Marine Recruiters Arraigned For Rape, Attack Trip Had Been Designed To Motivate Young Marine Recruits

It was a trip geared to motivate 130 Marine recruits, many still in high school, with a day of white-water rafting on the Deschutes River, followed by a night in a U.S. Forest Service campground.

But from the darkness, a recruit on security watch heard cries for help.

He awoke three Marine escorts and they found a hysterical man who, once he calmed down, said he and a female friend camping about a half-mile away were attacked by two men, and the woman was raped.

The men he described as their attackers are Marine sergeants who work in Portland-area recruiting offices.

Sgt. Rudolph Jackson, 29, of Gresham, a Marine recruit administrator in Portland, was arraigned Monday on charges of second-degree kidnapping, third-degree assault, first-degree rape and second-degree sex abuse. His bail was set at $200,000.

Sgt. Clinton Allan Bergmann, 24, of Vancouver, Wash., a recruiter in the Milwaukie office, was arraigned on charges of second-degree kidnapping and third-degree assault, and was ordered held on $100,000 bail.

Jackson’s superiors were unaware that, since moving to the Portland area from Georgia about two years ago, he has been convicted of attempted auto theft, and has an outstanding warrant for failing to appear in court to face charges of stealing a car and possessing a stolen car. Jackson remains on probation.

Because the weekend attack did not happen on a military base, the military is waiting until civilian police, prosecutors and courts resolve the case before taking jurisdiction.

But when the Marines found the beaten man in a primitive portion of the Clear Lake Campground, they quickly identified the accused sergeants and kept them separated and under watch until Wasco County sheriff’s deputies made the 75-minute drive from The Dalles, a county seat on the Columbia River.

Marine officials are fiercely guarding the privacy of the young recruits - most of them 17 or 18 years old, with about 15 females among the group.

But they do not believe the incident would have any impact on the young men and women who will ship out sometime over the next year. The males head to San Diego, while the women will go to Paris Island, S.C.

“This is a very isolated incident. What we’re looking at here, this is two individuals who acted on their own,” said Lt. Jeffrey Sammons, 12th Marine Corps District spokesman, from San Diego. “The positive image that the Marine Corps portrays will definitely outweigh any of the negativity that this has.

“You can’t hold 174,000 people in the Marine Corps responsible for the actions of two individuals who acted on their own,” Sammons said.

The trip started Friday morning with busloads of recruits and 21 adult Marine escorts heading east out of Portland, across the Cascade Range to central Oregon’s Deschutes River.

They formed lines and practiced a few drills before the eight-member raft teams hit the river about noon for a four-hour trip.

The recruit pool meets monthly, with recreational events scheduled once or twice a year.