late last month.

“They’re collecting intel on you,” Special Agent Joe Minucci said in the recording. “They want to know about what your job is, what you do, what access you have, ship movements, the type of ship that comes in.”

Minucci, who previously served on a NCIS trafficking task force, called the situation “a very big issue” in Bahrain.

“Although they don’t really have a need for that information, they sell that information, and that’s how they make more money in order to get themselves out of the situation they’re in,” he said.

Minucci declined to comment Thursday.

Contacted this week by Navy Times, NCIS officials declined to provide further specific information regarding Minucci’s claims and suggested Navy Times file a Freedom of Information Act to learn more from the public agency.

“The broader intelligence community is aware that foreign adversaries often use prostitution as a conduit to solicit sensitive information from service members,” NCIS spokesman Jeff Houston said in an email.

The training recording was posted ]May 27, a few weeks before the publication of a Military Times investigation into the trafficking of Thai prostitutes by U.S. sailors in Bahrain.

Among other findings, that investigation revealed how prostitutes and U.S. sailors have long comingled on the island, and how the command overhauled its anti-trafficking training to get a grip on the problem.

NCIS officials have refused to explain the agency’s actions before several trafficking investigations involving sailors launched in 2017, including why agents had a so-called “mamasan” pimp on the informant dole for four years.

But Minucci’s comments offer further insight into what’s been going on in Bahrain, an essential U.S. ally that sits just across the Persian Gulf from Iran.

In the recording, the special agent said that 90 percent of the [foreign] women in Bahrain are trafficked there.

But the Navy on Friday said that statement was not accurate.

“To clarify, when the instructor referred to these women, he was referring only to the foreign national women engaging in prostitution/escort services, as opposed to all foreign women, which is inaccurate,” Lt. Tim Pietrack, a Navy spokesman, wrote in an email to Navy Times.

In the training video, Minucci says that the issue of human trafficking is “very pressing here in Bahrain.”

NCIS spokesman Jeff Houston told Navy Times that the agency “does not specifically track trafficking trends.”

U.S. personnel are targeted by the women because “they know you get a steady paycheck on the 1st and 15th of the month,” Minucci said.

“They also know you’re going to rotate out every 12 to 24 months,” he added. “Because of that, there’s going to be a new face, or somebody new to take your place, so business will always be there.”

Bahrain’s embassy in Washington, D.C., and the country’s public prosecution office, did not respond to Navy Times emails seeking comment this week.

These women know that service members face consequences if such illicit relationships come to light, Minucci said.

“They also know you’re afraid to get in trouble, so you won’t say anything to your command, you won’t say anything to law enforcement,” he said. “They know you won’t beat them and you won’t rob them, in comparison to other clients from other countries that are here.”

While Thai women working as prostitutes in Bahrain were at the center of a cascade of NCIS investigations into sailors starting in 2017, Minucci said women are also trafficked from Russia, Ukraine and Colombia.

“Some come over here willingly, the majority of them do not,” he said. “Sometimes they know what the job is they’re coming here for, sometimes they do not.”

Several women are victim to “debt bondage,” and must pay off a certain amount to their trafficker before they are set free, Minucci said.

Near the end of his address, Minucci conceded it is difficult to avoid coming across trafficked women working as prostitutes in Bahrain, but he asked those listening to “be smart about it.”

“Report other servicemembers that use these types of services or seek out these types of services,” he said. “This is somebody’s daughter, this is somebody’s mother, this is somebody’s’ granddaughter. Some of them really don’t want to be there, and you’re going to affect their life. Your face is going to be the one they remember forever.”

“Think about the person you’re impacting when you make poor choices in this area,” 5th Fleet Command Master Chief Franklin Call said at the end of the recording. “The persons you’re impacting, man, they got life pretty hard.”

Based on extensive video footage of an NCIS sting operation and subsequent interrogations, the Military Times documents the extent of U.S. sailor sex crimes in Bahrain and the Navy’s high-level effort to crack down on the problem and discipline those sailors.

Did you serve in Bahrain? Email geoffz@militarytimes.com to share your experience.

It all started on WhatsApp.

The first in a cascade of U.S. Navy investigations into sailors accused of trafficking, housing and pimping female prostitutes in the Middle East can be traced back to June 2017 and a string of sex-charged encrypted text messages between a sailor in Bahrain and a Thai prostitute he met on the island.

“Yo u sexy than a mother fucker with your mean ass,” Gunner’s Mate 2nd Class Jihad H. Littlejohn had texted the woman on June 4, 2017, according to Navy court records.

Prosecutors would later allege that Littlejohn, a 29-year-old from New Jersey then assigned to the patrol ship Hurricane, had paid the so-called “working girl” for sex.

“I want to sleep on your titty,” the sailor had texted her.

“Lol you gotta pay,” she replied, according to court records.

But the woman, Lin Raiwest, was more than just another prostitute. Court records show she also was known as a “mamasan,” a pimp who managed her own stable of prostitutes that she trafficked, protected and profited from.

Raiwest’s chats with Littlejohn soon turned to bigger business, prosecutors later alleged.

Court records show she told him she was going to buy “some more girls” from Thailand and would put them to work in Bahrain’s lucrative sex trade ― one often fueled by U.S. military personnel stationed there.

“You want some?” she asked the sailor in a text.

“Hell yea I do,” Littlejohn replied.

“Girls for what?” he asked.

“Work. Make money,” Raiwest answered. “Don’t tell nobody tho.”

Navy prosecutors later cited the text message exchange to allege that the duo had hatched a plan to fly several women in from Thailand, house them in Littlejohn’s off-post apartment and put them to work selling sex, with Littlejohn expected to take a cut of their earnings.

The petty officer would “take their passports, take their freedom,” Navy prosecutor Lt. Ty Christian said at Littlejohn’s trial in August 2019.

To seal the deal, Littlejohn allegedly paid Raiwest 1,000 Bahraini dinar (about $2,650 at the time) to front the cost of getting the prostitutes from Thailand to Bahrain, according to court records.

In return, Raiwest gave him her passport as collateral.

Naval Criminal Investigative Service agents raided Littlejohn’s apartment in September 2017 and found Raiwest’s passport hidden in a safe, according to court records and testimony.

For reasons that remain unclear, Raiwest didn’t testify at Littlejohn’s trial and the petty officer was acquitted on all charges last summer.

But in 2017, this alleged partnership between Littlejohn and Raiwest — chronicled in the text messages she provided to NCIS — helped spark a web of investigations that revealed how deeply involved some U.S. sailors had become with the commercial sex trade in Bahrain.

Throughout the next year, those probes uncovered evidence that sailors were housing prostitutes in their taxpayer-funded apartments, seizing the women’s passports and taking a cut of the women’s earnings, profiting from a sex trade that serviced shipmates who lived on the island or came ashore during port calls.

Allegations of brutal sexual assaults on the vulnerable woman also came to light, as did evidence of at least one sailor acting as an enforcer for local prostitutes, shaking down a shipmate for payments.

Raiwest emerged as a central figure in several of the Navy’s investigations. Court records show the woman was well-known among sailors in Bahrain

She was also a longtime confidential NCIS informant, plying her illicit trade, reporting sailor misconduct and collecting cash rewards in the process.

These revelations — contained in hundreds of pages of court records, video footage and investigative documents obtained by Military Times — for the first time lay bare the extent of U.S. sailor sex crimes in Bahrain and the Navy’s high-level effort to crack down on the problem and discipline those sailors.

The cases also raise questions about why Navy leadership didn’t see this coming.

For years, U.S. sailors and prostitutes have lived, drank and slept together near “American Alley” in the Juffair section of Bahrain’s capital, Manama.

This warren of bars, nightclubs and apartment blocks sits just outside the gates of Naval Support Activity Bahrain, the headquarters of U.S. 5th Fleet, where about 7,500 American sailors are stationed to oversee naval operations across the volatile U.S. Central Command region in the Middle East.

Yet by 2017, sailors were not just patronizing prostitutes. The NCIS investigations revealed a shadowy subculture outside the gates of NSA Bahrain that had metastasized into multilayered enterprises with sailors as profiteers. The misconduct flew in the face of the Pentagon’s anti-trafficking policies and attendant online training programs that troops from all services must regularly complete.

Some evidence suggests the involvement of U.S. sailors was widespread. One accused chief told NCIS agents in 2018 that he believed up to 15 percent of sailors assigned to Bahrain were housing prostitutes in their off-post apartments.

“He stated many other sailors do not think you can or will actually get in trouble for patronizing prostitution or hosting foreign nationals,” in their off-base residences, a NCIS summary of the interview states.

That chief, who told NCIS agents he had patronized 10 to 15 prostitutes in Bahrain in 2017, said he “knew several of the women he paid to have sex with were engaged in debt bondage, owing their ‘mamasan’ approximately 2,500 [Bahraini dinar, or about $6,600], for coming to Bahrain,” one NCIS report states.

According to NCIS records, another sailor told agents that “service members have been housing women for profit since at least 2012, when he was previously stationed in Bahrain.”

That service member — whose name was redacted in the records NCIS released publicly — told agents that, “Sailors would typically hold (the women’s) passports to ensure they received money owed to them.”

For many sailors, it was all about the cash.

“A lot of people in the Navy talk about it, it’s an easy way to make money” an NCIS agent said to another chief who was busted trying to traffic women, move them in, seize their passports and take his own cut of their earnings.

“It’s all around,” a senior chief told NCIS agents in October 2017.

At least nine sailors, including five chiefs and a lieutenant commander, have been charged since 2017. A senior chief and lieutenant junior grade were among at least six other sailors who have been administratively disciplined in connection to such infractions.

But even now, the full scope of the NCIS investigations and the court cases they spawned remains unclear because the Navy has refused to release some court records while slow-rolling the release of other files that Military Times requested nearly a year ago.

Military Times began investigating the sex trade in Bahrain after several cases first popped up on Navy dockets in 2018.

In January of that year, word of the NCIS investigations reached the desk of then-Vice Adm. John Aquilino, the three-star who was overseeing 5th Fleet and Navy operations in the Middle East.

While unusual for a senior commanding officer to get directly involved in deckplate discipline, Aquilino felt the need to speak on the troubling reports.

He convened an all-hands meeting with hundreds of sailors from his waterfront commands that month.

Military Times obtained an audio recording of that all-hands, and Aquilino’s outrage rings out.

“Who thinks it’s okay to bring foreign nationals into this nation and take their passport and push them out for service to both yourself and anyone else, one of your buds?” Aquilino had asked. “Who thinks that’s okay?”

“The cases have spanned rates and ranks, and the large number of them are senior and khakis,” said Aquilino, now a four-star admiral in charge of the Navy’s Pacific Fleet.

“Floors me,” he told the sailors. “Absolutely floors me.”

His voice rising, Aquilino vowed to “beat this out of our organization” and warned sailors that the actions of a few could blemish the service to which they had all sworn their loyalty.

“Our Navy took a huge black eye with the collisions in 7th Fleet,” Aquilino said, referring to fatal ship collisions in Asia that killed 17 sailors in 2017.

“I’m not letting our Navy take another black eye.”

Big Navy insists the sex trafficking problems in Bahrain are now under control. Officials told Military Times that no new cases of trafficking, solicitation, or other such crimes have been reported among sailors in Bahrain since late 2018.

The Navy also increased training for sailors about the realities they will encounter in Bahrain.

Capt. Greg Smith, the current commanding officer of NSA Bahrain, acknowledged in a fall 2019 interview the reality on the ground and the challenges to changing sailor behavior.

“We are certain that this is a big problem,” said Smith, who took command in the summer of 2018. “We recognize that we don’t have all the answers…and we’re not declaring victory.”

Smith said the Navy has been working to reduce interactions between sailors and prostitutes by declaring certain establishments in Bahrain off limits to sailors, while hammering home how such behavior runs counter to Navy values.

Yet holding sailors accountable has not been easy. When Navy prosecutors tried to court-martial sailors for misconduct involving prostitutes, some cases were severely weakened or failed because Thai prostitutes at the center of the investigations did not testify.

Bahraini government officials did not respond to repeated requests for comment on this story.

Shore patrol logs obtained by Military Times also suggest the higher-ups were aware of how some sailors were spending their nights at various off-base watering holes. One November 2017 report showed 35 to 40 sailors at Wrangler, a popular nightclub. More than 100 suspected prostitutes were in attendance.

Corey Bean, a lawyer and Naval Reservist, was assigned to Bahrain from 2016 to 2019 and was a defense attorney on several of the Navy’s sex-trade-related cases there.

Now back in stateside civilian practice, Bean suspects that willful ignorance of the problems in Bahrain was the plan of the day by 2017.

“Unless it was flagrant, unless somebody really waved it in the face of leadership, no one was looking for it, so it could go undetected,” Bean said. “Nobody really cared to pursue what I think everybody kind of figured was going on.”

“They didn’t quite know how to address it or thought through how to address it,” he added.

“Until they had to.”

‘Keep the money’

If the alleged scheme between Littlejohn and Raiwest had come together, the petty officer could have supplemented his E-5 pay by housing Raiwest’s women and taking a cut of their earnings, according to court records.

Court records suggest that such arrangements could amount to hundreds of dollars worth of extra income a month.

“I’m bout to stack this paper,” Littlejohn had texted Raiwest in June 2017, according to court records.

But by July, prosecutors alleged, the deal between the two soured, and the trafficked women never showed up at Littlejohn’s apartment.

He was out roughly $2,600 that he had fronted to Raiwest to bring the prostitutes to Bahrain, according to NCIS records and Navy prosecutors.

The two began to argue as the alleged scheme unraveled.

“You played me,” he texted Raiwest on July 21, according to court records.

Raiwest insisted it was not her fault.

“Your girls ran away and you rushing me to pay you back?” she wrote.

On July 27 2017, Raiwest told Littlejohn it would be another week before she could pay him back.

“I just got a new place and sent some bitches that not listen home,” she texted.

“Fuck it,” Littlejohn texted her on Aug. 6. “Keep the money.”

Littlejohn still had one way to pressure Raiwest: He had her passport that she had given him as collateral when he fronted the $2,600, according to court records.

“I’ll give your passport to the police,” the sailor texted her.

But Raiwest was not intimidated.

“You not going to threaten me with this police bullshit,” she warned. “Trust me, it’s not worth it.”

“You going to police,” Raiwest said, “I’m going to NCIS.”

She did just that on Aug. 30, 2017, according to court records and testimony. Raiwest met with NCIS agents, alleging their failed scheme and turning over her long text exchanges with the petty officer.

The following month, NCIS agents raided Littlejohn’s apartment and found Raiwest’s passport hidden in a safe, court records show.

Navy prosecutors filed charges against Littlejohn in 2018. He initially faced charges of conspiring with Raiwest to traffic women and for paying her 1,000 Bahraini dinars to make it happen, among other alleged crimes.

But by the time of his August 2019 trial at the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C., several charges had been withdrawn.

Navy officials declined to say why those charges were withdrawn, but prosecutors had been unable to wrangle Raiwest into testifying against Littlejohn for reasons that Navy officials also refused to explain.

“You’re not going to hear from Ms. Raiwest,” prosecutor Lt. Ty Christian told the jury at the trial’s opening.

After the prosecution rested its case against Littlejohn, the military judge presiding over the case, then-Cmdr. Ryan Stormer, granted a motion from Littlejohn’s defense attorney to dismiss the two most serious remaining charges that involved Littlejohn confiscating and possessing Raiwest’s passport, and for transporting sex workers by means of fraud and coercion.

By the time a military jury began deliberating, Littlejohn was only facing a single charge for paying Raiwest for sex.

After an hour of deliberation, the court-martial panel found him not guilty.

Without Raiwest on the stand, the prosecution hinged mainly on text messages between the two.

Littlejohn’s civilian defense attorney, Phillip Cave, told Military Times after the trial that he was prepared to argue that the texts involved a plan the duo had to start a tattoo business.

But he declined to say how Raiwest’s passport ended up in a safe in Littlejohn’s apartment.

“I’m not going to comment on that,” Cave said.

The Navy’s failure to get Raiwest and other prostitutes to testify in court would become a reoccurring challenge in several cases targeting sailors accused of involvement in the Bahrain sex trade.

The Navy’s mamasan in Bahrain

The woman known as Lin Raiwest was far more than just another expat prostitute.

By the time her alleged scheme with Littlejohn collapsed in 2017, court records show Raiwest was a power player among some sailor circles in Bahrain.

Known for her amateur tattoo skills and a hard-partying lifestyle, the streetwise, imposing, at-times jewelry-draped young woman was a fixture in the off-duty underworld, a dolled-up socialite who lived just outside the gates of the Navy base in an upscale glass-and-concrete tower known as the Heavenly Plaza apartments.

But court records indicate she moved often and lived at times with up to six other women in an apartment, eschewing medical care and other services.

Court records also suggest she dealt with jealous and possessive clients who didn’t like her taking business from other men.

Known by some shipmates as “Kaylina” and to others as “Kay,” she held court at boozy brunches sailors attended on the weekend, hosted parties with U.S. personnel and pimped her own stable of prostitutes.

“She was very well-known among the sailors, among the community, even among those that did not use her services,” Brian Pristera, a Virginia attorney who represented a Navy chief charged and later acquitted in a case related to Raiwest, told Military Times.

Raiwest managed her prostitutes “with the focus on sailors and U.S. service members stationed in or stopping in Bahrain,” he said.

“She’s just a very public person in the area,” one petty officer testified in 2018.

Court records show one sailor texted that “Kaylina gots [sic] so many connections on base” to a buddy in late 2017.

But likely unbeknownst to her American acquaintances on the island, Raiwest had been an NCIS informant since 2014 and is designated under the code name MEBJ-1580 in agency and court records.

So while she continued her work as a prostitute and mamasan, Raiwest could also if needed turn to NCIS Special Agent Stanley Garland, the agent whom she’d known and secretly worked with for years.

“This is a calculating individual that knows what she’s doing and knows how to play this game,” Pristera said in court in 2018. “NCIS just kind of lets her do her own thing.”

How much NCIS paid Raiwest over the years remains unclear, but records show agents paid Raiwest $900 after searching Littlejohn’s apartment in September 2017 and finding her passport locked in a safe there.

NCIS records state the payment was to cover fees associated with Raiwest overstaying her visa, but at Littlejohn’s trial, NCIS Special Agent Elise Stephens called the payout “reward money.”

“This was a woman who was…very powerful,” Pristera told Military Times. “She was using that relationship [with NCIS] and taking full advantage of the fact that she had NCIS as a silent partner, almost.”

Garland testified in a separate trial in 2018 that he brought Raiwest on as an informant in 2014.

“She knew a young lady that had been assaulted by a sailor and brought her to us,” Garland said. “That began our relationship.”

While the Littlejohn situation was still under investigation, Raiwest would bring three of the Thai prostitutes she worked with to NCIS in the fall of 2017, with all three alleging — via their mamasan’s translation from Thai to English — that a Navy chief had brutally raped them.

Go here to read more about one of the women who accused the chief of rape.

Garland said in court that he “terminated her” as a source at his boss’ direction in 2018 when Garland transferred back to the states.

Garland declined comment when contacted by Military Times and referred questions to the NCIS public affairs office.

NCIS officials declined to comment on Raiwest’s history with the agency. The agency has also denied Military Times public records requests for documents showing how much Raiwest was paid and the nature of the cases she was involved in, as well as how many other pimps and prostitutes may have similar paid-informant relationships with the NCIS office in Bahrain.

Pristera also had problems getting more information about Raiwest from NCIS, according to court records.

A military judge ordered Raiwest’s NCIS file sealed during another trial.

“There’s a lot we don’t know that we wanted to know about Lin Raiwest and her relationship with the Navy,” Pristera said.

Military Times attempted to track down Raiwest and received an email from someone in 2019 purporting to be Raiwest.

But a Military Times reporter was unable to verify the identity of the sender, who declined to comment on the record.

‘They do sex and make u money’

A few weeks before NCIS agents raided Littlejohn’s flat and recovered Raiwest’s passport in 2017, Chief Operations Specialist Jayson W. Grant was browsing the Tinder dating app when the chance to traffic his own Thai women presented itself.

On the evening of Sept. 20, 2017, court records show he began chatting with a Tinder user who appeared similar to Raiwest: a prostitute who offered to provide Grant with trafficked women.

“You know anyone who needs a place to rent?” the 38-year-old chief asked.

“I could get girl from Thailand for u,” the woman texted back.

“Sounds good,” Grant answered. “How much money can we make and when can we start?”

“Need to procure Thai girl,” the woman texted back. “They make 120 (Bahraini dinar) a night, U hold passport.”

They then moved their chat over to the WhatsApp encrypted messenger, according to court records.

“They do sex and make u money,” she continued. “I get u Thai that is 16 or 19. Younger more money.”

“Nineteen and up,” Grant answered.

The woman told the chief that an American man she referred to as “Boss” would “traffic girls here to Bahrain.”

“They do what they told,” the woman texted. “U work them long time, make lots [sic] money.”

Boss would need to meet Grant first.

“That is the last step,” she told him. “He just need to see u before purchasing girls.”

The chief agreed to meet Boss the following week.

“Are you law enforcement or affiliated with law enforcement?” Grant asked the woman.

“U mean police? No they do not like working gurl [sic]. We could go to jail.”

“Ok good,” the chief replied. “Had to make sure you and your boss aren’t police.”

“Lol no we stay away.”

‘When a motherfucking ship pull in!’

Court records suggest Grant had enjoyed a successful Navy career before arriving on the island.

He spent time assigned to SEAL Team 3 and fitness reports sang his praises. One evaluation from his stint with the Japan-based U.S. 7th Fleet lauded Grant for “the successful prosecution of a Foreign Submarine of high National interest.”

A married father from Ohio, Grant had arrived at Naval Surface Squadron 5 in Bahrain earlier in 2017 and was the command master chief’s enlisted adviser, according to Navy records.

But court records also suggest he was going through a divorce and having financial problems.

Grant went to meet “Boss” on Oct. 4, 2017, at the Grand Yard House bar, an Americanized watering hole popular with sailors and prostitutes about 10 minutes from the Navy base.

Boss billed himself as a U.S. contractor who would get three prostitutes into the country and deliver them to the chief’s door.

The women would live with the chief, splitting time on the spare twin beds and sofas in his apartment.

Grant would take their passports.

“I’m nervous about this shit,” Grant told Boss after he sat down for the meeting, according to a transcript of their conversation entered into court records.

“It’s gravy, but you gotta be discreet, dog,” Boss warned the chief. “You can’t be out in the street, don’t be on Facebook with this shit.”

“Naw, I’m real discreet,” Grant assured him.

The women could slide Grants’ cut of the money under his bedroom door each night if he wanted, Boss explained.

They would cook, clean and give him massages.

“And shit, you know, you can fuck ‘em, whatever,” Boss said.

“Your homeboys can’t get no free pussy,” he warned. “Just you. You just hang onto their passports.”

“It’s basically like you’re renting a room,” Boss added. “That’s your cover story.”

Boss pointed out all the Thai prostitutes who already congregated around “American Alley” in the Juffair neighborhood just outside the base.

“I’ll tell you when you’re really gonna make some money, when a motherfucking ship pull in!” Boss told Grant. “Oh my goodness, dog, when a ship pull in!”

“I gotta fuck with that,” said Grant, who asked about the possibility of getting more girls in the future.

Boss told Grant that he himself ran a similar side hustle and urged Grant to make sure he wore a condom if he slept with any of the women.

“I ain’t trying to skeet up in that motherfucker!” Boss said. “I don’t need another damn family out here.”

The next morning, Grant hit the gym, went to work and planned for the arrival of the women later that day.

‘You’re a chief’

Grant would soon learn that the person on the other end of his Tinder conversation had been an undercover NCIS agent.

And so was Boss, who had secretly recorded his Yard House sit-down with the chief. A copy of that recording was obtained by Military Times.

NCIS had launched stings to snare would-be sailor-traffickers after Raiwest brought allegations of her foiled plot with Littlejohn to their attention that summer.

With Grant, the NCIS sting had hooked an E-7 and agents brought him in the day after he met with Boss.

“You have any idea why you’re here this morning?” an agent asked the chief in a recording of that interview obtained by Military Times.

“No.”

Grant slumped in his chair as the agent told him he had been caught in a sting.

The agent initially played the role of the good cop.

“Listen man, I don’t want you to beat yourself up,” he told Grant. “You’re going through a divorce, you’re out here, an opportunity presents itself.”

But the U.S. Navy can’t have sailors trafficking women, the agent explained.

“We don’t want girls being brought into Bahrain to work as prostitutes,” the agent said. “Bahrain has a lot of respect for who we are and what we do out here, and we just don’t want our Navy associated with any of that.”

Another agent said NCIS knew sailors were housing prostitutes and getting paid as a side hustle.

“A lot of people are doing this here,” she noted.

Grant claimed he hadn’t understood that the girls would be brought to Bahrain against their will.

But he admitted to the NCIS agents that he already had women living with him and paying rent.

“You are aware that the Navy’s paying your housing and you’re not supposed to be renting out rooms?”

“I didn’t know that,” Grant replied.

“This is bullshit,” one agent said. “I’m not gonna sit here and have you lie to us.”

“You’re a chief petty officer in the United States Navy and you have no idea that you’re not supposed to be housing girls and making a profit off them?” the other asked.

The other agent reminded Grant of the texts they exchanged, and how the agent had specifically used the word “trafficking” and said the girls wouldn’t have a choice.

“I’m literally paying off a pimp and moving them here to have sex on your behalf,” the agent said. “That didn’t raise any red flags to you?”

“It did,” Grant said. “My train of thought was housing.”

“Sounds like you saw a dollar sign,” the agent said.

Grant was later charged and pleaded guilty in February 2019 to attempted human trafficking and attempted labor trafficking offenses, according to court records.

Military judge Capt. Arthur Gaston sentenced Grant to four years in the brig and a dishonorable discharge.

He also will have to register as a sex offender, according to trial records.

Grant’s sentence is believed to be the heaviest handed down by the Navy in connection to the Bahrain cases.

At one hearing, Grant’s defense attorney, Lt. Cmdr. Corey Bean, suggested that undercover agents had taken their sting too far and could have busted the chief solely for the housing infractions.

“If the NCIS agent had not upped the ante and suggested the scheme of importing women from Thailand, this whole thing never would have happened,” Bean argued.

Lt. Cmdr. Keven Schreiber, the lead prosecutor in the case, asked Gaston for a 12-year sentence, citing “the level of callousness with which he was operating.”

“We cannot let our sailors have any question that this is not serious,” he said.

Grant’s legal proceedings took place in Naples, Italy.

He was initially incarcerated at a military prison in Germany, then sent to the Navy brig in Charleston, South Carolina, then to the brig in Miramar, California, and then back to Charleston, according to Bethany Payton-O’Brien, a civilian defense attorney he retained after conviction.

In the next month, Payton-O’Brien told Military Times that she plans to file an appeal “regarding both his court-martial findings and sentence.”

“There are a number of issues that we are raising in this case, including unlawful command influence,” she said, referring to Adm. Aquilino’s January 2018 all-hands meeting on the waterfront that addressed the Bahrain cases.

‘Is my career over?’

During his NCIS interrogation, Grant at one point denied trying to bring any other sailors in on the scheme.

But a few seconds later, he admitted to the involvement of his friend, a senior chief.

“Close friend?” an NCIS agent asked.

“Yes, sir.”

The name of that senior chief is redacted in court records obtained by Military Times, but NCIS brought him in that night.

Agents wanted to know more about the texts between the senior chief and Grant, particularly one exchange when the two sailors appeared to discuss trafficking woman and the senior chief texted Grant to “send me two.”

Video footage of the NCIS interview obtained by Military Times blurs the senior chief’s face but not his LaRon Landry Washington Redskins jersey.

The senior chief acknowledged to the agents that he had gone to the Yard House with Grant the night the chief met with Boss, but the senior did not sit in on their conversation. Instead, he ate at a table nearby while Grant and the undercover agent talked.

“(Grant) told me he was thinking of getting into some stupid shit,” the senior chief told agents, claiming that he texted Grant “send me two” as a drunken joke.

“We joke about it because it’s all around,” the senior chief said.

“Does it concern you that he was planning on getting girls trafficked in from Thailand to pimp out?” an agent asked.

“I tried to deter him,” the senior chief said. “But he’s got a financial situation going on in his life, going through a divorce.”

The senior chief also admitted to frequenting prostitutes while stationed there.

“The girls typically go to Wranglers?” an agent asked, referring to a nightclub known for bringing sailors and prostitutes together.

“Everyone go to Wranglers,” the senior chief answered.

As the interview came to an end, the senior chief sat there, deflated.

“Is my career over?” he asked.

“We push it to the command, we push it to legal and they deal with it,” the agent replied.

They noted that the senior chief held a top secret-sensitive compartmentalized information security clearance and could be on the hook for failing to report Grant’s plans.

“The fact that you have a TSSCI clearance, which a very small percentage of people in the United States have, not smart decisions,” one agent told him.

“Watch the company you keep,” the senior said, almost to himself. “I can’t tell my wife?”

“If you want to tell your wife you’re involved in prostitution and adultery, by all means,” the agent replied.

Navy officials declined to criminally charge the senior chief. Instead, he received a punitive letter of reprimand and had to forfeit half a month’s pay, according to Navy spokesman Lt. Timothy Pietrack.

Because the senior was only administratively punished, Pietrack declined to identify him.

“This sailor is no longer stationed in Bahrain,” Pietrack said in 2019.

The Navy cop shakedown

In October 2017, several weeks after Grant and the senior chief were busted, another sailor got caught up in a shakedown scheme involving a prostitute and another sailor who was acting as the woman’s enforcer, according to court records.

The case of Aviation Equipment Support Technician 2nd Class Dennis J. Mullens offers a glimpse into how interwoven prostitutes and sailors had become on the island.

Mullens would later swear he had no idea the woman he slept with one night that month was a prostitute, according to court records. He recalled attending a house party hosted by a Filipina woman he knew. There, he met a woman named Saifon who came to his room at the end of the night.

“She was a little flirty,” Mullens said on the stand during the court-martial of a Navy chief on other Bahrain-based charges in 2018. “We talked a little bit, we hooked up. And that was that.”

But Mullens said he soon began receiving threatening phone messages from another sailor acting as Saifon’s henchman and seeking payment for her services.

Mullens said the sailor was a master-at-arms, or MA ― a Navy police officer.

Through a series of threatening voice messages extracted from his phone by NCIS and obtained by Military Times, the MA told Mullens to pony up $60 for Saifon’s services or she would go to base authorities.

“You need to figure out how you’re gonna pay,” the unnamed MA told the petty officer.

The MA warned that they were “getting ready to make sure base police…know what’s going on.”

“She’s gonna go, and I’ll make sure I show her how to get there,” he added.

Mullens initially told the MA that he was broke and couldn’t come up with the money until payday, according to court records.

“That’s not gonna work,” the man answered. “You’re about to be fucked.”

The petty officer pleaded for more time, but the MA insisted that Mullens had created this problem for himself, according to court records.

“If you knew you didn’t have the money, why the hell did you do this?” the Navy cop asked. “You just hurt yourself right now with getting in trouble and most of all possibly hurt your career and more.”

Mullens at one point was facing court-martial for his alleged role in a separate Raiwest-related case involving two chiefs.

But Mullens later took a deal granting him immunity from prosecution in exchange for his testimony.

Mullens later testified that he met the MA on base during work hours and paid him the cash.

The MA was in uniform “but I don’t remember his last name on the uniform,” Mullens said in court.

The phone records revealing the shakedown were first identified by Brian Pristera, a civilian attorney representing one of the charged chiefs that Mullens testified against. Pristera received Mullens’ phone records as part of the trial’s discovery phase and unearthed the petty officer’s exchange with the unnamed MA regarding the woman.

NCIS officials declined to tell Military Times whether there was any investigation into Mullens’ allegations against the unnamed MA.

Pristera suspects NCIS hadn’t bothered to dig deeply into Mullens’ seized communications or they would have found the evidence of a sailor-on-sailor shakedown.

Pristera questioned Mullens’ credibility during his client’s trial and found it “unbelievable” that the petty officer couldn’t recall the MA’s name.

It wouldn’t be hard, the attorney argued, to identify the MA among the finite cadre of Navy police stationed in Bahrain.

“If it’s an active-duty master-at-arms on base in Bahrain at a known time, this isn’t rocket science,” Pristera told Military Times. “The Navy can’t figure out who this person is…allegedly shaking down someone or engaging in some other type of attempt to bribe?”

Military judge Capt. Arthur Gaston presided over the trial in which the story about Saifon and Mullens emerged.

Pristera presented the Saifon material during a hearing and asked the judge for more time to dig into the situation because, the attorney said, it spoke to Mullen’s credibility as a witness against his client.

Gaston declined to give him more time because it wasn’t relevant enough to the case.

But the judge agreed that evidence of one sailor shaking down another on behalf of a prostitute warranted closer scrutiny.

“NCIS should probably investigate,” Gaston said during a hearing. “It appears there is an MA who was assisting somebody in extorting money from a uniformed servicemember.”

Mullens declined a request for comment for this story.

Military Times contacted the WhatsApp number for Saifon listed in court records in late 2019. The number’s profile picture featured a selfie of a woman with an American flag hung in the background.

When a Military Times reporter texted that number and asked about Saifon and the shakedown, the person on the other end stopped responding.

‘A girl in every port’

The Bahrain cases reveal the challenges the Navy faces as it works to shift the sea service away from a culture where patronizing prostitutes at port calls was viewed as a routine part of Navy life for some sailors.

Capt. Greg Smith, the current commander of NSA Bahrain, called the cases “shocking” during an interview in fall 2019.

“You know the old phrase, ‘there’s a girl in every port,’” Smith said. “These are the kinds of things that the Navy has been working culturally to change.”

Bean, the reservist attorney who represented Grant and was stationed in Bahrain until 2019, said misconduct involving prostitutes was not uncommon for sailors in the past: “The repeated phrase was: ‘What goes on on a cruise stays on a cruise.’”

“If you look 20 years ago, it was almost a badge of honor to get really drunk and do who knows what on a port call,” Bean said in an interview with Military Times.

The Navy has tried to codify this culture shift via anti-trafficking and anti-sex crime training, part of an ongoing effort to evolve the notion of what is considered acceptable in the ranks.

Smith conceded that his people can’t monitor every sailor every night in Bahrain.

But at the same time, “we can’t just wring our hands and say hey, sailors will be sailors,” he said. “We are trying to be proactive and educate folks so that they know what’s right and wrong.”

Whether the Navy has truly solved the issues that reared up in 2017 in Bahrain remains to be seen.

Sailors are still stationed there. So are the Thai prostitutes.

Bahrain is unique among overseas assignments in that many sailors go there unaccompanied by dependents and don’t really mix with the locals, Bean said.

A recent Pentagon directive is set to end all accompanied tours there.

Overseas assignments like Japan or Italy offer sailors more opportunity to date local women, Bean said.

“That scarcity of having available local women, just because of the cultural differences in Bahrain…certainly made the prostitution business more enticing to someone who wanted to get into that,” he said.

Some critics contend that Navy leaders there knew such a situation was simmering and failed to act, well before Raiwest went to NCIS about her alleged scheme with Littlejohn.

Stephen Karns, a civilian attorney who at one point represented a sailor being investigated for involvement with prostitutes, wrote to Navy lawyers in 2018 and questioned whether higher ups had been ignoring the systemic problems in Bahrain that led to the cases.

The Navy’s leadership had turned a blind eye to such interactions and only acted when the issue metastasized into reports of human trafficking, he argued.

“The command and law enforcement understood that prostitution, especially in foreign countries, goes hand-in-hand with human trafficking,” Karns wrote.

Higher-ups have dodged responsibility for things getting to this point in Bahrain, Karns wrote.

“I’m not saying no action should be taken against these Sailors,” he added. “I believe some action should be taken against the command.”

Did you serve in Bahrain? Email geoffz@militarytimes.com to share your experience.

Sometime in 2017, Mary left her home in rural Thailand and traveled more than 3,000 miles to Bahrain to work as a prostitute.

The 5-foot-3-inch woman had just turned 18 when she began roaming the bars and clubs outside of Naval Support Activity Bahrain, looking for U.S. sailor clients.

Court records indicate that Mary might have found a path to marriage and a new life in America after she met a Navy petty officer who developed a soft spot for her.

“I want to marry you,” Aviation Support Equipment Technician 2nd Class Dennis Mullens told her in 2017, according to text messages later entered into Navy court records.

“You are always there,” he texted her. “I know I am not perfect…but you are always there.”

As their relationship deepened, court records show that Mary continued to work as a prostitute ― a line of work that troubled Mullens.

“I am with the customer,” Mary texted Mullens in October 2017. “What about visa?”

“Don’t talk to me when you are with customer,” Mullens replied.

“Why?” she asked.

“I don’t want to know,” he told her. “It’s not easy for me anymore.”

Mullens later said he wanted to build a life with Mary if she would only leave prostitution behind.

“I was like, don’t tell me about your customers,” he testified at a 2018 trial involving a Navy chief charged in a wave of sex crimes prosecutions against sailors in Bahrain.

“Don’t tell me about that life you have unless you’re ready to stop doing it,” Mullens said. “And then we’ll pursue this visa stuff because I wanted to give her a better life.”

“That’s the truth.”

But in September 2017, Mary’s life in Bahrain took a dark turn.

That month, she and another Thai woman told Navy authorities they both had been brutally raped by a Navy chief.

A third woman would come forward with the same allegation against the same chief in October.

Mary’s story, and the details of her life in Bahrain outlined in hundreds of pages of court records obtained by Military Times, emerged in the course of sprawling Navy investigations into sailors accused of sex trade-related crimes outside the headquarters of the Navy’s 5th Fleet.

Mullens declined to comment for this story.

Mary is a pseudonym. Military Times does not identify victims of alleged sexual assault. She could not be reached for comment.

“She tried to run away”

According to Navy court records, Mary told Naval Criminal Investigative Service agents that she met the Navy chief who allegedly assaulted her in one of the bars that dot the Juffair section of the capital Manama, where dance floors swirling with sailors and prostitutes were well-known venues for setting up sex-for-money transactions.

At the time, Mary was working for another Thai prostitute named Lin Raiwest, who was known in the local commercial sex trade as a “mamasan” and played a role similar to a pimp — managing a stable of prostitutes whom she trafficked, protected and profited from.

Mary’s mamasan brought her to NCIS agents to report the chief’s alleged assault. Raiwest was very familiar with NCIS: The mamasan had been a confidential informant for NCIS since 2014 and was known in its files by her code name, MEBJ-1580.

Raiwest helped translate for NCIS agents as Mary recounted the alleged assault using her native Thai language, according to court records.

Mary had met the chief on the night of Sept. 12, 2017, at Wrangler, a local club known for bringing prostitutes and sailors together, according to an NCIS summary of agent interviews with the woman.

She and the chief had haggled and agreed on a price of 50 Bahraini dinar, which was about $145 at the time, according to the summary.

The chief had driven Mary back to his off-post residence.

Once inside, they engaged in small talk, the NCIS summary states. They soon began having “consensual vaginal intercourse” in a spare bedroom.

Suddenly, Mary later told investigators, the chief turned her around “and penetrated her anus without her consent,” according to the NCIS record.

“(Mary) said no and she tried to run away, but (the chief) grabbed her hair to restrain her and pressed her face into the pillow to stop her screams,” the summary states.

When the chief finished, Mary told the agents, she dressed in the bathroom and they both left his apartment so he could give her a ride back.

As they waited near the elevator, the chief said he had to go back to his apartment to grab a shirt, according to the interview summary.

But when the chief went back in the apartment, he locked the door. Mary rang the doorbell, but the sailor did not answer, according to the NCIS summary.

The woman didn’t know where she was and had to drop a location pin to her mamasan’s phone. Raiwest came in a taxi to pick her up, according to NCIS.

Mary was “crying and reported being in pain” when Raiwest arrived, the summary states.

Mullens, the petty officer who had texted his desire to wed Mary that year, later testified in 2018 at a separate trial that Mary at some point told him “in detail what happened,” but she didn’t ask him to do anything about it.

‘Scary’

Two other prostitutes, at least one of whom also worked for Raiwest, alleged very similar sexual assaults by the same Navy chief in the fall of 2017, according to court records.

Raiwest helped translate for the women, who spoke little to no English, as they recounted their alleged sexual assaults for NCIS, according to records and a video of the interviews obtained by Military Times.

Mary and the two other women identified the chief in a photo lineup of five other “similar males.” Two of the women were confident in the identification, while a third prostitute was only 50 percent sure, according to NCIS records.

NCIS agents tried to get rape examinations for Mary, but Navy medical officials refused because she was neither a U.S. service member nor a dependent, according to court records.

Some of the women claimed injuries from the assaults.

“Did you go to the doctor?” an NCIS agent had asked.

“We don’t go to the doctor,” Raiwest said.

Raiwest told agents the women had feared coming forward.

“That’s why nobody ever say anything,” she said. “That’s why he think (sic) he can do all this to anybody.”

At one point, one of the chief’s accusers handed her phone over to an agent, and the agent asked which name the chief’s phone number was listed under.

“Scary,” Raiwest replied.

‘NCIS are about to get him’

NCIS ultimately identified the chief accused of sexually assaulting the prostitutes as Chief Logistics Specialist Calvin Halfacre.

After an investigation, sexual assault and other charges were filed against Halfacre ― a 42-year-old husband and father who was on an unaccompanied tour to Bahrain.

Agents brought Halfacre in for questioning on Oct. 6, 2017.

Halfacre, who records show had been a sexual assault prevention and response coordinator at a previous command, invoked his right to stay silent and asked for an attorney.

His civilian defense attorney, Phillip Cave, denied the allegations in court filings.

Cave suggested Raiwest was extorting Halfacre.

Both Mullens and another enlisted leader, Chief Logistics Specialist Earl McLaughlin, later faced charges of obstructing the NCIS investigation into Halfacre and were accused of helping him attempt to pay off the prostitutes to drop the charges.

A charge against Mullens was later dropped in exchange for his testifying against McLaughlin, who was acquitted by a military jury in December 2018.

Mullens instead received non-judicial punishment, according to court records.

At one hearing in the Halfacre case, Halfacre’s defense attorney wondered why NCIS couldn’t find another translator and suggested that Raiwest had a conflict of interest since she was already an informant for NCIS.

“She knows NCIS is very interested in this and that may well help establish her relationship with NCIS,” Cave argued in court records. “They will allow her to practice her own prostitution in Bahrain uninterrupted or unaffected by either NCIS, or more importantly, the Bahraini authorities.”

Cave also questioned the trustworthiness and motivations of Raiwest and said she did not qualify “as a sufficiently neutral and independent interpreter.”

Bahraini authorities did not respond to several requests for comment on the island’s sex trade or the allegations involving U.S. sailors.

By October 2017, text messages entered into court records show Mullens texting others about the case.

“Bro these girls found that chief about to fuck him up,” Mullens texted a friend that month, according to court records. “NCIS are about to get him.”

“Damn that’s crazy,” the friend replied. “Did the girls call NCIS?”

“Kaylina got so many connections on base,” the petty officer noted, referring to Raiwest by one of her aliases. “She got all the girls he raped to talk to NCIS.”

‘Doing a lot of crazy stuff’

As Halfacre’s day in court neared, Navy prosecutors lost track of Mary and one of the other accusers, according to court records.

Raiwest had also promised to testify against Halfacre but fell off the Navy’s radar and was unavailable to testify in Halfacre’s trial, which was held in Naples, Italy.

The third accuser had since returned to Thailand to care for her ailing father but was willing to return to Bahrain as of November 2018, according to court records.

It’s unclear how the Navy lost track of the women and why the Navy never brought the fourth woman back from Thailand to testify.

Ultimately, Navy officials offered Halfacre a plea deal, which dropped the sexual assault charges. He signed the deal in January 2019, which resulted in him pleading guilty to three counts of patronizing a prostitute, one specification each for Mary and the two other women who accused him of rape, according to court records.

Navy officials declined to comment on why they offered him a plea deal rather than pursue the initial charges at court-martial.

After pleading guilty in a Navy courtroom, Halfacre told military judge Capt. Arthur Gaston he had been going through a difficult time in his life, according to court records.

“I got to Bahrain, I started doing stuff that I normally wouldn’t do,” he said. “In Bahrain I was able to drink more than I ever have and going out, doing a lot of crazy stuff and trying to deal with it.”

The chief noted that “they know me around most of the bars in Bahrain.”

Navy prosecutor Lt. Sterling Spencer argued that such behavior wasn’t expected of sailors, “let alone a chief petty officer.”

“Chiefs are supposed to be setting the example,” she said. “Instead, he was out publicly associating with prostitutes at major bars that other sailors or junior sailors attended.”

Halfacre was sentenced to 30 months in the brig, a bad-conduct discharge, automatic reduction in rank to E-1 and forfeiture of all pay and allowances during confinement, Navy spokesman Lt. Tim Pietrack told Military Times.

He is doing his time in the Navy brig in Chesapeake, Virginia, and did not respond to letters seeking comment sent to him by Military Times.

His attorney, Cave, said he is appealing Halfacre’s sentence. That appeal focuses on the judge’s consideration at sentencing of a victim impact letter from one of Halfacre’s accusers who had returned to Thailand but agreed to testify.

Cave contends that because Halfacre didn’t plead guilty to raping the woman, a victim impact statement was not relevant.

The judge ruled that, because Halfacre had not pleaded guilty to the rape charges, certain parts of the letter could not be considered.

But the letter in its entirety is in the record of trial obtained by Military Times.

“I think about what he did to me every day,” the woman wrote.

“My life in Bahrain began to fall apart after he did this to me, as it affected my whole life.”

To read the full Tinder, Sailor, Hooker, Pimp story, visit: http://militarytimes.com/bahrain-scandal

Watch all five parts of the video series:

Part 1: “They do sex and make u money”

Part 2: The Informant

Part 3: “She tried to fight”

Part 4: “She came to my room”

Part 5: “Unacceptable”

The Navy filed charges against at least nine sailors for such offenses in 2017 and 2018, including one mid-grade officer and five chiefs. The charges included allegations that some sailors were trafficking or attempting to traffic Thai prostitutes into Bahrain and housing them in their off-post apartments with the intention of taking a cut of their nightly cash earnings.

Navy prosecutors secured guilty pleas in five of those nine cases, but officials concede that they offered watered-down plea deals to some of the accused sailors due to a recurring problem: the failure to get the Thai prostitutes at the center of the cases into a military courtroom to testify.

Several cases hinged on the cooperation of these victimized women, and the Navy’s prosecutions collapsed when the women fell off the Navy’s radar or they otherwise refused to cooperate, leaving prosecutors without key witnesses at trial.

Navy Times contacted several anti-trafficking and advocacy groups both in the United States and Thailand to learn more about the life of Thai prostitutes in Bahrain. All professed ignorance of the situation or declined to comment.

Attempts to contact the women at the center of the cases were also unsuccessful.

The women’s reluctance is unsurprising in a way, according to service officials.

Such women in Bahrain are there illegally, NCIS officials testified, and were both unfamiliar with and distrustful of the American military justice system.

“We’re not talking about you in the United States of America — we’re talking about Thai prostitutes in Bahrain,” one Navy prosecutor, Lt. Cmdr. Keven Schreiber, told a Navy judge during a court hearing, as he explained why women who had levied allegations against U.S. sailors were not available to take the stand.

The women exist “in a weird status in Bahraini society and law,” Schreiber said.

“What would be reasonable for them to do?” he asked.

Lin Raiwest, an NCIS informant and Thai prostitute who was well-known to many U.S. sailors in Bahrain and who was at the center of several Navy investigations, told her NCIS handlers that the women sometimes travel to Bahrain under a false alias so their families wouldn’t find out, according to court records.

They often lived in crowded apartments and went without medical care while selling sex to sailors in Bahrain so that they could make money to send home to their families in Thailand.

Sailors told NCIS agents that the women coming from Thailand to Bahrain arrived there indebted and indentured to their mamasan — the local term for female pimps who manage sex workers, helping to arrange their clients and taking a cut of earnings at night’s end.

The women are essentially indentured until they pay off their debt, according to NCIS records.

Bahrain officials did not respond to numerous calls and requests for comment for this story.

Defense attorneys in several cases acknowledged the challenges the Navy faced in getting these marginalized women to testify.

Brian Pristera, a civilian defense attorney, represented a chief petty officer who was acquitted in 2018 on an obstruction of justice charge stemming from the NCIS investigations in Bahrain. He was privy to several of the cases involving Thai prostitutes and he suspects that living in the shadows of Bahraini society made it harder to get those women on the stand.

“The Navy has had a difficult time dealing with witnesses…who are transient, who are not local and who are very skeptical of the justice process,” he told Military Times. “They’re not fluent in [English], they don’t understand our processes and it makes it complicated to involve them in the justice system.”

Raiwest was a confidential NCIS informant from 2014 to 2018, even as she continued working as a prostitute and also as a local mamasan, Navy court records show.

She told Navy prosecutors that she would testify in several cases, but later disappeared according to court records.

Navy officials declined to comment on why some prosecutions sputtered, but court records show several cases in which Raiwest was a central witness later resulted in acquittals or plea deals on lesser charges for sailors accused of crimes.

“It begs the question of — what is the Navy getting out of these informants when they’re so unreliable, they’re so unpredictable and so unavailable for the military justice process?” Pristera said. “You’ve got four years of a mamasan informing and working with NCIS, and you’ve got the end result today as a number of acquittals and trials that resulted in either reduced charges or no charges at all.”

A Navy official familiar with the cases acknowledged the difficulties.

“Holding sailors accountable at court-martial for conduct involving this population of vulnerable foreign nationals will continue to be a challenge,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the Navy did not authorize them to speak on the matter.

Overseas, the U.S. government could not compel these women to testify.

“Many of these women made the choice not to participate, or simply vanish,” the official said. “In the same way victims of sexual assault feel shame or remorse and choose not to report…persons who are victims of sex and labor trafficking are often reluctant to participate in prosecutions.”

The challenge of holding sailors accountable and winning convictions in court was further complicated by the fact that NCIS and Navy attorneys had little experience with sex trafficking prosecutions and had to seek counsel from the U.S. Department of Justice during some proceedings, according to court records obtained by Military Times.

“I’ll admit it was really important in the early stages of the panoply of cases that involved these topics, there was a lot of discussion about how we charge these cases, about what laws apply, about what the standards of proof and the elements might be,” Schreiber told the court in 2018.

To read the full Tinder, Sailor, Hooker, Pimp story, visit: http://militarytimes.com/bahrain-scandal

Watch all five parts of the video series:

Part 1: “They do sex and make u money”

Part 2: The Informant

Part 3: “She tried to fight”

Part 4: “She came to my room”

Part 5: “Unacceptable”

After a rash of such cases emerged there in 2017 and 2018, Navy sex trafficking training at the Bahrain-based U.S. 5th Fleet is no longer “stove-piped,” and new programs help sailors to recognize if they are susceptible to the vices Bahrain offers outside the base gates, officials say.

“These things are wrong,” then-Vice Adm. John Aquilino stressed to his 5th Fleet sailors in a 2018 all-hands call, after he received word of the investigations. “They are wrong. I don’t care if you’re in Bahrain, the United States, Singapore, Japan. It’s wrong no matter where you are.”

The investigations into more than a dozen sailors made everyone realize that the command needed “a more structured and deliberate campaign,” Capt. Carey Cash, the former fleet chaplain, told Military Times last year.

“Wherever sailors are stationed, whether it’s (stateside) or overseas, these challenges are there,” said Cash, who transferred from Bahrain in March. “What became apparent to us in Bahrain is we needed to do our due diligence…to be more deliberate about how we addressed it.”

The command there declares certain establishments off limits for sailors if there is a belief that it could lead to such unwanted interactions.

Cash has been on active duty for nearly 20 years, and said that what he saw in Bahrain was not the first time he had heard of such cases.

“Every crisis is a combination of danger and opportunity,” he said. “This is a crisis, and the danger is lives are being impacted and hurt.”

“As loathe as we are to seeing these cases…all of us, every one of us, need to make sure we are watching the trajectory of our own lives,” Cash said. “Any of us can slowly and almost quietly walk down a very dangerous path.”

Part of the renewed to crackdown on patronizing and trafficking prostitutes involved an advisory board comprised of officer and senior enlisted members, as well as some junior sailors, “that would help pull some wisdom and think about effective ways to get at the various groups within Bahrain.”

Much of Cash’s role in this renewed effort involves “ethics and character briefs” tailored for 5th Fleet personnel, he said.

The briefs focused on “habits which lead people down the road of bad decisions,” Cash told Military Times.

Sailors who have “heavy pornography use, secretive social media use and patterns of infidelity” are more susceptible to Bahrain’s vices, he said.

“When we do our briefs, we address these issues and let folks sort of come to their own conclusions about these behaviors,” Cash said, calling it “a mature discussion about real challenges that are out there across the fleet.”

Bahrain government officials did not respond to repeated requests for comment regarding the vulnerable women.

Real change among the ranks stationed in Bahrain will require a sustained effort, according to Corey Bean, an attorney and Navy reservist who was stationed in Bahrain from 2016 to 2019 and worked on several cases involving sex crime and trafficking allegations against sailors.

“It’s going to involve some better deckplate leadership,” he said of the prospects for improvement. “Chiefs, senior enlisted, engaging directly with sailors on that issue. Not only what the potential harm is, but the risk to the sailor legally in terms of jeopardizing their career and reputation, and letting them know that no matter what they have heard in the past, the Navy is not looking the other way anymore.”

“It’s got to be a sustained effort,” Bean continued. “You can’t just put out training where everybody signs off and goes on with what they have been doing.”

To read the full Tinder, Sailor, Hooker, Pimp story, visit: http://militarytimes.com/bahrain-scandal

Watch all five parts of the video series:

Part 1: “They do sex and make u money”

Part 2: The Informant

Part 3: “She tried to fight”

Part 4: “She came to my room”

Part 5: “Unacceptable”