US airman accused of exposing himself to 16-year-old girl avoided British trial

Hannes Marschalek was brought in front of a US court martial in 2023 on two charges of indecent conduct. Illustration: Guardian Design/Oklahoma Sex Offender Registry/Getty Images View image in fullscreen Hannes Marschalek was brought in front of a US court martial in 2023 on two charges of indecent conduct. Illustration: Guardian Design/Oklahoma Sex Offender Registry/Getty Images US airman accused of exposing himself to 16-year-old girl avoided British trial Hannes Marschalek, who allegedly exposed his penis to four other women in Cambridgeshire, tried via US court martial 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. View image in fullscreen Hannes Marschalek completing a personal inventory during a US Air Force deployment exercise in 2019 Photograph: Kelly White/US Air Force 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. How the US bypasses British courts to try its military over crimes in the UK Read more 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. View image in fullscreen Jacob Wulfson (centre) at the Dubai Airshow in November 2019. Photograph: Tech Sgt Joseph Pick/United States Air Forces Central 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 Litt