A British woman was strangled in the UK – why did the US military try her case?

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:08Today, a British citizen was assaulted in Cambridge. Why did the US military decide her case?

0:22And just before we start, today's episode does include discussions of sexual and physical assault. So please take care.

0:34It's the spring of this year and Guardian investigations reporter Harry Davis is in the east of England. My colleague Rob Evans and I, we're in the car and we are driving through a very luscious green English countryside in Suffolk. Their destination? One of the many US military bases scattered across the UK. RAF Lakenheath, gate number one. It's called RAF Lake and Heath. US Air Force planes use it as a base, even heading off to conflict zones like Iran. As you approach the base, you realise that you're approaching something secretive because there is a high perimeter fence, barbed wire. Unauthorised persons entering the area may be arrested and prosecuted.

1:15There are armed guards who check you in, and they have very large guns, and you enter into this little slice of America, as it were.

1:26It reminds me a bit of a university campus, isn't it? There are certain vehicles that are clearly American, and then there are also restaurants and things like Taco Bell. There's actually a drive-thru, and there's also a sort of miniature Statue of Liberty on the base. It feels like it's a little kind of pocket of Americana in West Suffolk. Harry and Rob then make their way to a bland brick structure. The building looks like a sort of 90s, very modern building. It's the base's courtroom, and it's here where US Air Force personnel are court-martialed. You walk in, and one of the things that strikes you is you feel like you've somehow been transported to either an American film set or just a room in, I don't know, Washington, DC.

2:14Harry and Rob are here to sit in on the trial of a US fighter pilot, accused of sexual assault and strangulation in Cambridge. Also in court that day is the alleged victim, Sarah Steele, an Australian-born UK citizen. And she's still coming to terms with the fact that her case will be decided not by a British judge or jury, but by the American military. These courtrooms look really different. They look like what you see in law and order. They look like a miniaturised, militarised version of Hollywood. it.

2:51At the end of the day, they play the national anthem of the host country and the American national anthem. And it's played across the loudspeakers, across the whole base. But that kind of happened in the middle of being in the courtroom too. And you're in the middle of something that is incredibly distressing and incredibly difficult to do.

3:18This happens on a US base in this big black box that you don't see until you're thrown into it. And it's happening quite literally behind gates, behind fences. You don't understand it until you're thoroughly in it and then there's no going back. From The Guardian, I'm Annie Kelly. Today in Focus, the US military cause dispensing justice in the UK.

3:56Harry Davis, welcome back to Today in Focus. Harry, you've just published this extraordinary investigation, which looks into how crimes committed on British soil can end up being heard in US military courts in the UK. You looked at one particular case which involved a US fighter pilot who was accused of assault by a woman who lives in the east of England. So could you tell me your name? My name's Sarah Steele. I am 42 years old. And you spoke with her. So could you tell me a bit about her? So Sarah Steele was born in Australia. I'm from Adelaide. And then in 2007, she moved to the UK to begin her doctorate in law and criminology.

4:37She's now an academic and researcher. she focuses on public policy and has a particular expertise in violence against women and girls for a long time i've taught consent workshops sexual safety training within things like the nhs she's a fiercely intelligent woman she's a mother of one and she's a keen ice skater and i think by all accounts very good i absolutely love the ice i love the piece of it she lives some works in Cambridge and that's where she teaches. So Harry, the crime we're going to discuss took place there in Cambridge in 2023. But could you start by giving me a bit of context? What was going on in Sarah's life at that time?

5:19She had separated from her partner earlier on in the year and I think she described in court that she was sort of trying to dip her toe back into that world. It was an interesting experience having last dated really before apps had become a massive thing. For me, it was a cautious approach where I wanted to get to know somebody, get them to know who I was and to feel safe in that interaction. Right. And is this where she came across Jacob Wilson, the US fighter pilot? Yeah. So they first met on Tinder and that's where they began chatting, then moved over into WhatsApp and they spoke online for several months, including during a period when she She underwent some quite serious surgery to correct an earlier mastectomy she'd had.

6:04When I first came out of the surgery, I literally could not make myself a cup of tea. I literally could not physically lift a kettle to pour the water into a mug. That made me feel really vulnerable, I think. So she was messaging Jacob Wilson during the time she was recovering from her operation. Yes, and they were certainly a kind of romantic sexual aspect to their chemistry. And then they eventually met at the beginning of December. And just before she went to meet him, she sent him a message. And that message effectively sets him what she described as ground rules for how she wanted the evening to go.

6:43and she said to him that condoms need to be used, that no means no when said and that he wasn't to touch her neck. So she explicitly said, please don't touch my neck. And he responded and said, yes, that's fair. And when you interviewed Sarah, she couldn't share her experience on the night of the assault with you because of legal reasons. Could have an impact on an ongoing appeal that's happening. But you did hear her describe it in court when you were there. Could you tell us what prosecutors allege happened the night she met Jacob Wolfson? The prosecution case alleged that what happened was that when Sarah went to meet with Jacob Wolfson, they went up to his apartment.

7:26And this is in the centre of Cambridge. And he offered her a drink. He poured her a whiskey. And they chatted for a bit. And then they moved into the bedroom. The prosecutor alleged that he had given her a potent benzodiazepine-like drug called atizolam. Things moved quite quickly. And the prosecution alleged that he assaulted her by strangling her. They alleged that he penetrates her with his penis without her consent. And he did so knowing that she had been drugged. And what does she describe on the stand about what she remembers? she said she remembered uh that jacob wolfson put her hand on her neck and that she was struggling to breathe she describes looking up at him seeing the light fixture above his head she seems to have then passed out so she described how she remembered waking up in the bath the following morning she described as various injuries bruising a very painful foot jacob Wolfson then helped her out of the bath and she then returned to his bed.

8:36She said that she was in a state of confusion and the court heard that Wolfson gave her some limeade and he'd washed the sheets. And eventually he drove her back to her house. She was unable to drive because of the injuries. In the immediate wake of the night and questions, the day afterwards, he started sending Sarah Steele a series of text messages which were apologetic, which said that he felt very bad about what had happened. she said in court. She went to A &E. It was a very cold, typical December night. I was in a lot of pain. The NHS is absolutely heaving and you're repeating yourself a lot.

9:16You're already exhausted. You're already in that immediate post-trauma period where you're trying to handle how you feel about everything and you're having to go through multiple NHS processes. She was examined by a doctor, although the doctor wasn't at that stage able to observe bruising on the neck. One of the doctors who testified in court said that her injuries were consistent with someone who'd been strangled. The following morning, she goes to the Sexual Assault Recovery Centre, and as well as undergoing a physical and intimate examination, there are photographs that are taken. She has a very off-the-record conversation with British police, which is a no-names conversation, preliminary conversation about what would it mean to report this.

9:59And she was at this stage trying to work out what had happened to her, but also how to proceed and how, if at all, she wanted this to be investigated. And the friend who had taken her to the sexual assault centre actually worked on another base, another US base near to RAF Lakenheath. And so this friend took her to her base. I was signed onto the base. I was taken to a building thinking I was going to have a very casual conversation about what the options were. What she has said is that she wasn't able to have that preliminary off-the-record conversation. It became, it was a formal interview. Straight away that first day?

10:37Yeah, straight away. And this is the Sunday afternoon. And so she was there in an interview room with two federal US law enforcement agents.

10:57And next thing you know, I'm in a room, camera on me, two-way, kind of the blocked off glass, and it's very American. It's very different than what I expected. It's really disconcerting. You can't ask for a break and go to a Costa for a coffee. You are on a military base. It was absolute hours. I found myself being formally interviewed in a way that would be used across the whole case without having slept properly, without having eaten. I'd gone from A &E to the SARC to the base. Very shortly after it seems that the US military police notified the local British police force, Cambridgeshire Constabulary, that they were going to be taking on this case and arrested Jacob Wolfson.

11:52But at any point was she asked whether this was something she wanted to happen? So Cambridgeshire police have told us they allowed the Americans to have primary investigative jurisdiction and Cambridge Police told us that they let this go on the basis that the US Air Force had told them that the victim wanted this to be handled by the Americans. Now Sarah has said to me that that wasn't what she said. I would have expected somebody from the constabulary to ask me a simple question. Do you want us to hand this to the United States Air Force? no member of the British Constabulary ever asked me what I wanted.

12:32The British police force in this case seemed to have ceded investigative responsibility of the case very quickly. The victim in this case was a British citizen. This is clearly a crime that didn't relate to Jacob Wolfson's military duties. It didn't happen on the base. She isn't a dependent, a spouse of him. So it is striking that Cambridge police didn't contact her at this stage. She was later informed a few days later that the British police had handed over responsibility of the case to the US Air Force police. I just find this completely staggering that this could happen to an alleged victim of sexual assault in the UK.

13:11So Jacob Wolfson is then arrested by the US Air Force police. And what's he charged with? He is issued an order by his commander not to contact Sarah Steele, which he almost immediately violates. Wolfson was charged with four offences. The first charge was disobeying a commander's order. The second was a sexual assault charge. And the sexual assault charge was that he penetrated Sarah's vagina with his penis without her consent. And the second sexual assault charge was that he did that knowing that she'd been drugged. And the fourth charge was violence against an intimate partner by strangulation.

13:48So it's strangling an intimate partner. How might it have been different if Cambridgeshire Police hadn't passed that over to the military police? Yes, so it would have gone to specialist rape and sexual assault prosecutors. And in the English jurisdiction, an offence of this kind is charged as rape. It would be strange for us to call that as sexual assault. Can you tell us a bit about what you know about how this case was investigated by the US military? Yes, so the case was investigated by a federal law enforcement agency. They are a military police force. They arrested Wolfson. They searched his apartment.

14:28They also brought in experts to look at, so for example, Sarah Steele's urine sample. A federal US laboratory was able to detect the presence of this drug, Etizalam. That investigation involved federal law enforcement agencies sort of going around different premises in Cambridge to get CCTV. They were assisted in that by Cambridgeshire police. They are US police officers, but in this case, they operate here. Was Sarah given the opportunity at any point to insist that her case was handed back to UK law enforcement? So there was a point in February where there was a welfare check at her house where two police officers turned up.

15:07But this was two and a half months into the investigation. She feared at that stage that they handed it back to Cambridge, that first of all, that the evidence they'd collected wouldn't be handed over. But also she worried that if the military police dropped that case to Wolfson, he would then become a flight risk.

15:28so sarah decides as you said that she wants to continue this case against jacob wolfson even though it's going to be tried in this military court you spent a week in suffolk on this military base attending this trial every day so could you take us inside that courtroom what was it like in there yeah so it's a strip lit room with white walls quite a low ceiling it's really quite challenging to walk in there. You feel small and vulnerable and having to look so closely in the face of the person that is accused of these things that are quite horrific is just really very challenging. I utterly dreaded the whole thing.

16:11I was constantly just feeling an impending sense of doom.

16:21On one side you have the defence team, at the front of the courtroom you have the prosecution team, these are all Air Force lawyers. Jacob Wolfson also brought on an additional lawyer who was a civilian and then there's a jury, there's a panel of eight Air Force officers who are hearing the case. They're all there in their sort of pressed navy blue uniforms. Were any of the jury women? No. So she was facing a jury exclusively male? Yes, it was an all-male jury.

16:52It's been really difficult having to literally sit in a room full of people in uniform, overwhelmingly older men, and have those individuals who haven't any semblance of life experience similar to my own. They were culturally different. They weren't people that had grown up in Australia or Britain. They were American. And to say that they weren't representational of society at large would be an understatement. And just to clarify, Jacob Wilson, he was pleading not guilty to all of those charges. Is that right? He pled not guilty to the charges. His lawyer said he was unequivocally not guilty and that he had been falsely accused, plain and simple.

17:36Right, so when the trial gets underway, Sarah Steele is called forward to testify. And I think I'm right in saying that in the British system, there are these steps that are put in to try and protect, you know, alleged victims of sexual assault. So I think she could have maybe requested to have done this from behind a screen or maybe via video link. But she wasn't given any of these options in this court. and I think I'm right in saying that she ended up testifying just metres away from Jacob Wilson and she was also cross-examined by this private lawyer that he had hired. Who was this private lawyer?

18:16This is a guy called Tim Balecki. He's a quite prominent defence lawyer in the US military system. I mean, there are some kind of extraordinary videos, YouTube kind of promo clips of him talking about himself as a gun for hire.

18:28Harry Davies:When I walk into court and I see the prosecution's got five or six people ready to prosecute the case and it's just myself. It's like bringing a knife to a gunfight. You can still bring five or six knives, but I've got the guns. He's a quite tall, imposing character, blonde hair in a sort of regulation crew cut, pinstripe suit. He was pretty combative at times. Towards Sarah? Towards Sarah in his questioning. What were his arguments? What kind of evidence was he presenting in his defense? So at one stage he asked her about various text messages that she had exchanged with Jacob Wolfson in which they discussed how they wanted to have sex together and we were getting into the detail of sexting.

19:12And what was he trying to do with that? How was he trying to present her with that evidence then? The implication was that she wanted to be strangled. Even though she'd expressly said that she didn't want his hands on her neck? Yes, he was dwelling on and scrutinising early messages where, in his mind, they had been talking about rough sex. Balecki was suggesting that actually she wanted a kind of form of rough sex. I'm not going to lie, there was moments of utter rage running through my head that somebody dared to even suggest that. But being able to be articulate and keep it together enough and not let the emotion take hold so that you can actually address that and not let them get you to that jumbled state.

20:05He depicted her as a liar, as someone who exaggerates. At one stage, he even questioned whether she'd even had the breast surgery. He asked the jury members, have you heard any record of that? The implication being, has she made that up too? He also described this as a play for money, that she had concocted this whole set of allegations in order to extract money out of a UK compensation scheme for victims of crimes. Not particularly large amounts of money that you'd get from a scheme like that. The aim of any defence counsel in this setting is to discredit you, to make you look either foolish or unsavoury or that you're dishonest.

20:55That is their job. Having to be exposed to that in front of a whole bunch of men in uniform was really, really something I did not want to do. Balecki seized on some texts that she had sent Wolfson while she was in hospital recovering from the surgery that she'd had. And she joked about how she was on quite strong American painkillers. This was part of his argument that he advanced to suggest that she had abused drugs, creating the impression or encouraging the panel to think that she was more likely to have taken the drug before going to see Jacob Wolfson than him administering it. and at one point he suggested that she might have wanted to pop a few pills before going to meet a fighter pilot significantly younger than her.

21:45Wow, okay.

21:50I had to withstand extended periods of intrusion into things that you never thought would be publicly shared. It feels like you're being torn apart. It feels like you're being ripped up and that you'll never be able to put yourself back together. and all you want to do is take a breath, or all you want to do is go to the bathroom, and that is just a horrible experience. I wouldn't wish on my own worst enemy. She appeared across several days. It was north of six hours, I'd say. It must have been grueling for her. I was so exhausted. I think I got to a point where I was yawning, and my eyes were drooping, and it was just like, are we finished yet?

22:39And Harry, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe in the English legal system. If you are an alleged sexual assault victim having to give evidence in court, I mean, I think it would just be a few hours, wouldn't it, that you would expect to be cross-examined? Yeah, I've spoken to a few barristers who prosecute and defend these cases in English courts and they were surprised to hear that someone was on the stand for that long. They would try to limit it to one to two hours. I mean, throughout the trial, I thought you were remarkably composed, but obviously there were moments where you... Walked out and threw up in the toilets out the back?

23:13Yeah, I did. I literally, during one of the breaks, walked out and vomited in the bathroom. It feels like an attack and it feels like in order to see justice, you have to give up your privacy. You have to basically flay yourself open and let them take whatever they want in order to see that conviction happen. I think Sarah, she stood her ground. She stood up to him. But you can understand where she's coming from when she said that this felt like it was her on trial rather than Wolfson. The raft of emotional highs, lows, distress to anger to frustration to feeling cornered. It felt like I was the one being punished for somebody else's choices.