The daughter of a retired Army general is speaking out about years of alleged sexual abuse by her father
- Retired Army Maj. Gen. James Grazioplene was arrested December 7 on multiple charges of rape and incest.
- The charges are based on allegations dating back to the 1980s, and were previously dismissed by the military judicial system for exceeding the statute of limitations.
- Grazioplene's daughter, Jennifer Elmore, spoke out to the Washington Post, alleging her father sexually abused her for 15 years starting when she was three years old.
- The Post reviewed letters and interviewed several people who corroborated Elmore's allegations.
- Grazioplene was indicted by a grand jury in Prince William County, Virginia, where there is no statute of limitations.
The daughter of a retired two-star Army general may finally see her father face justice for years of alleged sexual abuse after the military justice system dismissed the case.
Over the course of seven months, Jennifer Elmore shared her traumatic story with the Washington Post, and provided letters from the period of abuse at the hands of her father, James Grazioplene, who retired at the rank of major general in the Army. Post reporter Dan Lamothe also spoke with five other people, who corroborated Elmore's account.
Elmore told the Post she recalled the first instance of abuse took place at her grandmother's home in LeRoy, New York, when she was three years old. The abuse continued for the next 15 years, and escalated to what she termed "night visits" to her room.
For the past three decades, she told the Post, she confided in few friends and fewer family members. A high school boyfriend interviewed by the newspaper corroborated that she had told him of the abuse years ago. Letters from Elmore and one from her mother, Ann Marie Grazioplene, to James Grazioplene's sister Elizabeth Powley, all reviewed by the Post, provide written accounts of Grazioplene's disturbing abuse.
"Jim has ... made an attempt at sexually molesting Jennifer. She was sleeping, thank God," said one letter reviewed by the Post, addressed to Powley by Ann Marie Grazioplene. "I caught him before he got started."
One of Elmore's confidants, a coworker named Julie Adams, accompanied Elmore to Fort Bragg in 2015 to submit evidence to investigators, according to the Post. She made the decision to report her father to the Army, she told the newspaper, after a troubling phone call with her parents. During the call, which her current husband heard, Grazioplene told her "the only thing worse that I could have done to you is murder you," Elmore told the Post.
The Army investigated Elmore's allegations and brought a case against the general in 2017. But the case was dismissed on a technicality; a decision in February 2017 placed a five-year statute of limitations on rape charges.
Over a year later, Grazioplene was arrested December 7, 2018, on multiple charges of rape and incest after an indictment by a grand jury in Prince William County, Virginia, where there is no statute of limitations.
Elmore and her attorney declined to comment further due to the new charges. Officials for Prince William County and the Army also declined to comment.
Grazioplene told the Post, "I will not comment. The charges are false and incorrect."
Elmore told the Post, which typically does not publish the names of alleged sexual assault victims, that she wanted her story to be told.
"If I stay silent and the next person opts for that, and the next person opts for that, and the next person opts for that, where are we?"