Found guilty of on-the-job sex assaults, former Travis Air Force Base psychologist sentenced to 11 years

A Solano County Superior Court judge on Friday sentenced to more than 11 years behind bars a former Travis Air Force Base psychologist found guilty last fall of a series of felony sexual assaults on female patients and three misdemeanor counts.

After hearing victim impact testimony and statements from attorneys — but before pronouncing the prison term — Judge E. Bradley Nelson looked directly at Heath Jacob Sommer, 43, saying he took a version of exposure therapy “to a new level” and used his “position of trust” between 2014 and 2016 to repeatedly take advantage of “very vulnerable people,” female patients who sought his help to cope with previous sexual trauma while on active duty.

And following a statement from Sommer — “I apologize … I never intended to be offensive to people,” he said — Nelson enumerated the counts, noting the second one, rape, would account for the greatest number of years, eight, in state prison, with two other felonies, oral copulation by fraudulent representation and sexual battery by fraudulent means, filling out the balance.

Nelson added 18 months in Solano County Jail for three misdemeanor charges of sexual battery for the purpose of sexual arousal. He then credited Sommer, shackled at the waist in a striped jail jumpsuit and displaying no visible reaction to the sentence, with 904 days in custody. Additionally, Sommer will be required to serve 20 years probation upon release, register as a sex offender for life, and pay nearly $10,000 in restitution to the victims and other court costs.

More than two years after Sommer’s arrest, the case — initially prosecuted by deputy district attorneys Daniel Madow and Brian Roberts, both of whom have since taken jobs elsewhere — and the nearly two-hour sentencing hearing came to an end at 12:30 p.m. in Department 4 of the Justice Center in Fairfield.

At the hearing’s outset, Nelson and Deputy District Attorney Shelly Moore, assigned to the matter after Roberts left the DA’s Office, discussed the number of victim impact statements that would be allowed. The judge — and at the urging of defense attorney Thomas Maas — disallowed two because they did not testify at trial. However, a third, who testified at trial, was permitted to do so.

In her argument to allow the two, Moore called Sommer “a predator” who exhibited a pattern of of behavior to induce women to submit to the psychologist’s version of exposure therapy in his David Grant Medical Center office on the sprawling base just south of Vacaville. (A generally accepted form of psychotherapy, the technique is thought to help allay or purge anxiety disorders by having the patient face — or even re-enact — circumstances related to the source of their distress.)

“Exposure therapy is not a crime,” Maas argued, and, a moment or two later, Nelson ruled only the victim who testified at trial, an Air Force colonel, would be permitted to speak.

Sitting at the prosecution table, flanked by Moore and Cynthia Malloy, a victim’s advocate for the Solano County DA’s Office, the victim said she “can’t use the word closure” regarding her experience with the American justice system, adding that her trial testimony amounted to publicly revealing “the worst part” of her life.

“On Monday, I’ll retire,” receiving a medical discharge from the Air Force after more than 25 years of service, although she wanted to complete 30, she said.

Air Force officials, she added, determined she suffered from PTSD, the acronym for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, a mental health condition prompted by a terrifying event, either experiencing or witnessing it. She was gang-raped by three British soldiers during a deployment to Afghanistan, and sought Sommer’s help while stationed at Travis, she reminded the court.

Though she seemed to suggest she could survive the rape, the victim told Nelson that she “couldn’t survive” Sommer’s exposure therapy.

“I didn’t realize how vulnerable I was when I went to see the defendant,” she said. “He was my provider — it never crossed my mind” that Sommer would do what he did. (At trial, she testified that it included more than one instance of sexual intercourse, including a time when she, Sommer, and Sommer’s wife slept together at the Sommers’ home.)

When she left Travis, assigned as a lawyer with the Judge Advocate General Corps to the Department of Defense, the victim “wished the trauma would be left behind,” but it wasn’t, she noted.

As she continued to speak, adding that she came forward “to protect other airmen,” Sommer cast his eyes downward onto the defense table and she began to cry softly.

“I knew from Day 1” that coming forward would be the end of her career and, five years after the encounters with Sommer, “I’m not the person who I thought I was,” she told Nelson.

She said she was unsure what the “correct sentence is” for Sommer, but she urged the judge, who listened closely, a stern look on his face, to consider “the damage that he (Sommer) has done.”

Afterward, Moore told Nelson “11 years is not enough” because Sommer “preyed upon the most vulnerable victims,” comparing his behavior to an adult taking advantage of a child.

She appeared to allude to trial testimony of Sommer’s treatment protocol, therapy that included sexual intercourse, oral sex and sexual touching, among other things. The women, some of whom had suffered sexual trauma while deployed to the Middle East or Afghanistan, had sought Sommer’s help to rid themselves of — or learn how to cope with — horrific memories.

Moore disputed Maas’ previous assertions that the victims willingly participated in the sex acts with Sommer, adding, “I find that offensive.” She said aggravating circumstances in the case included Sommer’s actions that “re-traumatized” the victims.

One victim who testified at trial, Moore reminded Nelson, eventually came to believe Sommer was a predator and engaged in sex, specifically oral copulation, “for his personal pleasure.”

“He really did groom his (female) patients” and his pattern of behavior “showed sophistication and planning,” she said.

In his remarks before sentencing, Maas offered “factors of mitigation,” noting Sommer, who license to practice psychology has been revoked, helped one victim secure lifetime medical benefits for her active-duty sexual trauma.

Added Maas, “You can’t do these acts on unconscious people or through fraudulent means.”

Sommer, who did not take the stand in his own defense during trial, assured Nelson that he had “no intent to disparage any victims.”

At one point, recalling his treatment of some clients, Sommer, who was convicted on Oct. 31, choked up at memories of some who later went on to commit suicide.

He said he harbored no thoughts of revenge toward those who accused him and remains willing to try to rectify any psychological damage he did to others.

Sommer was arrested in May 2017 and pleaded not guilty in a case that drew national headlines and embarrassment for the Department of Defense in the #metoo era, the global movement against sexual harassment and sexual assault of women by men, especially in the workplace, and of victims speaking out and publicly identifying the perpetrators.

Travis officials hired Sommer, who once went by the alias of Heath Jacob Lind, through a contracting company in 2014. At the medical center, just south of Vacaville, he treated more than 100 people before being suspended on July 12, 2016, Air Force officials have said.

At press time, District Attorney Krishna Abrams did not return a request for comment about the Sommer’s sentencing, and it was unclear if Maas would seek a new trial but he almost certainly will file an appeal.