It's just strange how so many American dissidents get hit with those type of charges. Charges that are designed to destroy the person's reputation and cause the public to refuse to even listen to their point of view on why they disagree with US war policy. This tactic works great, as shown by your reaction to the story - you didn't come here to talk about the story, but to deflect away from the story, by smearing the soldier as a sex offender. And you're not the only one who came here to do that. I won't even include non-Americans like Julian Assange, Pavel Durov, and Dominque Strauss-Kahn who were also charged as sex offenders in order to have them arrested so the US and its allies can then press the real charges they wanted to arrest them for, or force them to resign from their office. As head of the IMF, Strauss-Kahn was calling for ending the use of the US dollar as the global reserve currency. Soon enough, he was charged with sex offences and driven from office, to be replaced by reliable neoliberal Christine Lagarde.

FOR EXAMPLE:

Matt DeHart, the alleged Anonymous hacker, deported to U.S. after Canada refused to grant him asylum

...Mr. DeHart fled to Canada with his parents ahead of a criminal trial on child pornography charges that he insists were laid by authorities as leverage to further a national espionage and national security probe.

Mr. DeHart says the pornography charges are a ruse to investigate an espionage and national security probe tied to his involvement in Anonymous and his operation of a “hidden” Internet server used to leak a classified U.S. government document, likely destined to WikiLeaks, the whistle-blowing organization.

A Post investigation revealed many problems with the evidence in the pornography case and confirmed the FBI interrogated him on espionage and security matters several times while he was in custody under unusual circumstances.

In it’s decision on his asylum claim, the IRB raised similar concerns, saying there are enough questions about the case “to cast sufficient doubt on the credibility” of the government’s case and found no “credible or trustworthy evidence” he committed child pornography offences.

However, his claim for protection was not accepted because the IRB said the United States “has a fair and independent judicial process” where he can fight his criminal charges and press his civil rights complaint...

The US government via its 'justice' arm the DOJ, files charges to get people into custody. They are seeing if they can get anything to stick. Years later, after everyone involved in the case is dead or retired, they sometimes admit they had been lying the whole time.

Newly declassified document reveals that US knew that Ethel Rosenberg was not a spy long before her execution