Staff Sergeant Hannes Marschalek, accused of exposing himself to five women and girls including a 16-year-old, faced a US military court martial rather than British prosecution – the second such case involving a Lakenheath-based serviceman in as many months.
For the second time in as many months, a US serviceman based at RAF Lakenheath has avoided prosecution in a British court, after Cambridgeshire Police handed jurisdiction over an indecent exposure case to the American military. Staff Sergeant Hannes Marschalek, accused of exposing himself to five women and girls – including one aged just 16 – was instead tried at a US court martial, where a plea deal saw one of two charges against him dropped.
Marschalek, 37, who moved to the UK in 2021 with his wife and daughter after being posted to Lakenheath, was arrested at his Littleport home in Cambridgeshire on 9 October 2022, following complaints from several women. Three weeks later, with Marschalek on bail, Cambridgeshire Police agreed to hand the investigation to the US military after receiving a formal request from American authorities. A force spokesman said the decision had been carefully considered, and that “all victims were consulted with prior to the decision”.
The allegations, which spanned roughly two months in 2022, involved multiple women reporting seeing Marschalek standing at the door of his home, exposed and, on at least one occasion, using his phone to record the scene as they passed. The five complainants ranged in age from 16 to 24.
Court martial documents later revealed that Marschalek had texted two friends about his conduct in July 2022, at one point writing: “I definitely just flashed a couple ladies walking from the train. LOL.” In a further message, he described removing his clothes and standing near a window as women walked past outside. Military prosecutors told the hearing the messages showed a pattern of “repeatedly exposing his genitalia to unexpected women”, followed by him boasting and joking about what he had done.
When later interviewed by investigators, Marschalek acknowledged that his behaviour might have appeared inappropriate to others, though he said he had found the possibility of being seen sexually exciting. His defence offered more mundane explanations for some of the individual incidents, including that he had removed his clothes after exercising and was waiting to put them in the washing machine, and that he had opened his front door on another occasion simply to create a cross-breeze in a house without air conditioning.
Under a plea bargain, Marschalek admitted to standing naked at his door on two occasions, and a reference to masturbation was dropped from the charge sheet; a second indecent conduct charge was dismissed entirely. He was sentenced to two months in Lakenheath’s own correctional facility and dismissed from the air force – a fraction of the two-year maximum available to a UK court for the same offence. However, in April this year, a US military appeal court overturned his sole guilty verdict, ruling that prosecutors had charged him under the wrong offence; that decision is itself now being challenged.
The case, reported by the Guardian, is likely to renew concerns over American service personnel avoiding British courts, after it emerged last month that another Lakenheath-based airman, Captain Jacob Wulfson, had also been permitted to face a court martial rather than UK prosecution. Wulfson had been accused of strangling academic Sarah Steele and having unprotected sex with her at his Cambridge flat; Steele has since described the court martial process as “degrading”.
The Wulfson case caused significant disquiet in Westminster, with a spokesman for Sir Keir Starmer calling it “deeply distressing”, while Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy told Parliament that the US government needed to account fully for what had taken place. Nick Timothy, the shadow justice secretary and MP for West Suffolk, told the Mail that the Marschalek case demonstrated the same underlying issue. “This shows exactly the problem that was revealed in the Sarah Steele case,” he said, adding that he had asked the Justice Secretary to investigate and that clarity was needed on how such decisions were made. Timothy has argued that the relevant treaty is unambiguous in requiring that US personnel accused of offences against UK residents should face trial in British courts.
A US air force spokesman said the service had “negotiated jurisdiction over this case with the local police”, based on the facts available at the time. Under the relevant agreement, British police retain the authority to refuse such requests from the US military over offences committed on UK soil by personnel who are off duty.
RAF Lakenheath, in Suffolk, is the largest American base in Britain, home to more than 6,000 personnel and their families, complete with its own shopping mall and a drive-through Taco Bell, where transactions are conducted in dollars. Marschalek has since returned to the United States, where he remains on the sex offender register.
