A court martial board removed 53-year-old Major General James Roddis from the army and sentenced him to six months in prison with a two-year suspension.
One of the men who carried Prince Philip’s coffin for the royal funeral in 2021, Roddis, had acknowledged to having engaged in ignominious behavior.
After going through a misbehavior procedure, he was forced to leave the army in May, but the court martial board also formally terminated him from service.
In addition, the board mandated that Roddis pay £2,500 to his victim and complete 150 hours of unpaid labor in addition to 30 days of rehabilitation.
The married father-of-three was told by the court martial that he had been drinking for several hours when he began to touch the woman’s hair before kissing her on the lips in April of this year.
Judge Advocate General Alan Large imposed the sentence, saying: “As we’ve seen from the video, over a few minutes, you started stroking her hair and you wrapped your arm around her.
It was obvious that she didn’t want your attention. Then you removed the bobble in her hair.
Another individual at the table made it clear that the victim felt uneasy about that.
