Court martial: Major General given suspended sentence for kiss

A senior Army officer who drunkenly touched and tried to kiss a woman in a karaoke bar has received a six-month suspended prison sentence.

Now ex-Major General James Roddis was part of an overseas delegation and had been drinking for several hours when he started touching the hair of the woman before kissing her on the lips.

Roddis, 53, was required to resign from the Army following the subsequent misconduct investigation and admitted disgraceful conduct of an indecent kind at a hearing in July.

Suspending the prison sentence for two years, the military board at a court martial in Bulford, Wiltshire, also ordered him to 30 days of rehabilitation, 150 hours unpaid work and to pay his victim £2,500 compensation.

The court was told the delegation were on the last night of their overseas trip in April this year.

Prosecutor, Graham Coombes, described to the court a video of the build up to the incident, although the kiss itself was not seen.

“He begins to inappropriately touch and play with her hair and touch her ponytail before putting his arm around her,” Mr Coombes said.

“She turns to the accused and asks him to stop. She turns towards him and raises her finger appealing to him to stop. She says she didn’t know what else to do to stop him touching her hair.

“You can see her raise her eyes and indicate her displeasure.”

Roddis admitted to kissing her a couple of minutes later.

Imposing sentence, Judge Advocate General Alan Large said: “As we’ve seen from the video, over a period of some minutes you began touching her hair and you put your arm around her.

“She was clearly not interested in your attention.

“About 10 minutes later you put your hand on her chin, pull her head towards your lips, and kiss her on her lips for about two seconds.

“The disgraceful conduct in your charge encompasses both the unwanted touching of her hair and the kiss.”

Roddis is a former commanding officer of The Highlanders, 4th Battalion Royal Regiment of Scotland, and later played a role overseeing special forces.

He received a number of accolades during his military career, including a Distinguished Service Order – an award given for highly successful command and leadership during active operations.

He was awarded an MBE and also earned two Queen’s Commendations for Valuable Service in 2008 and 2017.

Until recently, Roddis was director of strategy for Strategic Command – an organisation comprised of special forces and intelligence units among other responsibilities.

In 2014, he was commanding officer of The Highlanders – who were then the last Scottish battalion to serve in a combat role in Afghanistan.