Fort Leavenworth leader sentenced to military prison after county court acquittal
A colonel at Fort Leavenworth has been sentenced to 28 years in military prison and an Army dismissal after being convicted of sexual abuse charges in a military court, after being acquitted of similar charges in a Leavenworth County court earlier this year.
According to the military publication Stars and Stripes, Col. Scott C. Nauman, 53, was found guilty of one specification of abusive sexual contact, one specification of sexual assault of a child and three specifications of sexual abuse of a child in a general court-martial, the highest military court.
In March, a Leavenworth County jury found Nauman not guilty of two counts of aggravated indecent liberties with a child and two counts of sexual battery.
Two teenage victims who Nauman knew testified that he repeatedly groped and fondled their breasts between 2020 and 2022 when they were around the ages of 11 and 15, according to court records. During a preliminary hearing, one girl estimated Nauman groped her breasts once or twice a month as she sat at her desk and he sat behind her.
The older girl said Nauman gave her massages that didn’t feel like massages because he would move his hands from her shoulders to her waist and would squeeze her sides. The girls also said Nauman measured them for bras, with Nauman refusing to let the older girl do it herself.
The two-day trial came two years after Nauman was first charged, because Leavenworth County prosecutors appealed to the state to allow the testimony of two older victims, whom he knew, after Judge Gerald Kuckelman ruled their testimony inadmissible, according to court records.
The state ordered the testimony be reconsidered but Kuckelman denied the prosecutors’ motion to allow the evidence just before trial began, records show. Leavenworth County prosecutors said the women would testify that Nauman’s sexual abuse of them when they were minors included massages, groping, oral sex, kissing and touching Nauman’s private area.
Soon after, the Army arraigned Nauman for court-martial, where he pleaded not guilty again and chose to be tried by a jury of officers, according to Stars and Stripes. The witness testimony that wasn’t allowed in Leavenworth County court was admitted into the court-martial, per Stars and Stripes.
Those charges occurred in and around a white trailer-based camper in June and July 2012 at Fort Riley, Kansas, and Fort Drum, N.Y., when the victims were younger than 16, according to Stars and Stripes.
Nauman will serve his sentence at Fort Leavenworth at the United States Disciplinary Barracks, the military’s maximum-security prison.
Leavenworth County Attorney Todd Thompson said his office is pleased that the Army was able to charge Nauman with the crimes.
“We are deeply gratified to see this outcome for the victims and hope it brings them a measure of closure,” Thompson said in a statement sent to The Star.
“Our office pursued this case for years, seeking to introduce prior acts that occurred outside our jurisdiction — efforts that were ultimately denied. Yet, it was through the diligence and ability of the military to hear all of the evidence that justice was fully realized, ensuring this conviction,” Thompson said.
