An airman already serving a 25-year sentence will spend nine additional years in prison for molesting two more children while he was stationed at Ramstein Air Base, Germany.
was sentenced to an additional nine years to the 25-year sentence he is currently serving for molesting two additional children while he was stationed at Ramstein Air Base, Germany.
At a March 4 court-martial at F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyoming, Airman Michael Merritt pleaded guilty to molesting two children in Germany, said Lt. Christen Ornella, a spokeswoman for the 90th Missile Wing.
A charge sheet alleges that Merritt abused one child between August 2009 and July 2010, and the other between January 2011 and January 2012. The children's names and the circumstances of the abuse were redacted from the charge sheet.
Merritt is imprisoned being lodged at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, Ornella said. He will serve his 25- and nine-year prison sentences consecutively.
Last March, Merritt pleaded guilty was sentenced to 50 years in prison, but under an agreement that he reached with the general court-martial convening authority, his prison time was cut in half in exchange for pleading guilty to aggravated sexual assault, sexual abuse, sodomy, assault consummated by a battery, kidnapping and attempted kidnapping in cases involving four children. Merritt was sentenced to 50 years in prison, but his prison time was cut in half in exchange for his guilty plea, under an agreement that he reached with the general court-martial convening authority,
"The agreement saved four young child victims from having to testify and recount Merritt's abuse in a litigated trial," a March 20, 2014, news release from the 90th Missile Wing says.
The Air Force had accused Merritt of abusing children in the Ramstein and Vogelweh housing areas between 2003 and 2013. The Air Force Office of Special Investigations began looking into the matter after a child told investigators in January 2012 that a man pulled her into his car and abused her.
After the 13th Field Investigations Squadron at Ramstein spent months conducting more than 600 interviews and collectinged more than 250 forensic samples, Merritt's was arrested in August 2013. By then, he had been reassigned to F.E. Warren. He was put in pretrial confinement that October.
Lt. Col. Christopher Ouellette, commander of the 13th Field Investigations Squadron, said last March that investigators were looking into whether Merritt had abused any other children while he was in Germany.
Stars and Stripes first reported on March 19 that Merritt had been sentenced to more time in prison after additional victims came forward.
