SAN DIEGO – A military judge ripped into a former Marine Corps recruiter Wednesday, minutes after handing him the maximum sentence on charges he had sex with young women he had brought into the Marines.

Staff Sgt. Timothy J. Hall, 31, pleaded guilty to charges of fraternization, obstructing justice and violating an order during his court martial at Marine Corps Recruit Depot.

The judge, Lt. Col. Jeffrey Meeks, also found him guilty of adultery after one of his victims – now a lance corporal at Camp Pendleton – testified he fondled her and forced her to have sex with him last year on the floor of a recruiting office in Oshkosh, Wis.

Sexual relationships between service members of differing ranks, whether consensual or coerced, are forbidden under military regulations.

He was tried in San Diego because the Marine Corps western regional recruiting command, which includes Wisconsin, is based here.

Meeks sentenced him to one year in prison, reduction to the lowest enlisted rank and a bad-conduct discharge. Because of a plea bargain, the prison term will be limited to four months.

Hall started a tour as a Marine recruiter in Oshkosh in April 2006. He acknowledged kissing two different female Marine recruits during spring and summer 2007, although testimony made reference to allegations by other women as well.

The Camp Pendleton lance corporal said she was a 19-year-old student at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh when she met Hall April 26, 2007, two weeks before she signed an enlistment contract.

During separate meetings in his office, he kissed her and touched her thigh, she testified, and once grabbed her breasts while she was doing pull-ups as part of exercise training. Another time, he changed his clothes in front of her.

One night in May, the two attended a concert together. The woman returned to Hall's recruiting office to pick up some things. While there, she said, he invited her into the adjacent Navy office to “show her something.” Then he removed her skirt and had sex with her for about five minutes, she said.

The woman testified she feared resisting because she knew Hall was strong and an expert in martial arts.

“He said he was a military policeman, and he would get away with it,” she testified. She said she later told a drill instructor during boot camp at Parris Island, S.C., but nothing happened.

Prosecutors also replayed two conversations between Hall and the woman that she had secretly recorded with the help of Naval Criminal Investigative Service agents Feb. 4, after NCIS had begun probing Hall's conduct. In the recordings, he neither admitted nor denied having sex with her, but did advise her to say as little as possible to investigators.

“I'm trying to stay in the Marine Corps,” he said on the recording. “If you say things in regard to you and I having a relationship, then basically, I'm screwed.”

The woman's therapist testified the lance corporal suffered post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of her sexual encounter with Hall. She was hospitalized for three months this spring at the Veterans Administration hospital in Menlo Park through a women's trauma program.

Hall's lawyer, Capt. M.J. McDonald, presented no evidence to rebut the charges. But he argued the lance corporal had concocted the sexual allegations out of jealousy after meeting another one of Hall's recruits and learning he had kissed her, too.

Just before his sentencing, Hall tearfully apologized to the Marines who had to pick up the slack when he was suspended from his recruiting duties, as well as to his wife and four children. He said his family is facing foreclosure on their home because of his misconduct.

“I've made some very poor choices,” Hall said. “If I could turn back time, this would be a stun gun to my common sense.”

But he did not apologize to either of his victims, including the lance corporal sitting in the back of the courtroom.

“It shows a complete lack of contrition,” said Capt. John Torresala, the prosecutor. “He's not sorry for what he did. He's sorry he got caught.”

Hall's statement, and the prison sentence agreed to in the plea bargain, visibly enraged Meeks, who pronounced it “ridiculous.”

“Your actions have impact on other people, and not just your wife and children,” Meeks said, glaring at Hall. “I'm sure that's not what you were thinking when you were (having sex) with someone under your command. I don't think four months is enough to make you understand what you've done.”

He also accused Hall of shaming the Marine Corps.

He ordered Hall to get out of his courtroom. And he offered his own apology to the victim.

“I am sorry about what happened to you,” Meeks said. “This is not what the Marine Corps is all about.”

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