Cambridgeshire police face questions over decision to hand sexual assault case to US military

The Cambridgeshire force has acknowledged that after Sarah Steele was assaulted, it allowed the US military to take ‘investigative primacy’. Composite: Guardian Design/Getty Images View image in fullscreen The Cambridgeshire force has acknowledged that after Sarah Steele was assaulted, it allowed the US military to take ‘investigative primacy’. Composite: Guardian Design/Getty Images Cambridgeshire police face questions over decision to hand sexual assault case to US military Jacob Wulfson, who strangled woman he met online, was allowed to be tried at airbase court martial instead of facing UK justice Bizarre questions and an all-male ‘jury’: woman strangled by US pilot in Britain tells of airbase trial Explainer: how the US bypasses British courts A police force in England is facing mounting questions over its decision to allow the US military to prosecute the case of a woman who was strangled by an American fighter pilot in his apartment in Cambridge city centre. Cambridgeshire police has acknowledged that in the days after the assault in 2023, it allowed the US military to take “investigative primacy” in the case, despite the fact the crime took place within the force’s territory and when the pilot was off duty. The force appears to have accepted a claim by US military investigators that the victim, Sarah Steele, “did not want to be contacted” by local police about the case. However, Steele, 42, has insisted this claim by US military was false. View image in fullscreen Sarah Steele: ‘I absolutely did not tell anyone then that I didn’t wish to speak to the British police.’ Photograph: Antonio Olmos/The Guardian The decision by Cambridgeshire police to cede responsibility to the US military paved the way for the pilot, Capt Jacob Wulfson, to avoid British justice. Instead, he was tried in a military tribunal at RAF Lakenheath, a US airbase in neighbouring Suffolk. Wulfson was convicted at the court martial in April 2026 of strangling Steele on their first in-person encounter after the pair met on a dating app. He was acquitted of penetrating her without her consent and doing so knowing she had been drugged, an offence that was charged as sexual assault and “aggravated sexual contact”. In an English court, an offence of sexual penetration without consent would probably have been categorised as rape. The jury in the court martial consisted of an all-male panel of Wulfson’s fellow air force officers, all stationed at the same base as him. These men also decided his sentence: six months in a correctional facility. View image in fullscreen Wulfson (centre) with colleagues at the Dubai airshow in UAE in 2019. Photograph: Tech Sgt Joseph Pick/US Air Forces Central Last week, Steele described her “degrading and distressing” experience of going through the US military justice system as a victim. She believes that the system, which was unfamiliar to her, “picked me up, chewed me out”. The Guardian’s investigation into the case, part of a series of reports