Minister probing case of US pilot who avoided British trial for strangling woman in Cambridge
The case was not investigated by the local police and was instead handed to the US military
Last updated 26th Jun 2026
A justice minister has said he will look into the case of an American fighter pilot who was able to avoid a British trial for strangling a woman in Cambridge while stationed in England.
Captain Jacob Wulfson was tried at a court martial on a US airbase despite his alleged crime taking place while he was off-duty.
As first reported by the Guardian, the case was not investigated by the local police and was instead handed to the US military.
Mr Wulfson’s victim Sarah Steele said she was treated “incredibly aggressively” by the pilot’s defence team and felt like she was the one on trial.
Jake Richards described the case as “really serious” and said there are “issues” around the military courts system.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today: “It’s a really serious case. It’s very good that it’s being raised by yourselves and others.
“I’m going to take it away back to the Ministry of Justice and make sure that we are looking into the details of this later.”
He added: “There are issues around military courts, whether that is in America or indeed our own, and how that interplays with our criminal courts and our civil courts. That’s always an area that we look at.”
He said there should be a “really thorough and objective look at this case”.
Ms Steele, an academic, met Cpt Wulfson on a dating app and eventually arranged to meet at his flat while he was working at RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk.
She left his flat the next morning feeling that something was wrong, later accusing him of non-consensual sex, drugging and strangling her, the Guardian reported.
He was charged with sexual assault and aggravated sexual contact, and was ultimately found guilty of strangulation, but acquitted of the other charges.
The judge in the court martial was a US air force colonel and the jury was a panel of eight air force officers.
Some British terms had to be explained to the panel, and Cpt Wulfson’s “enemies killed in action count” as an F-35 pilot was used as mitigation for his sentence, the newspaper said.
Speaking about the trial, Ms Steele told the same programme: “It was a very difficult system to be in, and at times I was treated incredibly aggressively, and I felt like I was on trial, and it became a character assassination.
“People are attacking you with assertions that are trying to undermine, say that you’re lying, say that you’re a problem, say that you’re all manner of evil things and that you’re creating this, and you’ve got to wade through that staring in the face of the accused.”
Ms Steele’s case would likely have been tried at a crown court had it been handled by the Crown Prosecution Service.
The court martial handed Cpt Wulfson a sentence of six months at a correctional facility at RAF Lakenheath.
Calling for a clearer guidance on who should prosecute such cases, she said: “I think it’s really important that for the interests of justice and for the rights of victims, that we have clear framework discussion around this.”
There are around 12 active US air force bases across the UK.
The US military justice system has a distinct legal framework and is separate from British civilian courts.