A Fort Polk commander who was relieved of duty earlier this year has been charged with abusive sexual contact, maltreatment of a subordinate and conduct unbecoming an officer, according to a statement from the base’s spokeswoman Shelby Waryas.
Lt. Col. John Paul Depreo, who commanded the 46th Engineer Battalion at the installation, was removed from command in January for what Waryas termed “lack of trust and confidence in his judgment and ability to command.”
Earlier this month, Depreo’s case was referred to a General Court-Martial. He is set for trial on June 26, Waryas said.
Details of the incident underlying the charges are few. At the time of his dismissal from command, the Army Times cited an anonymous source in reporting that the Depreo’s removal was related to a December incident at a holiday party at a Lake Charles casino.
Neither the Lake Charles Police nor the Calcasieu Parish Sheriff’s Office had any record of a complaint, however.
The Army Times was the first to report on the specific charges Depreo faces.
Depreo’s removal earlier this year came among a spate of sex crime cases faced by soldiers at the installation in Vernon Parish.
Another soldier in the same unit as Depreo, Command Sgt. Maj. Jeremy Compton, is set to go to trial June 1 on a number of sex-crime related counts, including child pornography and adultery, according to a report in Stars and Stripes.
In an unrelated incident, five Fort Polk soldiers were charged in November with raping two women in the nearby town of Rosepine, according to police reports. Those cases remain pending in state court.
And in January, Pvt. Tyler Davis was sentenced to 42 years in prison after pleading guilty to child pornography and sexually assaulting three children in 2022.
The sprawling Army base in west central Louisiana is a major economic driver for the region and the state, pumping an estimated $770 million in payroll into the economy, according to Louisiana Economic Development. Those figures do not include the millions of dollars in private contracts and support industries that also flow from Fort Polk..
Next month, the installation, which is among a handful around the country named for Confederate soldiers, will be redesignated Fort Johnson, after a Black World War I Medal of Honor recipient. The redesignation is part of a Congressionally-mandated program to strip the names of former confederates from United States military facilities.
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