Honk News (Washington) – Twenty men have submitted tort claims against the U.S. Army regarding allegations of sexual abuse linked to a medical doctor who formerly worked at Joint Base Lewis McChord.
On Monday, filings were made following Doctor Michael Stockin’s guilty plea to several charges, resulting in a 13-year sentence for sex abuse.
Stockin, as reported earlier by FOX 13, assaulted patients while pretending to provide medical care. New documents from alleged victims reveal that Stockin would make patients undress and touched the soldiers’ genitalia without any chaperone present.
“People felt emboldened by seeing so many soldiers talking about what happened to them, and they came forward,” said Christine Dunn, a lawyer with Sanford Heisler Sharp McKnight. “I think there are also a lot of people who thought Stockin didn’t get a high enough sentence. That the sentence wasn’t commensurate with the harm he caused and they wanted to do more, so I had a lot of people reach out to me to say, ‘more needs to be done.’”
Stockin received the highest sentence possible after admitting to sexually abusing 41 former patients (soldiers) at Madigan Army Hospital, situated at JBLM. This is regarded as one of the biggest sex abuse scandals in U.S. military history.
According to Protect Our Defenders, a nonprofit dedicated to ending sexual violence in the military, military sexual assault is often underreported, especially among male survivors.
Today, new federal tort claims have been filed, contributing to the ongoing legal case against the U.S. Army related to the Stockin scandal.
The new cases filed on Monday have increased the number of men who have turned to Dunn’s office for accountability or financial compensation for the harm they experienced. A tort claim was first filed in 2023.
In early January, the military reported that it was continuing to look into the various claims made against it, including the federal tort claims filed specifically against the Army.
A military spokesperson stated that they need to assess all possible legal issues related to Stockin to confirm they are legally sound before proceeding with their own investigation into the allegations.
