AF Classmate of Flinn Who Had Affair Faces 55-Year Prison Term
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BOSSIER CITY, La. — An Air Force officer who was a classmate of 1st Lt. Kelly Flinn could get 55 years in prison if convicted on charges arising from an affair with a married officer that produced a child.
Charges against 1st Lt. Crista Davis, 28, range from failure to fill out weekly reports to conduct unbecoming an officer: writing her lover’s wife profanity-filled letters boasting about sex.
Unlike Flinn, Davis has not been charged with adultery. But she says she and her ex-classmate are both victims of sex discrimination.
“Our cases are linked by the fact that we’re both women and they’re slamming us,” Davis told the New York Daily News in Tuesday’s editions.
Her attorney, Louis P. Font, said the charges were brought as retaliation. “She’s black, she’s female and she has exposed racism and sexism in the Air Force,” he told the Dallas Morning News in an interview published May 9.
The Air Force denied that the charges were motivated by bias.
The charges against Davis are conduct unbecoming an officer; absence without leave; willfully disobeying a superior officer; willful dereliction of duty; and making false official statements. If convicted on all counts, she faces 55 years in prison.
The Air Force would not give phone numbers for Davis or Maj. Greg Russell, who she has named as the father of her son, Cristophe.
Davis, of DeKalb, Ill., said she and Russell began an affair in 1995, two years after she graduated from the academy. That also was a year after Russell, who sported tattoos on both arms and, when off-duty, bracelets, chains, earrings and a ring through his pierced tongue, was suspended from teaching.
Davis said she ended the relationship last year after learning Russell was married. He was never charged with adultery because that would have delayed prosecution of other substantial charges against him, said Neil Talbott, spokesman for the Air Force Academy.
Charges of misusing an Air Force credit card and failing to pay debts were dismissed in January.
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