A US airman who allegedly exposed himself to a 16-year-old girl and four young women in England was able to avoid the British justice system after the US military was permitted to take control of the case, the Guardian can reveal.
Cambridgeshire police received complaints that the airman, Hannes Marschalek, had indecently exposed himself to the women as they walked past his home in Littleport, a small town in Cambridgeshire, in 2022.
One alleged victim said he had stood at the door exposing his penis while holding a mobile phone, while another said he had posed naked at the door, with his hand on the top of the door frame.
Three weeks after arresting and questioning Marschalek, and opening an investigation into the case, Cambridgeshire police agreed to hand over the investigation to the US military after an official request from the Americans.
This allowed the US military to take Marschalek, 37, to a court martial held at his airbase in 2023, where he and prosecutors negotiated a plea bargain.
The case has echoes of that of Capt Jacob Wulfson, a US fighter pilot who strangled a British woman in his apartment in Cambridge city centre after meeting her through a dating app in 2023. The victim, Sarah Steele, an academic, has spoken of her “degrading” ordeal when the case was tried in a US military tribunal rather than a British court.
In both cases, Cambridgeshire police opted to cede responsibility for investigations of the sexual crimes to the US military, even though the crimes occurred on British soil while the perpetrators were off duty. In such cases, the UK should have primary jurisdiction for prosecutions.
This year, Marschalek won an appeal in a US military court that quashed his conviction on technical grounds. Military lawyers representing him denied he was a “serial flasher”.
Marschalek, a staff sergeant, was assigned in 2021 to work at RAF Lakenheath, the largest US airbase in the UK and the same facility where Wulfson was based. He lived with his wife and daughter in Littleport, a 25-minute drive away.
The court martial papers show that in July 2022, Marschalek texted two friends to say he had “definitely” flashed women from his home.
The text read: “I definitely just flashed a couple ladies walking from the train. LOL.” He added in a later text: “I took all my clothes off when I walked in. I went to go open a window and I was standing right in front of it when they walked by.”
Military prosecutors alleged that these texts demonstrated how he was “repeatedly exposing his genitalia to unexpected women, and then bragging about it, and then laughing about it”.
On 9 October 2022, Cambridgeshire police arrested him at his home and took him into custody after the complainants, between 16 and 24 years old, alleged he had exposed himself several times over the previous two months.
One woman said she had witnessed him “standing at or near the doorway with the door completely open”, with no shirt, his shorts pulled down to his knees, and his penis exposed. “His left hand was holding his cellphone with the screen facing toward him and the camera facing out at an angle toward where [she] was standing … His right hand was on his penis.”
Another said she had seen him “posing” completely naked at the door and that he had “a blue Pepsi can in his left hand and his right hand was above his head on top of the door frame”. One woman later said she no longer felt safe in her home town.
In a statement to the Guardian, a Cambridgeshire police spokesperson said that when the force had arrested Marschalek, officers had discovered he was employed by the US military. “His employers were notified of his arrest and the investigation,” they added.
Cambridgeshire police continued their investigation and took statements from three women while he was on bail.
“During the course of the investigation an official request was received from the relevant authorities within the US military asking us to consider transferring the investigation to them for onward progression,” the police spokesperson said.
On 31 October 2022 the force decided to hand the investigation to the Americans. “This was carefully considered and all victims were updated in regards to the decision made to transfer the investigations to the US military for continued investigation,” Cambridgeshire police said.
The force said that “all victims were consulted with prior to the decision”.It added that no one had complained about this decision at the time.
A spokesperson for the US air force said it had “negotiated jurisdiction over this case with the local police using all available facts at the time”.
In interviews with military investigators, Marschalek was quoted as saying: “I understand and believe my behaviour, specifically opening the door to be seen naked, which sexually excited me, could have been perceived by others as vulgar, obscene and repugnant.”
He was brought in front of a court martial in 2023 on two charges of indecent conduct. He and military prosecutors agreed a plea bargain in which one charge was dismissed.
In return, Marschalek admitted he had stood at his door naked on two occasions between August and October 2022. Originally, this charge had alleged that he had masturbated at the door of his house, but the reference to masturbation was deleted from the final formulation.
In his defence, Marschalek argued that he had “removed my clothes after working out and placed them in the washing machine and I was naked when I opened the front door of my residence”. He said he had been there for 20 seconds at most.
He added that his “house did not have air conditioning, so to get a cross-breeze going in the house and cool things down, [he] opened a front and back door of [his] residence after exercising”.
The military judge sentenced him to two months in a correctional facility at Lakenheath and dismissed him from the air force. If he had been prosecuted in the English criminal courts, Marschalek would have faced up to two years in jail.
In April this year, a US military appeal court dismissed the guilty verdict against him, ruling that prosecutors had made an error by charging him under the wrong offence. Prosecutors are now seeking to challenge this ruling.
Marschalek has moved back to the US, where he remains on the sex offender registry as a result of his indecent conduct in the UK. He has been approached for comment.
Details of his case will add to growing questions about the prosecution of US military personnel for crimes committed on UK soil.
The Guardian’s investigative series Base Justice has put the spotlight on an arcane agreement that requires UK police to give “sympathetic” consideration to requests from the US military to take over investigations into crimes that occur away from US bases by off-duty American military personnel.
UK police have the authority to refuse such requests and they have done so repeatedly. However, it appears some forces are ceding control in cases, including those involving sexual crimes, as the US military seeks to maximise its jurisdiction.
The Wulfson case has already prompted concern at the highest levels of the UK government.
A spokesperson for the prime minister said it was “deeply distressing” that Wulfson had avoided a trial under English law and was instead brought before a US court martial. David Lammy, the deputy prime minister, told parliament that he wanted the US government to give a full account of what had happened.
