Air Force Maj. Gen. Phillip Stewart leaves a courthouse at Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston, Texas, in January 2024. (Rose L. Thayer/Stars and Stripes )

FORT SAM HOUSTON, Texas — An Air Force officer testified over two days, often through tears, that she did not know how to say “no” when her boss, a two-star general, invited her into his hotel bedroom during an alcohol-fueled night on a work trip.

The woman said she was shocked the moment a night of drinking and discussing the Air Force, family and combat missions turned to sex when Maj. Gen. Phillip Stewart put his arm around her and the two kissed.

The sexual encounter, which the woman and Stewart have agreed occurred during an April 2023 trip to Altus Air Force Base in Oklahoma, was the focus of much of the nearly seven hours of testimony that she provided Monday and Tuesday during Stewart’s court-martial at Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston in Texas.

Stars and Stripes does not name people who identify themselves as victims of sexual assault unless the person has agreed to be named. An attorney for the officer in this case asked she not be named.

Six men and two women, all three-star Air Force generals, are jurors in the trial and began hearing testimony from the woman on Monday afternoon.

Stewart faces two counts of sexual assault, plus a charge of dereliction of duty for flying an aircraft within 12 hours of drinking alcoholic beverages during the same trip to Altus. He also is charged with conduct unbecoming an officer for inviting the same woman to his hotel room during a March 2023 work conference in Denver, Colo.

The court-martial is expected to continue through the week. Each count of sexual assault carries a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison and just six jurors need to agree for a verdict.

The general pleaded guilty Monday to adultery and pursuing an unprofessional relationship with the woman, a lieutenant colonel who worked in his office. At the time, Stewart was commander of the 19th Air Force, which oversees much of the service’s pilot training from its headquarters at Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph Air Force Base.

The lieutenant colonel, soft-spoken and dressed in a blue Air Force uniform, spent more than three hours Monday answering questions from Air Force prosecutor Col. Naomi Dennis and describing her interactions with Stewart since he took command in August 2022.

She looked at Stewart only once during testimony when Dennis asked her to identify him in the courtroom. Stewart often took notes as she spoke.

The April night at Altus began with a social event where the woman said she drank two glasses of wine and had little interaction with Stewart beyond placing his dinner order.

As 9 p.m. approached, she said she informed Stewart, a career fighter pilot, that he was approaching the 12-hour window prior to a scheduled flight. Pilots are not allowed to control an aircraft if they’ve consumed alcohol during that time. The woman is also a pilot with more than 1,000 combat flying hours.

In response, Stewart asked her what she was drinking. An old-fashioned, she said, and Stewart asked she get him the same. About 15 minutes later, she said she boarded a bus with him to make certain he got to his room safely.

The two struggled to get the key to work at the house only to call for help and realize they had the wrong house — Stewart’s lodging was next door.

“It’s funny but also pretty embarrassing and mortifying,” she said.

Stewart then invited her into the house for a glass of wine and she accepted. He poured the wine and the two sat in the living room of the general officer hotel. She sat on the couch and he sat in an armchair.

“I’m thinking we are getting to know each other finally,” she said. “I was envious of people who had a relationship with their bosses.”

She said she never brought up the 12-hour alcohol window again because it was uncomfortable the first time and Stewart already knew. She then sent a text message to invite two noncommissioned officers who traveled with them to join them.

The two NCOs did and left at about midnight, leaving the woman alone with Stewart again. By this point, the two had finished a bottle of wine and she had gone to her room to get a can of wine, which she also had finished. She testified she then opened a smaller bottle of wine and felt drunk when the two were sitting together on the couch looking at photos on her phone and Stewart put his arm around her.

Then kissing began and the woman testified she is uncertain who initiated it.

“I kissed him back. It was a response. I haven’t kissed anyone but my husband in 22 years,” she said. “In the back of my mind I’m thinking, ‘How do I get out of this?’”

Stewart then stood up and extended his hand to her.

“Come on,” he said.

She took his hand, stood up and followed him down a hall to the bedroom where they had sex, she said.

Throughout the encounter, she said her mind was trying to catch up with what was happening.

They had sex a second time. When he went to the bathroom, she got up and dressed.

Before she left for her own room, she reminded him to set his alarm because they had to catch the bus in about four hours for a breakfast social and then his flight.

In the days and weeks that followed, the woman described being unable to sleep, eat or focus on anything. She tried to push down everything and carry on as normal, she said — even when she ran into Stewart at a restaurant near the base while she was with her family and he was with a large group.

When Dennis asked why she waited until early May to report the incident to the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, she said it felt “too big.”

“It was my marriage, my identity, my integrity, my job, my future,” she said. “I felt like everything was going to collapse on me if I said anything. Who’s going to believe me? Who is going to believe me over a two star?”

On Tuesday in court, the woman returned to the witness stand and faced more than three hours of questions from Sherilyn Bunn, Stewart’s lead attorney, who used text messages to show the woman did often joke and message the general socially before the trip to Altus, despite her saying previously that she hadn’t. Bunn also pointed out messages exchanged between the woman and Stewart in the weeks between the sexual encounter and her filing a criminal report.

“You talked about alcohol with Maj. Gen. Stewart a lot,” Bunn said estimating the number of conversations before and after the trip as being in the “double digits.”

Other messages were filled with references to laughter, positive emojis and nonwork-related information, Bunn said. In one, Stewart invites the woman’s husband to smoke cigars. In another, she talks about purchasing champagne at the grocery store.

After Bunn’s questions, Dennis asked the woman why she texted Stewart after the Altus trip as if everything was normal.

“I didn’t want this to be real,” she said. “I’ve never been unfaithful to my husband.”

She said she was looking to Stewart for clues on how to act and he was acting as if nothing happened and perhaps messaging her more than he had previously.

The guilt of keeping the encounter from her husband ultimately helped her decide to report it, she said.

Bunn asked the woman had she weighed “the choice of whether or not this was an adulterous relationship or an assault.”

“No,” she said loudly.

Dennis and Bunn also spent considerable time questioning the woman about the March night in Denver when Stewart sent the woman messages while they were both attending the Air and Space Forces Association conference.

The two were at the same social event in a hotel bar, but Stewart went to his room while she remained downstairs drinking with others.

In the 14 messages that Stewart sent on two different smartphone applications, he asked the woman whether she had a safe ride to her hotel, which was not at the conference with most other attendees, including Stewart.

“You can crash here if you want. I have 2 queens,” he wrote in one.

“I see you have no shortage of attention,” he wrote in another.

While Dennis inferred Stewart was describing attention from friends and other men, Bunn inferred Stewart meant people were staring at the woman because she was drunk in the bar.

The woman said she was “frustrated” and “in tears” about the messages. She said she showed them to two NCOs — the two who would later drink with her at Stewart’s Altus hotel. The men said they would speak to Stewart about it on her behalf.

However, the next day she asked each of them not to do so. She didn’t like how she had aired officer business in front of enlisted personnel, she said.

“I was being dramatic,” Bunn said the woman told investigators in May.

Bunn questioned the woman why she would go alone into Stewart’s room just a month later, given her initial reaction to the messages in Denver.

“I wasn’t sure anymore. I wanted it to be nothing,” she said.

She said she wanted to be a deputy commander of a training group at Randolph AFB.

Dennis asked her what her career goals were now.

“I’ll retire in November,” she said.